As the Felice Brothers circa 2023 took the stage in almost sheepish fashion at The Monkey House on June 22nd in Winooski, it hardly seemed possible it’s been a decade since they last appeared in Vermont.
Yet indeed it was almost ten years since Ian, James, and the company delivered one of the highlights of 2013’s Grand Point North Festival. The current quartet didn’t quite stop the reverential attendees in their tracks this humid early summer evening as they did that early autumn afternoon, but they certainly entertained and, in a little over an hour of a single set, offered a brace of their thought-provoking songs too.
A quick sell-out of the first announced night at this tiny venue led to the announcement of a second show for the Felices and while it seemed there were precious few carryovers in the audience on June 23rd, that only seemed to buoy the spirits of the band.
They certainly made up for lost time away from the Green Mountains, in short order reminding how they invariably recall the earthiest, most ramshackle work of Bob Dylan (The Basement Tapes with The Band). As James unfurled a sustained organ line from his keyboard on his very first solo, it was hard not to find it instantly recognizable as the vintage Sixties sound of the Nobel Laureate’s.
But Ian’s distinctive voice and idiosyncratic singing style came into play even more clearly on “Valium.” At the same time, the peculiar virtues of his compositions emerged in marked contrast to his sibling’s: the nightmarish visions turned reality during “Inferno” hardly equates to “Silverfish,” a number introduced as a song about ‘pest control.’ Intentional or not, the comic relief arising at such points was sufficiently understated to work effectively.
What was not open to debate is how much stability and force drummer Will Lawrence and bassist Jesske Hume bring to the current lineup of the Felices. The former, who offered an engaging opening set of his own solo material, nails down the internal rhythm(s) of such songs as “Abundance” and “Jazz On The Autobahn.”
Meanwhile, the latter remained steadily locked in with her rhythm section partner, that is, when not tossing loopy lines into the air reminiscent of the late great Rick Danko of The Band or cooing dulcet vocal harmonies on the brand-new tune “Suzy Is A Skeleton.”
In terms of stage presence alone–apart from their musicianship– the Catskill Mountain natives remain delightfully unrehearsed, that is, apart from Ian’s departing the tiny stage by himself after he sang sans guitar for the encore. Otherwise, his animated body language, during the raucous “Cherry Licorice”‘s guitar solo and otherwise, bespeaks a spontaneous immersion in the moment of performance.
In fact, the Felice Brothers’ unaffected and humble approach to their music and themselves may be the source of the devotion radiating from those followers who populated the room (then ever-so-quickly quickly departed after the end of the show).
Facetious as were the comments tendered by the two frontmen about their group’s ‘run’ in the Onion City, those observations nevertheless carried kernels of truth about the mutual pleasure they and their bandmates exchanged with those who came to see them these two late June nights.
