After his acclaimed tour to Australia in September 2011 SIMONE FELICE, singer, songwriter, novelist, survivor, will again bring his incomparable music and talent to our shores in July. Hot on the release of his latest release, Simone Felice with be accompanied by his band of merry music makers as well as fellow countryman JOSH RITTER on his first ever visit to our shores, making this an unforgettable musical evening of enlightenment and discovery.
For Simone Felice, his self-titled solo debut has literally been a lifetime in the making. As the former drummer, writer and vocalist of The Felice Brothers explains, “This album is the one I’ve had buried away, somewhere in my weird heart.”
Felice doesn’t use the word “heart” casually. When you sit with him in a room you can hear a subtle metallic ticking noise. If you hunt for the source of the sound you’ll find a vertical scar bisecting the entire length of his chest, a visceral reminder of the open-heart surgery he was forced to undergo in the summer of 2010 after a childhood congenital defect brought him to the brink of death. He traces the line of that scar as if it’s where his new songs actually emanate from, and in a way they do. "Simone Felice" is strikingly simple in its arrangements but extravagant in its emotional impact. There is a luminous aura surrounding these compositions, something magical and otherworldly, even when the lyrics are startlingly topical or reference historical events.
Felice conveys his often mournful tales of star-crossed lovers and beautiful losers with remarkable empathy. Given his own life-and-death experiences – the recent surgery and the birth of his first child were just the latest chapters — his approach can genuinely be called openhearted. Over the course of a year, this Catskill Mountains-based artist found the most deeply resonant places in which to record his work, settings that were as haunted in their rafters as he felt in his bones: a barn near his home in the woods, an old church in London, an abandoned high school building by the Hudson River. What he created in these hushed, hallowed places is music that could be called folk but that has running through it a ghostly gospel-like feel. Occasionally helping him realize his vision were friends from Mumford & Sons, The Felice Brothers, and even the members of a local girls choir, the Catskill High School Treblaires.
JOSH RITTER is from Moscow, Idaho and the son of two neuroscientists. He was on his way to follow in their footsteps when he discovered Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan's "Girl from the North Country" in high school and has since released five studio albums and has been recently named one of the 100 greatest living songwriters by Paste Magazine, alongside Dylan, Springsteen, and Neil Young. His most recent album ‘So Runs The World Away’ will be released for the first time in Australia on June 15. The album will be released as a 2CD, packaged with the brand new 6 track EP ‘Bringing in The Darlings’.
Do not miss what will be one of the music highlights of 2012