Peter Viney's Blog

Ian Felice

With Nick Panken (support)

The Barn, Railway Inn
Winchester
Friday 2^ndNovember 2018

The stage set at the Railway: left over from Halloween

Support reviewed below main act.

SET LIST: IAN FELICE

1  In Memoriam (Kingdom of Dreams)
2 Mount Despair (Kingdom of Dreams)
3  21^stCentury (Kingdom of Dreams)
4  Water Street (Kingdom of Dreams)
5  Kingdom of Dreams (Kingdom of Dreams)
6  Signs of Spring (Kingdom of Dreams)
7  The Kid (aka Ghost Town, New York) (new, later to appear on Felice Brothers ‘Undress’ in 2019)
8  Triumph 73 (Felice Brothers)
9  Special Announcement (new)
10  Boy From Lawrence County (Felice Brothers)
11  Days of The Years of My Life (new)
12  Wonderful Life (Felice Brothers)
13  Daniel Boone (new)
14  Ballad of Lou The Welterweight (Felice Brothers)
15  Jack At The Asylum (Felice Brothers)
16  Cherry Licorice (Felice Brothers)

Having seen Simone Felice several times, it was instructive to see Ian Felice solo. The family interests are there … songs about dead girls (as Simone describes them) or graveyards (as Ian describes them), what a shitty town they come from (both), comparison to Winchester (both), songs about mentally shattered contemporaries back from war (both), their dad leaving (both)girls and drugs (both) prostitutes (both) .

I prefer Simone solo, and with the Duke & The King to the Felice Brothers. The Felice Brothers are gloriously ramshackle and raucous, but Simone adds a necessary touch of polish on record. The whole family are gifted musicians, imaginative lyricists and fine singers and performers, but when the charisma and intensity was handed out, Simone got the lion’s share. Ian is also a powerful performer, but he sings the songs, while Simone gives a dramatic performance and acts them out too. Ian’s Catskill persona goes to a Guild one pick up semi-acoustic guitar, which might be the most heavily-worn and road-battered electric guitar I’ve seen on stage. The strumming area is bare grey wood – not just worn, but no varnish or colour left. He was always the lead guitarist, fingerpicking and doing solo runs too. Simone is simply one of the most powerful rhythm guitarists I’ve seen. Ian also added loud percussion on the wooden body of the guitar on Signs of Spring.

It was an oddly balanced set. The first six songs are all from Kingdom of Dreams which I bought the day it came out: In Memoriam. Mt Despair, 21st Century, Water Street, Kingdom of Dreams, Signs of Spring.

I thought we were going to get the whole album. He went straight through six songs. As on the album, you pay avid attention to the lyrics. They veer between cutting, funny and strange. Great writing.

Then he switched to new stuff from an album due in Spring 2019, so titles are guesses, and it was interspersed then bookended with Felice Brothers material. I had expected a return to Kingdom of Dreams  and was especially hoping for Road to America, which I thought the best song and best lyric on the album. We didn’t get it. I thought he did himself a disservice on the merchandising by not finishing with a Kingdom of Dreams  song, but maybe we all had a copy already. Everybody seemed to know every track he did from it. In fact he only had a book of poems, a T-shirt, a poster (small, £10!) plus CDs and vinyl copies of Kingdom of Dreams . I reckon when you tour, you need a limited edition live set to sell.

The new material sounds promising. Both Special Announcement and  Days of The Years of Our Lives are on July 2018 Felice Brothers setlists, and The Kid (Ghost Town New York) was done solo last December in London. So “new” isn’t so much “really new” as “unrecorded but will be on the new Felice Brothers album.” Daniel Boone was the other new song he announced.

There was a good sprinkling of Felice Brothers favourites in solo versions. Triumph 73 from Life In The Darksounds as if inspired by the same seedy rooms as Simone’s Don’t Wake The Scarecrow. Boy From Lawrence County is the one I think of as All those pills and powders and appeared on Yonder Is The Clock.

Wonderful Life (not to be confused with the Cliff Richard film) is a lyric for repeated listening. The You say you were only seventeen when you fell in love with that dirty reverend Green lines stand out because in the British version of Cluedo Reverend Green is a board piece. In American versions (Clue) it’s Mr Green what with more respect for the clergy. I always wonder whether it’s coincidence or whether they had a British version. Simone and Ian share an ability for a lyric that sticks in the head.

Jack At The Asylum was another from Life In The Dark and is very Felice … crack whores, Death Valley, Cherokees, evening news, lynching, Hiroshima …  and it has that America! America! Chorus.

The Ballad of Lou The Welterweight became an audience singalong, everyone knowing the raunchy (though ironic) lyric and not just the chorus:

Powder your nose, pull off your pantyhose
Let me love you from behind, my Darling

The stage set was left over from Halloween, and it inspired Ian to finish with a song that (he said) he’d never done solo live, Cherry Licorice because of the lines:

 Because I’m high on Halloween candy yeah
And your lips are sweet as brandy

It does appear on Felice Brothers setlists. Great song.

Only disappointment: I really wanted to hear Road to America.

SET LIST: NICK PANKEN

1   Violet Gibson (Lisa O’Neill)
2  In The Manner That It Came To Me
3  The Unforgiven (?)
4  George Jackson (Bob Dylan)
5  On That Day (?)
6  All The Way Back Home

Nick Panken is from Spirit Family Reunion. Like Ian Felice, he plays single pick-up electric guitar with thumb and fingers, though his is a clean unbattered model. He also has harmonica for a couple of songs. I thought he somewhat overdid the obsequious American thanks and pleasure and privilege to have you listen to me stuff. Once or twice is OK.

The first sounded like a gunfighter ballad, with lines about “I would take out the baddie (bad guy?)” but as he told us afterwards, it’s a Lisa O’Neill song about women who tried to assassinate Mussolini. It’s called Violet Gibson. A google produces this:

Violet Gibson is the extraordinary story of an Irish woman who travelled to Rome in 1926 with the aim of assassinating the fascist dictator Mussolini. She never spoke of her motivations and died in a Northampton asylum.

He said he’d just heard it and was fascinated by it …  quick thinking. According to Folk Radio it was released two weeks ago on Lisa O’Neill’s Heard A Long Gone Song.I’ll seek out that album.

The next was an original, In The Manner That It Came To Me, as announced, and I still felt vaguely in Marty Robbins territory. The next I wasn’t sure of the title. The fourth, sensibly for a support was a well-known cover, Bob Dylan’s George Jacksonwhich Dylan did twice on a 45, and no, this was not “Big Band version.”

With one’s mind on Bob Dylan, the last two sounded like outtakes from Saved in style and lyrics … Satan’s Kingdom must come down  and a song where everything comes only from the king (All The Way Back Home). I think you need a gospel choir to get away with that sort of Christian rock with that kind of lyric, though I still cherish Peter, Paul & Mary’s Very Last Day which I used as the basis of a short story.

His “merch” was a cassette. I know cassettes are developing a certain cachet, but come on! Who still has a cassette player? After all the tape deteriorates and they’re useless in ten years or so. When we commissioned ELT audio in two versions … probably 15 or so years ago (cassettes lasted in education much longer than elsewhere), it cost three times as much to produce a cassette as a CD. It actually has to be inserted and run in a high-speed copier rather than stamped out. He’s selling it at £10.  Madness.