March lucky number and colors

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Aries:
Lucky Number: 12, 18, 26, 32
Lucky Color: blossom pink and spring green.
Lucky Day: Monday

Taurus:
Lucky Number: 2, 10, 13, 42
Lucky Color: burnished gold and electric blue
Lucky Day: Thursday

Gemini:
Lucky Number: 35, 40, 47, 62
Lucky Color: bright green and silvery Grey
Lucky Day: Saturday

Cancer:
Lucky Number: 17 , 28, 35, 70
Lucky Color: sea green and golden wheat
Lucky Day: Wednesday

Leo:
Lucky Number: 9, 22, 25, 61
Lucky Color: amber and burgundy
Lucky Day: Friday

Virgo:
Lucky Number: 4, 46, 51, 71
Lucky Color: cherry red and chocolate
Lucky Day: Sunday

Libra:
Lucky Number: 21, 24, 35, 71
Lucky Color: Thursday
Lucky Day: Purple

Scorpio:
Lucky Number: 18, 32, 64, 68
Lucky Color: parrot green and brilliant red
Lucky Day: Friday

Sagittarius:
Lucky Number: 6, 66, 67
Lucky Color: green velvet and buckskin
Lucky Day: Tuesday

Capricorn:
Lucky Number: 6, 19, 41, 49
Lucky Color: aquamarine and Chrysostom
Lucky Day: Wednesday

Aquarius:
Lucky Number: 27, 28, 41, 43
Lucky Color: sunflower yellow and rose pink
Lucky Day: Monday

Pisces:
Lucky Number: 14, 28, 53, 61
Lucky Color: Dark blue
Lucky Day: Saturday

Today Birthday Celebrities Horoscope

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You are playful, spirited, and totally distinctive in your self-expression. Anyone who identifies you thinks you are "one in a million". As likable as you are, some may be frightened by your dull approach, perhaps taking your many jokes a little too seriously. Underneath, you are far more sensitive and religious than you appear. Your memory is extraordinary and your talents are many. You love a good discuss, and with your sharp mind, generally win! Famous people born today: Keira Knightley, Amy Smart, James Caan, Leonard Nimoy, Bianca Kajlich, Barry Newman, Jennifer Grey, Gregory Corso, Alan Arkin, Rufus Thomas


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Neptune Always Important in Astrology

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It is a fairly new discovery and therefore referred to as one of the "modern planets." Neptune was discovered in 1848 when astronomers solved the secrecy of why Uranus was being pulled off its orbit. They had alleged that another planet was exerting a gravitational pull, and were proven right when they discovered Neptune.

Why is Neptune called as a "generational planet?”
It receives about 14 years for Neptune to pass through a sign, so those born in a meticulous period have this in common. It influences a generation and the lens through which that set handles Neptunian concerns.

The long vision of history reveals the crash a generation made on the culture via Neptune. One example is the 1960s when Neptune was in Scorpio, and there was serious experimentation in drugs, and the music veered toward the trance-like, indistinct, dark, mysterious and subterranean. Neptune shapes the collective mythology, and the memory of that era is colored by Scorpionic undertones of emotional strength.


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Capricorn luckies

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Capricorn is all about hard work. Those born under this Sign are more than happy to set in a full day at the office, realizing that it takes a lot of those days to attain the top. That's no problem, since Capricorns are both striving and determined - they will get there.

Life is one big project for these people, and they acclimatize to this by adopting a businesslike approach to everything they do. Capricorns are sensible, taking things one-step at a time and being as realistic and realistic as possible. The Capricorn-born are extremely dedicated to their goals, almost to the point of stubbornness. The Goat is the Capricorn symbol and an apt lucky charm for these people.

Goats love to go up to the top of the mountain, where the air is clear and fresh. In much the same way, Capricorns want to get to the top of their chosen field so that they can gather the benefits of success; namely fame, status and money. Getting to the top is not always easy, however, so it's likely that Goats will disturb a few feathers along the way.

Positives:
A person born under the sign of Capricorn will have a propensity to be goal oriented. They seek positions where they can have great manage and authority. They don't function well in subsidiary positions. If they believe they can succeed in attaining a goal, they will continue until it is reached.

Capricorns tend to be thoughtful thinkers. To them life is a serious business, and the need to be in control of it is supreme. They are seekers after knowledge and wisdom. Lucid, logical and clearheaded, they have excellent attentiveness, and delight in all forms of debate but will maintain these bonds their whole life.

They are loyal to associates. Never rash, they consider business and personal relationships carefully before becoming involved. These are family people, and family usually comes first, apart from where business is their primary concern.


Lucky Stones: Garnet, Dark Sapphire

Lucky Number: 8, 13, 22, 26

Lucky Colors: Light Brown, Steel, Grey


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Mercury in Zodiac signs

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Mercury in Aries: Mercury in Aries gives fast, intelligent and innovative thinking. People born with this combination are violent in their approach. They like to be on their toes all the time. Positively this result gives a penetrating sharp mind. Negatively, it gives quick conclusions and fickle thinking.

Mercury in Taurus: Mercury in Taurus yields a keen appreciation for beauty and a practical approach towards life. The person born with this mixture is mostly incoherent in expressions. Positively, it gives a steady mind, and even an inspiring sense of expressions. Negatively, it can lead to lust, or dullness in thinking and acquisitive.

Mercury in Gemini: It is the ruler of this zodiac. Brilliancy in writing and oratory skills are bestowed to the lucky person born with this full pressure of the planet. The person tends to be curious and involved in everything. Positively, the person is pointed, clever, multidimensional and endowed with great communication skills. Negatively, the person can be indecisive, scatterbrain and even stammering.

Mercury in Cancer: Mercury in cancer brings out sensitivity and insight in a natal chart. The person is typically a great listener. He is cautious and careful in thinking, with love for traditional expressions. Positively, the person understands with others. Negatively, it can yield to meanness.

Mercury in Leo: Mercury in Leo makes people strong-minded and very opinioned. They give a dramatic style to their communication skills. Positively, the people have natural ability for leadership. Negatively, the person becomes dominant and self-centered.

Mercury in Virgo: Mercury in Virgo gives extremely analytical skills, as the planet is placed in its own zodiac. People born with this combination hate to be irrational and disorganized. A slight ignorance flares up their irritation and worry. Positively, it produces a humid person with brilliant mind for details and research work. Negatively it inclines one towards over criticism, irritability and no imagination.

Mercury in Libra: Mercury in this sign seeks agreement and balance in thoughts. In this zodiac it can yield a combination of emotions, intelligence, and attraction. Positively, the judgment and intelligence in communication skill is superb.

Mercury in Scorpio: Effect of Mercury in Scorpio is that of seeking the truth and profundity behind everything and everyone. Though often not so capable of expressing himself or herself clearly, the person can grip and read other people`s thoughts uncannily. Positively, one blessed with this union can go deep inside mysteries and stands for truth. Negatively, it is self-important and concerns only with the self.

Mercury in Sagittarius: This combination makes the person quick, energetic and quite a visionary. They put thoughts in whatever they speak; hence it is not unusual for them to often move away from truth. They would love to be enclosed by people and listened to. Positively, the thinking is universal and gentle. Negatively, the person is dominating and unconcerned about facts or other`s attitude.

Mercury in Capricorn: Mercury in this sign forces a person to be alert about the words one speaks. The thoughts are thoroughly planned and executed. Ambitious, calculating nature with possibility of greediness is also evident. Positively, the effects are that of a strong mind, understanding, reliability and tolerance. Negatively, the person is manipulative and calculative for egotistical gains in whatever they do.

Mercury in Aquarius: The people under this power are bound to think out of the box. They are outgoing, though they may be regarded a bit peculiar by others. When well placed, it makes the person devoted to interests of others, with good use of his keen grasping capabilities. Negatively, the person really becomes odd and anti social.

Mercury in Pisces: Mercury in this sign makes the person tending towards arts and intuition. A person`s thinking also acquires a dream like excellence, a bit out of touch with reality. Positively, they may prove to be creative and good with people. Negatively, they may have a dependent and with a weak strip where relationships with people is concerned.



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BOOK REVIEW: I'm Chevy Chase... And You're Not by Rena Fruchter [Virgin Books]

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I finally got around to reading the 2007 biography I’m Chevy Chase… And You’re Not and I’m sorry to say I’m dubious about the book. Chase is one of Saturday Night Live‘s original cast members and indeed one of the main architects who created the show alongside Lorne Michaels and Michael O’Donoghue. I can be obsessive about SNL, picking up almost every book about the show and its rotating cast that I can get my hands on. Chevy’s work on SNL and his Hollywood career are well known and need no re-hash here. The man is certainly worthy of biographical treatment but my personal feeling is that perhaps this third rate biography is about all he deserves.

First of all, the writing is unimaginative and fails to rise to any level of investigative journalism. A third grader could do a better job than this. Okay. Maybe that’s a little harsh. Make that a sixth grader. It seems a little odd to me that after years of reading stuff about what a jerk Chevy can be, this biography comes along and paints the first glowing account of his life that I have ever seen or heard. It’s only natural that the subject should be a key source for an official biography, but author Rena Fruchter comes off as a total sycophant on Chevy’s pay roll.

To his credit, Chase is open and honest about the abuse he suffered as a child. Issues and challenges that those youthful experiences brought about in his adult life are addressed in a brutally honest and admirably forthcoming manner here. That alone constitutes a bravery sadly lacking in most people, be they celebrity or not. The book also provides new perspective on Chevy’s departure from SNL after only one season which I found illuminating.

I want to believe that maybe Chevy is not the asshole that dozens of writers and former co-workers have described over the years. And perhaps a better writer could have painted this portrait a little more convincingly. On the other hand, if he really is a jerk, I can’t imagine there would be much demand for a tell-all, “Citizen Chase”, Hollywood Babylon-type treatment. Ultimately, perhaps the chosen approach was a marketing decision. The largest prospective audience for a book like this is the man’s fan base. He’s a funny guy and a major figure in American comedy no matter how you look at it. So it’s two steps forward with his personal revelations but one step back with a poor choice for biographer and I remain ambivalent about whether he deserves better. It’s just been too many years for me reading about what a jerk Chevy can be for this book to come along and just completely change my thinking about him. Having said all that, I still love the guy. In the final analysis, the courage he displays in his willingness to speak about the horrors of child abuse and his own admission that drug use drove him into rehab in the 80s will likely win out and make me love him even more. Those are things that surely would have been glossed over or skipped altogether if this bio were a total hack job.

The Felice Brothers' Road Crusade For Authenticity

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I had the extremely good fortune to write an article about the Felice Brothers for Crawdaddy.com in late 2010 that was published online in January of 2011. One of my favorite contemporary acts, I went way overboard in researching the article. Though I was paid handsomely for my work, I went considerably over budget in my research, running up gasoline, food, and hotel bills as I traveled to see the band in Louisville and Nashville in the weeks running up to their appearance at Newport, Kentucky’s Southgate House, where I interviewed James Felice for the article. Covering one of my favorite bands for the legendary Crawdaddy was a great honor for me. I will forever look upon this assignment as being akin to “winning the freelance Super Bowl”. Special thanks to editor Angie Zimmerman and to James Felice for being so gracious with his time. Months after this piece first appeared I ran into James Felice at Cincinnati’s MidPoint festival and he spoke glowingly about the article, saying that it was one of his favorite things he’d ever seen written about the band. Remembering my face and our conversation, he asked, “Did you write the review of our new CD for Crawdaddy too?” I assured him that indeed I had and again he complimented my work. As good as it gets for a freelancer who remains an unabashed fanboy as well. Crawdaddy more or less folded in 2011, as they were gobbled up by Paste Magazine who has a much bigger readership but apparently no intention of honoring Crawdaddy with more than an untended, rarely-updated blog page on their site. Try going to Crawdaddy.com and you’ll see links to maybe a dozen articles or so, a shameful and inexcusable under-representation of the magazine that launched “Rock Journalism” before there even was such a thing and yes, even before Rolling Stone magazine. Shame on you, Paste. Anyway – here’s the piece I wrote about the Felice Brothers. Like the other stuff I wrote for Crawdaddy, I am real proud of it. Since even the band seemed to appreciate the article, I thought it would be a shame for it to just disappear forever from the interwebs. Thanks for reading and Happy New Year. –rh

***


If Keith Richards recorded an acoustic album in a loose, back porch hootenanny setting with Tom Waits producing, he’d be lucky if it came out sounding as raw and authentic as the Felice Brothers’ self-titled release from 2008. Though they have enjoyed an increasing amount of success in the Alt-Rock and Americana scene over the past few years, the Felice Brothers remain relatively unknown. With a sound often described as a bittersweet whiskey binge of Dylan-esque ballads and folksy anthems, the Felice Brothers also have an arsenal of infectious acoustic honky tonk numbers. Performing with sweaty, blood-in-their-eyes passion, the Felice Brothers’ live performances are a ramshackle hillbilly soul catharsis exorcism. They look like they’ve been on the road for five straight years, which they have. Trudging ever onward, they spend months at a time on the road, schlepping coast to coast in a beat-up old RV that they have driven all over the US and Canada. Even a cursory glance at their tour dates is enough to give you road fever. The band seems to be constantly touring, taking very few days off and frequently traveling several hundred miles in between shows.

Brothers Ian, James and Simone Felice were raised in a musical family in the Catskill Mountains. Drawing inspiration from their father and many generations of musicians that came before them, the three formed an ad hoc group and eventually moved to New York City. Busking on street corners, in subway stations and city parks, the band soon came to the attention of a small European label called Loose Records. Already veterans of the road at a very young age, the band cobbled together Tonight At The Arizona from a cluster of early demos and hit the highway once again.

Night after night in one city after another, the band performed a seemingly endless string of live shows unmatched in visceral intensity and emotional power. The ragged band of troubadours pressed on as their reputation grew. Their material originating mostly from brother Ian’s pen, it resonates with echoes of the past. Folk legends, murder ballads, strange tales of the rural poor. Some literal and linear in nature, others more abstract. Every last one of the slow tunes is heart wrenching and the rave ups are all unfailingly gut-bucket gritty.

The band’s self-titled CD surfaced in early 2008 and soon “Frankie’s Gun” and “Whiskey In My Whiskey” blossomed into college radio staples. A published novelist and renaissance man whose creativity knows no boundaries, brother Simone left the band to pursue other avenues. With fiddler Greg Farley and drummer Dave Turbeville now full-fledged members of the Felice Brothers entourage, the road was not kept waiting.

The band shares vocal duties. Ian and the similarly tight-lipped bassist Christmas Clapton keen and bleat like rusty saxophones. (Their vocal stylings are frequently compared to Dylan.) Wherefrom these stick figure scarecrows straight outta Steinbeck conjure the full spectrum of human emotion I don’t know. Burly, bearded, cherub-faced James has a huskier tone suiting his larger frame. A raspy raconteur with a voice of considerable depth, he howls “Goddamn You, Jim” and “Let Me Come Home” through tears of rage and desperation. Even Farley is strapping on a guitar and stepping up the microphone to belt out the occasional Cajun hillbilly rock and roux number nowadays.

Already accustomed to busking in the streets and subway tunnels of New York City, when their frozen fingers couldn’t feel the frets, teeth chattering between verses and subway trains drowning out every other chorus, the Felice Brothers’ dream to one day play the Newport Folk Festival was not going to be thwarted by a mere power outage. After the rain cleared, they just played barefoot and acoustic in the mud in front of the stage. By instinctively braving the elements and rising above less than ideal circumstances, they turned adverse conditions into a damn good story and overnight it became part of the legend. Just another tale from the road. Throw another log on the fire.

In support of 2009’s Yonder Is The Clock, the family Felice expanded for that summer’s Big Surprise Tour with Justin Townes Earle, Dave Rawlings Machine, and Old Crow Medicine Show. Though spanning barely a dozen stops on outdoor stages around the Midwest and down south, the tour was seen by many as a natural heir to Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue. A totally unique program was improvised by loose and spontaneous aggregations that included members of all four bands as they meandered on and off the stage throughout two lengthy sets on each stop of the tour.

Our bedraggled and baying band of road dogs was busier than ever this past summer, touring with few breaks straight on into the fall. Squeezing several European dates in between two extensive US tours, the band’s material began to evolve and change in unexpected ways. In Louisville, Kentucky and Nashville, Tennessee, this writer was witness to two performances that were wildly divergent in color and content, though the shows were a mere eight weeks apart. In the interim the band had ventured to the far corners of the earth and back again, their travels reflected in the evolution of their new material. With just a few dates left on of one of the longest treks of the band’s brief but already storied history, the gracious and loquacious James Felice took a few moments to chat with me before the band’s performance at the historic Southgate House in Newport, Kentucky. Finding the band finally in the home stretch of a lengthy fall tour, with the comforts of home almost within their grasp and the Cincinnati skyline looming on the horizon as darkness fell on the Ohio River, I asked James Felice about the band’s relationship with the road.

*


RH: You guys seem to be out there on the road almost all the time with very few days off.

James Felice: Yeah. I guess most bands at our level do a lot of touring because these days it’s the only way you can make money, really. We don’t have too many things tying us back at home and we’re always excited to get out on the road and play. It’s fun and we know that it helps us to live. We’re gonna be able to live this winter and not freeze to death because we toured all fall. When you’re a touring musician your work is sort of all lumped into a few months at time. Then there’s other times when you have nothing to do because it’s not like a nine-to-five job. It’s more like a September 1st to December 1st kinda job. It’s almost like going up to Alaska and being a fisherman or something like that.

RH: At some point does the road begin to feel like home and when you’re back home with nothing to do that feels strange?

JF: Yeah, absolutely. We call it Post-Tour Depression. For at least a week after a tour, especially a long tour like this one, you don’t know what to do. It’s seven o’clock and you feel like you should be loading into a club. It’s actually really weird how lonely and lost you feel. At home it’s really quiet. It gets really quiet really quick and kind of boring and scary. You almost feel like you’re suffocating sometimes, but you’re not of course. You’ve just been to forty-five, fifty cities in the last two months so it can be weird to come back home. Especially because we live in a little town where there’s nothing going on. I just have a little house I live in. I don’t have a real job. There’s no schedule. Like tonight, I’m doing this interview in a bar. I don’t usually do that. At home I’d be stacking wood or building a fire or something. So yeah, you fall into that depression but then two weeks later you’re thinking, “I can’t fucking believe that I was on tour! How did I live like that?”

RH: I’m sure you try to make the routing of the tour as easy as possible, but sometimes I guess it’s unavoidable that there’s going to be long drives between shows?

JF: Yeah. The first part of this tour was on the west coast and in the southwest so the drives were always very long because the cities are so far apart. We had something like eleven shows in a row from San Diego up to Vancouver. Then the next day we had a day off, but we had to drive eighteen hours to Salt Lake City. Then ten hours to get to Denver. Then seventeen hours to Omaha. So there’s an incredible amount of driving. We’ve put 12,000 miles on the bus in the last couple months. Maybe more, actually. It’s a lot of traveling. It’s a big ol’ country, man. It’s really, really big.

RH: Eighteen hour drive – that’s no kinda day off at all, is it?

JF: (Laughs) No, no! But I know I could be a truck driver now, you know? If this falls through, I could be a truck driver or a bus driver. Just get my CDL and be ready to go.

RH: You guys have been trekkin’ around in that same RV for a while now, is that right?

JF: Yeah it’s the only one we’ve ever had. Well, the only thing we’ve driven cross country. When we were just getting started we had like a “short bus” - like they have for special needs kids? - which we were! But that didn’t really last too long. We were gonna drive the short bus cross country on our first tour that we booked ourselves. And I remember we were like two miles from home just driving around and we hit a pothole and we all almost died. We almost careened off the road and we were like, “You know what? We can’t do this. We gotta be safe. We can’t take this thing across the country”. Driving that thing was so fucking dangerous.




RH: How much of the new material does the band write while you’re on tour and road test from night to night?

JF: We road test a lot. But we don’t write very much on tour. We’ve been working on our new record. We’re almost done now. We’ve been playing a lot of songs from the new record that’s coming out in March, I think. And it’s a different kind of sound. It’s a different record. The next tour we do, when we tour for the new record, it’s gonna be a different sounding band.

RH: Tell me about the new song, I think it’s called “Royal Hawaiian Hotel”?

JF: Yeah, actually I think it’s gonna be called “Ponzi”.

RH: When I heard it at the Nashville show that one struck me as really different. Ian puts down the guitar. He’s doing more of a frontman kinda thing, swinging his arms around a bit, a little more animated than usual…

JF: Yeah, we’re trying to have fun, man. We’ve been playing this folk kinda rock thing I guess, whatever you wanna call it, for a while. And it’s fun to do but we gotta keep movin’ on. Can’t play the same music your whole life. And, you know, we haven’t really cashed in on it as hard as some. It’s kinda funny ‘cause now you see a lotta bands doing really well with the kinda stuff we were doing. There’s like a whole scene now, bigger than I had noticed before. There seems to be a growing scene that plays this kind of music. But I think it’s time for us to move on and try out some new shit.

RH: The Felice Brothers are already an established act and quite prolific, obviously. But right now I have sense of you guys being on the brink of huge step forward. With the amount of new and very different material that I’ve heard over the course of just a handful of shows, I am reminded of Exile-era Stones or Wilco’s Being There. I guess what I’m trying to say is that it seems to me like single disc wouldn’t even scratch the surface of where you guys are at right now and maybe a double album might called for.

JF: Yeah, we have dozens and dozens and dozens of songs. Ian, my brother, writes most of the songs. He’s so prolific that we still pull up songs that he wrote years ago sometimes. Even things that didn’t make the first record. He’s got so many great songs. This new record is actually not going to be a double record. It’s a short, concise, straight to the point kind of thing. Which is important because I feel like our last record was a little sprawled, a little bit too much? This one’s concise and it’s different because we’re moving forward. Ian and the rest of us in the band, we’re never satisfied with what we’re doing and we don’t want to be pigeonholed. You know, this whole rootsy, folky, Bob Dylan, The Band, good time shit is cool. But it’s not us, really. It was. We started playing this kind of music because it was the only goddamn thing we knew how to play, you know? Acoustic guitar, a drum, an accordion. But it’s not who we are, you know? We’re certainly dirt bags. And we’re certainly broke still. But we are musicians and we like to challenge ourselves. So we just have to keep going.

RH: I’m often struck by the dichotomy between stage right and stage left. You and Farley do a fair bit of jumping around, but Ian and Christmas sometimes seem almost reluctant to be onstage at all.

JF: Well yeah, they’re more reserved. They’re more introverted I guess, than Farley and I. It depends on the show. It depends on the crowd and the energy and how things are going. Every show with us is not the same because we’re not acting up there. We’re not playing to a script. It seems like a lot of these big acts out there, there’s like a script that you play: You smile here, you make this joke there, you do this flourish at the end of this song. We don’t do that. We are completely loose and the feeling is always new and different. So some shows are not gonna be as wild and animated. They might be more intense and dark. Ian is sort of like the forefront. He’s our leader, he’s the guy. He’s in charge. And so he sets the tone. And naturally I guess Farley and I are a little more animated, and Christmas a little less so, and Dave does his thing behind the drums. So it depends on the show. The last show we played was crazy. Ian was crazy. He’s all standing up on the drums and fuckin’ around and it was great, you know? But the show before that he was dark and more subdued. That’s just the way it is. That makes it exciting for us because we can’t be sitting there doing the same thing every night. Sometimes the audience gets pissed because it’s maybe not what they expected. But that’s okay.

RH: Well I guess if your challenge was to be as animated as Farley on stage every night you’d have your work cut out for you!

JF: Right! I’d fuckin’ break my hip or somethin’!

RH: You’ve indicated that you’d rather not say at this time what label will be releasing the next record. What else can you tell me about the new record and where you guys are at right now?

JF: Well, when we first got started we had all these labels knocking on our door after Tonight At The Arizona came out. Major. Huge. The biggest labels in the world. Some of the biggest producers in the world. And they flew us out to L.A. and here and there. We played for them and they said they wanted to produce our record. But at the end of the day we decided we didn’t want do that because they all wanted to tell us what to do. They wanted to have a hand in it. The A&R guys told us, “Yeah, yeah. We’ll let you do what you want but I’ll come in and check in like every couple days and make sure everything’s going well and I’ll have ideas.” And we said, “Fuck that”. We don’t want any A&R guy, or anybody telling us what to do. We turned down a lot of big time opportunities and went with Conor Oberst’s label Team Love and they’re great. It’s a little tiny label run by really awesome people. They don’t have a lot of money but they did their best with the record. But you know, we’re still struggling, man. You know, it’s hard to maintain a high level of artistic integrity when you also think “I’d also like to be able to pay my rent”, you know? The way the record industry is these days, for a lot of bands, it’s a struggle. It’s something that we have always struggled with as a band since we first started playing. Ian didn’t want to release Iantown (the band’s earliest demos). He’s like, “That’s a piece of shit. I don’t wanna put that out.” But we said, “Ian, come on. You know… You live in a tent. Let’s get a place to live.” So we did. But you know, Ian is very serious about artistic integrity. He lives and dies by that shit. So I think we’re doing okay. We’re real proud of the new record.

This time we’re gonna step it up a little bit to a slightly larger label. Nothing huge because we don’t want to go with a major that’s going to tell us what to do. And hopefully we’ll get on the right track. These people [at the new label] respect us for who we are and they like the music. They care about it, beyond making money. Because we’re never gonna be huge, I don’t think. You know? We’re gonna do our job and we do it very well. And we’re gonna get bigger than we are now. But we’re not gonna be doing like Lady Gaga numbers. You know we’re not gonna be doing nothing like that big. But these people, at Team Love and at the new label, they care about the music and that’s awesome. That’s what we need: we need financial support and freedom at the same time. Which is very hard to get, in any artistic endeavor. When you try to do anything. And that is the artist’s dilemma: Do I wanna eat? Or do I wanna do what I wanna do? And where do those two things meet? There’s always a compromise. Always. No matter what. But where do they meet, money versus freedom? Comfort versus freedom? Which of course is the great debate in the whole world.

ROAD TO THE COAST AND BEYOND pt. 1

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Day 1
Tuesday May 15, 2012
Cincinnati, OH

7am EST – I pick up A1 at his brother’s house and we go to U-Haul to get the truck.

8am – We park in front of 111 Calhoun Street and begin loading the truck. By 10am we are back at U-Haul where they attach trailer to the truck and I pull my car up on the trailer. After U-Haul reps secure the car on the trailer, we are ready to hit the road.

[It is here where a U-Haul rep, instructing me how to pull my car up on the trailer, made a remark that A1 and I later realized was a poignant Zen statement: “You’ll feel a bump. Then just let it roll.”]


11am – We take 75 South into Northern Kentucky where we switch to 71 South. From there our route took us on 65 South to Nashville then 40 West to Memphis.

(A1 at the wheel with Nashville skyline in the background.)
9pm CST – Arrive at Motel 6 in Brinkley, AR.Doped up & docile in the truck all day, my cat Waylon islet loose in the hotel room where he seems happy as a clam, prowling aroundinvestigating the room’s parameters, jumping from bed to bed, eating, drinkingwater, using the litter box like normal, and ultimately crashing out on one ofthe beds. Cat owners know that it is impossible to tell how a cat will react tobeing taken out of its comfort zone. On this first night of the journey I was particularlyconcerned about Waylon. I needn’t have worried. He was totally chill on thisfirst night and indeed throughout the 4 days on the road he was extremely well-behaved,never once hissing, scratching, biting, peeing, spraying or even crying. He wasa lion-hearted trooper every mile of the trip and totally exempt from all thetravel anxieties that haunted me on the road.Day 1 mileage: 553 miles
 

ROAD TO THE COAST AND BEYOND pt 2

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Day 2
Wed May 16, 2012
Brinkley, AR


7am CST – wake up

8am – get coffee, fill the tank, hit the road west on I-40 to Little Rock

12pm – I-30 West through Arkadelphia, Hope and Texarkana

 
3:30pm – Much highway congestion through the entireDallas/Ft. Worth area. Beyond there it was smooth sailing through endless milesof vast, expansive, flat, boring landscape on I-20 West.7:30pm CST – Arrive at Motel 6 in Abilene, TX

 
Day 2 mileage: 565 miles
* * *
Day 3
Thursday May 17, 2012
Abilene, TX

6:40am CST – Wake up, get coffee, fill the tank, hit theroad!7:45am – Leave Abilene, TX on I-20 West10:45am – Stop for gas in Midland, TX1:45pm – Switch to I-10 West2:45pm – Pass through El Paso, enter New Mexico.3:30pm – Gas up in Las Cruces, where we see cheapest gas of thewhole trip at $3.25 a gallon.


4pm – We are momentarily detained by US Border Patrol! A1 isa legal alien but he doesn’t have his green card on him. Officer runs quickcheck on his ID and lets us go. We were only detained about 15 minutes andtruthfully it wasn’t scary at all because the Border Patrol officers were allexceedingly friendly.5pm – Enter Arizona.6pm MST – Arrive at Motel 6 in Willcox, AZ
 Day 3 mileage: 687 miles

ROAD TO THE COAST AND BEYOND pt 3

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Day 4
Friday May 18, 2012
Willcox, AZ

6am MST – wake up

7am – Gas up and leave Willcox, AZ on I-10 West towards Tucson.





10:30am – Switch to I-8 West, the highway that will take us the rest of the way to San Diego. This fourth and final day on the road would yield the best roadside scenery of the week.







1:45pm – Another brief Border Patrol stop at the California border. There will be a total of four. Each time the officers seem to get more friendly. On one occasion we slowed to a crawl, never coming to a complete stop as the officer simply waved and said, “Take it easy, guys.”




2pm – Cross the border into California

2:15pm – Immediately after passing through Yuma, AZ and into California we drive through the Imperial Dunes. A spectacular sight, it looks for a few minutes like we are driving through mountains of snow white sugar. Has to be seen to believed. My pictures didn’t do it justice, so I ganked this one from the interwebs:



3:30pm – We settle into the slow lane as our truck struggles up the steep mountain ascent and into Devil’s Valley. This stretch of highway is far and away the most striking scenery, surrounded as we are by mountain-size piles of boulders as far as the eye can see. The truck’s temperature gauge is peaking out as we reach the summit. We heave a sigh of relief as we reach the top and begin the long descent into the city proper.












4pm – Arrive at A1’s house in San Diego. We decompress for a while and after cleaning up we go out to dinner with A1’s parents at an excellent Mediterranean restaurant around the corner from his place called Aladdin Café.

7pm – We meet up with some friends in the Pacific Beach neighborhood for bonfire, bourbon & beer.

10pm PST – Back at the house, we crash.

Planets in Astrology

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The Sun: The Sun is a top name. The ever in attendance core self that acts as a vehicle for achieving the life task. The Sun is the true self shining from the core. The Sun's energy is the center around which the qualities are built.

The Moon: The Moon is an achiever. The soul that holds the courage. The automatic emotional self that is the ground of a person's being. The soul's inheritance of home and Mother, and the desire to make that safe place in the world.


Mercury: Your sensitive filter. The unique way impressions are engrossed, and what your mind alights on. The preoccupations of your life throughout the mind. A messenger among the soul and the material world.

ROBYN HITCHCOCK SAVES THE DAY - Nov. 7, 1999

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In the fall of 1999, my band the Loose Wrecks was booked to be the opening act for Robyn Hitchcock at a club called Top Cat’s in Cincinnati, Ohio. As a big fan of Robyn’s work, I was ecstatic about this opportunity and quickly set about making a poster for the show. I took the silliest picture of Robyn’s face that I could find and I had it enlarged. Using four sheets of 11”x17” paper crudely taped together to make a poster, the result was kinda rough looking but effective. On the night of the gig I was in the club when I overheard a very loud screaming argument between Robyn’s tour manager and someone at the bar. Apparently Robyn was touring with an opening act and the tour manager was shouting, “Who is this third fucking band?! They will NOT be playing tonight!” To their never ending credit, the bar staff at the club tried to come to my defense, explaining that I had promoted the show for weeks, hanging flyers and posters all over town, notifying local radio stations, etc. The angry tour manager was drooling and spitting and shaking with rage and refused to back down. Someone pointed me out to him and the man turned his angry sneer upon me and began to approach me from across the empty barroom. At that precise moment, as God is my witness, Robyn Hitchcock himself walked through the front door of the club, uncharacteristically ebullient and beaming from ear to ear, loudly asking the room at large, “Who made this fan-TAS-tic poster for tonight’s show?!” I told him it was me and he thanked me profusely, complimented my work, and after introductions were made he seemed thrilled that my band was also on the bill for the evening. Across the room, the tour manager’s gait and demeanor shifted dramatically. Sneer turned to smile as he thrust his hand out for me to shake, “Nice work, mate. Robyn’s happy with it. Glad you’re on the bill tonight.” Fortuitous timing to say the least, and Robyn himself was never aware of the potentially volatile situation that he unknowingly defused. I have been fortunate to cross paths with Robyn Hitchcock several times over the years. He is highly intelligent, gracious, chivalrous and polite. The music world would be a lot better off if there were more guys like him. A true original, copious Syd Barrett comparisons notwithstanding, and a total gentleman.

CHRISTMAS LOVE FOR NEW ORLEANS

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Asking all who read this to keep in mind that New Orleans is STILL recovering from Katrina. Each of us in our own way can contribute to New Orleans’ economic recovery if we consider these NOLA products for gifts and cuisine for our Christmas celebrations with family and friends.


1. MUSIC!
Perhaps the city’s greatest export, New Orleans music is the foundation upon which almost everything in the American Music Vernacular was built. Home of Kermit Ruffins, Dr. Michael White, Rebirth Brass Band and dozens more, Basin Street Records is one of the city’s premiere record labels. Here’s a direct link to their webstore: https://www.basinstreetrecords.com/shop/

2. COFFEE!
Café Du Monde is NOLA’s original French Market coffee stand, world famous for its café au lait and beignets. Their coffee is available in many grocery stores. Other items from the menu, treats, apparel, coffee mugs, etc. available online here: http://shop.cafedumonde.com/coffee.html

3. BEER!
Though beer may not be the first local delicacy to come to mind when considering NOLA products, the Abita Brewing Company is one of the finest microbreweries in the country. Currently they have one of their seasonal brews on store shelves, a dark, flavorful Christmas Ale that is out of this world. Like the Café Du Monde coffee, Abita can be found at many discerning grocery stores and independent beer sellers. Even luckier would be the discovery of a local pub with Abita on tap. While we daydream about that prospect, you can get more mouth-watering info from Abita’s website: http://www.abita.com/

4. SoCo!
Another less obvious gift choice, Southern Comfort has been brewed in New Orleans since 1874. Simply put, this suggestion might be particularly helpful to those who have yet to get a Christmas gift for me.


In all likelihood I will be amending and expanding this post to include more NOLA products. In the meantime, here’s a couple catch-all links to additional gift ideas and food items:

Pure Cajun Products - http://www.purecajun.com/

New Orleans Products.com - http://www.neworleansproducts.com/store/cart.php

Voodoo dolls, candles and other magic trinkets - http://www.neworleansvoodoocrossroads.com/products.html

And lastly, a favorite stop of mine, Marie LaVeau’s House Of Voodoo - http://voodooneworleans.com/



Laissez les bon temps roulez!

BOOK REVIEW: I'm Chevy Chase... And You're Not by Rena Fruchter [Virgin Books]

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I finally got around to reading the 2007 biography I’m Chevy Chase… And You’re Not and I’m sorry to say I’m dubious about the book. Chase is one of Saturday Night Live‘s original cast members and indeed one of the main architects who created the show alongside Lorne Michaels and Michael O’Donoghue. I can be obsessive about SNL, picking up almost every book about the show and its rotating cast that I can get my hands on. Chevy’s work on SNL and his Hollywood career are well known and need no re-hash here. The man is certainly worthy of biographical treatment but my personal feeling is that perhaps this third rate biography is about all he deserves.

First of all, the writing is unimaginative and fails to rise to any level of investigative journalism. A third grader could do a better job than this. Okay. Maybe that’s a little harsh. Make that a sixth grader. It seems a little odd to me that after years of reading stuff about what a jerk Chevy can be, this biography comes along and paints the first glowing account of his life that I have ever seen or heard. It’s only natural that the subject should be a key source for an official biography, but author Rena Fruchter comes off as a total sycophant on Chevy’s pay roll.

To his credit, Chase is open and honest about the abuse he suffered as a child. Issues and challenges that those youthful experiences brought about in his adult life are addressed in a brutally honest and admirably forthcoming manner here. That alone constitutes a bravery sadly lacking in most people, be they celebrity or not. The book also provides new perspective on Chevy’s departure from SNL after only one season which I found illuminating.

I want to believe that maybe Chevy is not the asshole that dozens of writers and former co-workers have described over the years. And perhaps a better writer could have painted this portrait a little more convincingly. On the other hand, if he really is a jerk, I can’t imagine there would be much demand for a tell-all, “Citizen Chase”, Hollywood Babylon-type treatment. Ultimately, perhaps the chosen approach was a marketing decision. The largest prospective audience for a book like this is the man’s fan base. He’s a funny guy and a major figure in American comedy no matter how you look at it. So it’s two steps forward with his personal revelations but one step back with a poor choice for biographer and I remain ambivalent about whether he deserves better. It’s just been too many years for me reading about what a jerk Chevy can be for this book to come along and just completely change my thinking about him. Having said all that, I still love the guy. In the final analysis, the courage he displays in his willingness to speak about the horrors of child abuse and his own admission that drug use drove him into rehab in the 80s will likely win out and make me love him even more. Those are things that surely would have been glossed over or skipped altogether if this bio were a total hack job.

Ace Frehley: No More Cold Gin

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After reading Ace Frehley’s new book I was reminded of this piece I wrote for CityBeat back in April of 2008:

When KISS was interviewed on NBC's Tomorrow show in 1979 in full make-up and regalia, it was clear from Ace Frehley's crazy cackle that he was unglued, untethered, off the leash and most certainly not controlled by Gene Simmons' angry dagger glares. Simmons' demonic powers apparently did not include the ability to rein in Space Ace Frehley, who stole the show with his speed-freak stream-of-altered-consciousness rants that had host Tom Snyder in stitches.

On record and on stage, Ace kept pace with all the Hard Rock guitar heroes of his day. KISS' reputation as a Heavy Metal circus act did not disguise the fact that those were high-voltage Chuck Berry riffs spitting out of Ace's Les Paul like a flame-thrower. In those days before the Internet, rumors were sketchy and unreliable -- reports of any kind were few and far between. But when Ace first left KISS in 1983 due to "health problems," it was soon widely known that the real reason for his sacking was alcohol abuse. The band became an even worse hackfest without the one original member who actually had some chops, but Ace's post-KISS solo stuff was spotty at best. He made a record every few years and toured very little, but even keeping this relatively low profile Ace always maintained a reputation as a guitar god and a raging party animal.

KISS' self-imposed unmasking, financial de-pantsing, frequent lineup changes and steady decline through the '80s and '90s is well-documented. For a band that was more about flash and fire than the music from the outset, they sucked and struggled more than ever until the inevitable reunion tour in 1995. In the early days the bands' profits went back into their stage show and a series of bad investments. Hard to believe, but it's been said that the reunion tour was the first time in their career that KISS made any real money. Think of that: Who the fuck was banking on all those KISS lunchboxes and shit? By 2002, Ace was sick of the circus again and left with a laugh, saying, "This fucking 'farewell tour' has been going on for seven years!"

I don't listen to my KISS records very much anymore. But I will always owe a debt of gratitude to Ace for being the guy who first inspired me to pick up a guitar. Over the years my tastes have changed, but my guitar is my constant companion. When I was a kid I wanted to be Ace Frehley when I grew up. Ironically, this very same childhood obsession with learning to play guitar also lead me to the conclusion that "growing up" was for assholes. Then the unthinkable happened: Ace grew up. Word is that for the first time in his adult life, Ace Frehley is sober.

Even under the make-up, Ace's complexion always made him look like a man of wax who stood too close to a fire. His hairline is creeping skyward now, but his brown hair still falls about his shoulders. Long gone is the silver symmetry of his face-paint design from the old days. In its place we find a scraggly goatee and ever-present pair of dark sunglasses resting atop a nose that must have snorted a hundred miles of white lines in its day.

A lot of guys who lived that Rock Star lifestyle didn't survive. It's against all odds that Ace is still standing, even about to release his first new album in many years.

Once a notorious drunk slacker cokehead and improbable role model for any kid, Ace is now doing what I would have once thought impossible for him: He's kicked the bottle at age 57. I'll drink to that.


[Special thanks to my friend & CityBeat editor Mike Breen. –rh]

The Felice Brothers' Road Crusade For Authenticity

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I had the extremely good fortune to write an article about the Felice Brothers for Crawdaddy.com in late 2010 that was published online in January of 2011. One of my favorite contemporary acts, I went way overboard in researching the article. Though I was paid handsomely for my work, I went considerably over budget in my research, running up gasoline, food, and hotel bills as I traveled to see the band in Louisville and Nashville in the weeks running up to their appearance at Newport, Kentucky’s Southgate House, where I interviewed James Felice for the article. Covering one of my favorite bands for the legendary Crawdaddy was a great honor for me. I will forever look upon this assignment as being akin to “winning the freelance Super Bowl”. Special thanks to editor Angie Zimmerman and to James Felice for being so gracious with his time. Months after this piece first appeared I ran into James Felice at Cincinnati’s MidPoint festival and he spoke glowingly about the article, saying that it was one of his favorite things he’d ever seen written about the band. Remembering my face and our conversation, he asked, “Did you write the review of our new CD for Crawdaddy too?” I assured him that indeed I had and again he complimented my work. As good as it gets for a freelancer who remains an unabashed fanboy as well. Crawdaddy more or less folded in 2011, as they were gobbled up by Paste Magazine who has a much bigger readership but apparently no intention of honoring Crawdaddy with more than an untended, rarely-updated blog page on their site. Try going to Crawdaddy.com and you’ll see links to maybe a dozen articles or so, a shameful and inexcusable under-representation of the magazine that launched “Rock Journalism” before there even was such a thing and yes, even before Rolling Stone magazine. Shame on you, Paste. Anyway – here’s the piece I wrote about the Felice Brothers. Like the other stuff I wrote for Crawdaddy, I am real proud of it. Since even the band seemed to appreciate the article, I thought it would be a shame for it to just disappear forever from the interwebs. Thanks for reading and Happy New Year. –rh

***


If Keith Richards recorded an acoustic album in a loose, back porch hootenanny setting with Tom Waits producing, he’d be lucky if it came out sounding as raw and authentic as the Felice Brothers’ self-titled release from 2008. Though they have enjoyed an increasing amount of success in the Alt-Rock and Americana scene over the past few years, the Felice Brothers remain relatively unknown. With a sound often described as a bittersweet whiskey binge of Dylan-esque ballads and folksy anthems, the Felice Brothers also have an arsenal of infectious acoustic honky tonk numbers. Performing with sweaty, blood-in-their-eyes passion, the Felice Brothers’ live performances are a ramshackle hillbilly soul catharsis exorcism. They look like they’ve been on the road for five straight years, which they have. Trudging ever onward, they spend months at a time on the road, schlepping coast to coast in a beat-up old RV that they have driven all over the US and Canada. Even a cursory glance at their tour dates is enough to give you road fever. The band seems to be constantly touring, taking very few days off and frequently traveling several hundred miles in between shows.

Brothers Ian, James and Simone Felice were raised in a musical family in the Catskill Mountains. Drawing inspiration from their father and many generations of musicians that came before them, the three formed an ad hoc group and eventually moved to New York City. Busking on street corners, in subway stations and city parks, the band soon came to the attention of a small European label called Loose Records. Already veterans of the road at a very young age, the band cobbled together Tonight At The Arizona from a cluster of early demos and hit the highway once again.

Night after night in one city after another, the band performed a seemingly endless string of live shows unmatched in visceral intensity and emotional power. The ragged band of troubadours pressed on as their reputation grew. Their material originating mostly from brother Ian’s pen, it resonates with echoes of the past. Folk legends, murder ballads, strange tales of the rural poor. Some literal and linear in nature, others more abstract. Every last one of the slow tunes is heart wrenching and the rave ups are all unfailingly gut-bucket gritty.

The band’s self-titled CD surfaced in early 2008 and soon “Frankie’s Gun” and “Whiskey In My Whiskey” blossomed into college radio staples. A published novelist and renaissance man whose creativity knows no boundaries, brother Simone left the band to pursue other avenues. With fiddler Greg Farley and drummer Dave Turbeville now full-fledged members of the Felice Brothers entourage, the road was not kept waiting.

The band shares vocal duties. Ian and the similarly tight-lipped bassist Christmas Clapton keen and bleat like rusty saxophones. (Their vocal stylings are frequently compared to Dylan.) Wherefrom these stick figure scarecrows straight outta Steinbeck conjure the full spectrum of human emotion I don’t know. Burly, bearded, cherub-faced James has a huskier tone suiting his larger frame. A raspy raconteur with a voice of considerable depth, he howls “Goddamn You, Jim” and “Let Me Come Home” through tears of rage and desperation. Even Farley is strapping on a guitar and stepping up the microphone to belt out the occasional Cajun hillbilly rock and roux number nowadays.

Already accustomed to busking in the streets and subway tunnels of New York City, when their frozen fingers couldn’t feel the frets, teeth chattering between verses and subway trains drowning out every other chorus, the Felice Brothers’ dream to one day play the Newport Folk Festival was not going to be thwarted by a mere power outage. After the rain cleared, they just played barefoot and acoustic in the mud in front of the stage. By instinctively braving the elements and rising above less than ideal circumstances, they turned adverse conditions into a damn good story and overnight it became part of the legend. Just another tale from the road. Throw another log on the fire.

In support of 2009’s Yonder Is The Clock, the family Felice expanded for that summer’s Big Surprise Tour with Justin Townes Earle, Dave Rawlings Machine, and Old Crow Medicine Show. Though spanning barely a dozen stops on outdoor stages around the Midwest and down south, the tour was seen by many as a natural heir to Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue. A totally unique program was improvised by loose and spontaneous aggregations that included members of all four bands as they meandered on and off the stage throughout two lengthy sets on each stop of the tour.

Our bedraggled and baying band of road dogs was busier than ever this past summer, touring with few breaks straight on into the fall. Squeezing several European dates in between two extensive US tours, the band’s material began to evolve and change in unexpected ways. In Louisville, Kentucky and Nashville, Tennessee, this writer was witness to two performances that were wildly divergent in color and content, though the shows were a mere eight weeks apart. In the interim the band had ventured to the far corners of the earth and back again, their travels reflected in the evolution of their new material. With just a few dates left on of one of the longest treks of the band’s brief but already storied history, the gracious and loquacious James Felice took a few moments to chat with me before the band’s performance at the historic Southgate House in Newport, Kentucky. Finding the band finally in the home stretch of a lengthy fall tour, with the comforts of home almost within their grasp and the Cincinnati skyline looming on the horizon as darkness fell on the Ohio River, I asked James Felice about the band’s relationship with the road.

*


RH: You guys seem to be out there on the road almost all the time with very few days off.

James Felice: Yeah. I guess most bands at our level do a lot of touring because these days it’s the only way you can make money, really. We don’t have too many things tying us back at home and we’re always excited to get out on the road and play. It’s fun and we know that it helps us to live. We’re gonna be able to live this winter and not freeze to death because we toured all fall. When you’re a touring musician your work is sort of all lumped into a few months at time. Then there’s other times when you have nothing to do because it’s not like a nine-to-five job. It’s more like a September 1st to December 1st kinda job. It’s almost like going up to Alaska and being a fisherman or something like that.

RH: At some point does the road begin to feel like home and when you’re back home with nothing to do that feels strange?

JF: Yeah, absolutely. We call it Post-Tour Depression. For at least a week after a tour, especially a long tour like this one, you don’t know what to do. It’s seven o’clock and you feel like you should be loading into a club. It’s actually really weird how lonely and lost you feel. At home it’s really quiet. It gets really quiet really quick and kind of boring and scary. You almost feel like you’re suffocating sometimes, but you’re not of course. You’ve just been to forty-five, fifty cities in the last two months so it can be weird to come back home. Especially because we live in a little town where there’s nothing going on. I just have a little house I live in. I don’t have a real job. There’s no schedule. Like tonight, I’m doing this interview in a bar. I don’t usually do that. At home I’d be stacking wood or building a fire or something. So yeah, you fall into that depression but then two weeks later you’re thinking, “I can’t fucking believe that I was on tour! How did I live like that?”

RH: I’m sure you try to make the routing of the tour as easy as possible, but sometimes I guess it’s unavoidable that there’s going to be long drives between shows?

JF: Yeah. The first part of this tour was on the west coast and in the southwest so the drives were always very long because the cities are so far apart. We had something like eleven shows in a row from San Diego up to Vancouver. Then the next day we had a day off, but we had to drive eighteen hours to Salt Lake City. Then ten hours to get to Denver. Then seventeen hours to Omaha. So there’s an incredible amount of driving. We’ve put 12,000 miles on the bus in the last couple months. Maybe more, actually. It’s a lot of traveling. It’s a big ol’ country, man. It’s really, really big.

RH: Eighteen hour drive – that’s no kinda day off at all, is it?

JF: (Laughs) No, no! But I know I could be a truck driver now, you know? If this falls through, I could be a truck driver or a bus driver. Just get my CDL and be ready to go.

RH: You guys have been trekkin’ around in that same RV for a while now, is that right?

JF: Yeah it’s the only one we’ve ever had. Well, the only thing we’ve driven cross country. When we were just getting started we had like a “short bus” - like they have for special needs kids? - which we were! But that didn’t really last too long. We were gonna drive the short bus cross country on our first tour that we booked ourselves. And I remember we were like two miles from home just driving around and we hit a pothole and we all almost died. We almost careened off the road and we were like, “You know what? We can’t do this. We gotta be safe. We can’t take this thing across the country”. Driving that thing was so fucking dangerous.




RH: How much of the new material does the band write while you’re on tour and road test from night to night?

JF: We road test a lot. But we don’t write very much on tour. We’ve been working on our new record. We’re almost done now. We’ve been playing a lot of songs from the new record that’s coming out in March, I think. And it’s a different kind of sound. It’s a different record. The next tour we do, when we tour for the new record, it’s gonna be a different sounding band.

RH: Tell me about the new song, I think it’s called “Royal Hawaiian Hotel”?

JF: Yeah, actually I think it’s gonna be called “Ponzi”.

RH: When I heard it at the Nashville show that one struck me as really different. Ian puts down the guitar. He’s doing more of a frontman kinda thing, swinging his arms around a bit, a little more animated than usual…

JF: Yeah, we’re trying to have fun, man. We’ve been playing this folk kinda rock thing I guess, whatever you wanna call it, for a while. And it’s fun to do but we gotta keep movin’ on. Can’t play the same music your whole life. And, you know, we haven’t really cashed in on it as hard as some. It’s kinda funny ‘cause now you see a lotta bands doing really well with the kinda stuff we were doing. There’s like a whole scene now, bigger than I had noticed before. There seems to be a growing scene that plays this kind of music. But I think it’s time for us to move on and try out some new shit.

RH: The Felice Brothers are already an established act and quite prolific, obviously. But right now I have sense of you guys being on the brink of huge step forward. With the amount of new and very different material that I’ve heard over the course of just a handful of shows, I am reminded of Exile-era Stones or Wilco’s Being There. I guess what I’m trying to say is that it seems to me like single disc wouldn’t even scratch the surface of where you guys are at right now and maybe a double album might called for.

JF: Yeah, we have dozens and dozens and dozens of songs. Ian, my brother, writes most of the songs. He’s so prolific that we still pull up songs that he wrote years ago sometimes. Even things that didn’t make the first record. He’s got so many great songs. This new record is actually not going to be a double record. It’s a short, concise, straight to the point kind of thing. Which is important because I feel like our last record was a little sprawled, a little bit too much? This one’s concise and it’s different because we’re moving forward. Ian and the rest of us in the band, we’re never satisfied with what we’re doing and we don’t want to be pigeonholed. You know, this whole rootsy, folky, Bob Dylan, The Band, good time shit is cool. But it’s not us, really. It was. We started playing this kind of music because it was the only goddamn thing we knew how to play, you know? Acoustic guitar, a drum, an accordion. But it’s not who we are, you know? We’re certainly dirt bags. And we’re certainly broke still. But we are musicians and we like to challenge ourselves. So we just have to keep going.

RH: I’m often struck by the dichotomy between stage right and stage left. You and Farley do a fair bit of jumping around, but Ian and Christmas sometimes seem almost reluctant to be onstage at all.

JF: Well yeah, they’re more reserved. They’re more introverted I guess, than Farley and I. It depends on the show. It depends on the crowd and the energy and how things are going. Every show with us is not the same because we’re not acting up there. We’re not playing to a script. It seems like a lot of these big acts out there, there’s like a script that you play: You smile here, you make this joke there, you do this flourish at the end of this song. We don’t do that. We are completely loose and the feeling is always new and different. So some shows are not gonna be as wild and animated. They might be more intense and dark. Ian is sort of like the forefront. He’s our leader, he’s the guy. He’s in charge. And so he sets the tone. And naturally I guess Farley and I are a little more animated, and Christmas a little less so, and Dave does his thing behind the drums. So it depends on the show. The last show we played was crazy. Ian was crazy. He’s all standing up on the drums and fuckin’ around and it was great, you know? But the show before that he was dark and more subdued. That’s just the way it is. That makes it exciting for us because we can’t be sitting there doing the same thing every night. Sometimes the audience gets pissed because it’s maybe not what they expected. But that’s okay.

RH: Well I guess if your challenge was to be as animated as Farley on stage every night you’d have your work cut out for you!

JF: Right! I’d fuckin’ break my hip or somethin’!

RH: You’ve indicated that you’d rather not say at this time what label will be releasing the next record. What else can you tell me about the new record and where you guys are at right now?

JF: Well, when we first got started we had all these labels knocking on our door after Tonight At The Arizona came out. Major. Huge. The biggest labels in the world. Some of the biggest producers in the world. And they flew us out to L.A. and here and there. We played for them and they said they wanted to produce our record. But at the end of the day we decided we didn’t want do that because they all wanted to tell us what to do. They wanted to have a hand in it. The A&R guys told us, “Yeah, yeah. We’ll let you do what you want but I’ll come in and check in like every couple days and make sure everything’s going well and I’ll have ideas.” And we said, “Fuck that”. We don’t want any A&R guy, or anybody telling us what to do. We turned down a lot of big time opportunities and went with Conor Oberst’s label Team Love and they’re great. It’s a little tiny label run by really awesome people. They don’t have a lot of money but they did their best with the record. But you know, we’re still struggling, man. You know, it’s hard to maintain a high level of artistic integrity when you also think “I’d also like to be able to pay my rent”, you know? The way the record industry is these days, for a lot of bands, it’s a struggle. It’s something that we have always struggled with as a band since we first started playing. Ian didn’t want to release Iantown (the band’s earliest demos). He’s like, “That’s a piece of shit. I don’t wanna put that out.” But we said, “Ian, come on. You know… You live in a tent. Let’s get a place to live.” So we did. But you know, Ian is very serious about artistic integrity. He lives and dies by that shit. So I think we’re doing okay. We’re real proud of the new record.

This time we’re gonna step it up a little bit to a slightly larger label. Nothing huge because we don’t want to go with a major that’s going to tell us what to do. And hopefully we’ll get on the right track. These people [at the new label] respect us for who we are and they like the music. They care about it, beyond making money. Because we’re never gonna be huge, I don’t think. You know? We’re gonna do our job and we do it very well. And we’re gonna get bigger than we are now. But we’re not gonna be doing like Lady Gaga numbers. You know we’re not gonna be doing nothing like that big. But these people, at Team Love and at the new label, they care about the music and that’s awesome. That’s what we need: we need financial support and freedom at the same time. Which is very hard to get, in any artistic endeavor. When you try to do anything. And that is the artist’s dilemma: Do I wanna eat? Or do I wanna do what I wanna do? And where do those two things meet? There’s always a compromise. Always. No matter what. But where do they meet, money versus freedom? Comfort versus freedom? Which of course is the great debate in the whole world.