Now on extended leave from his critically acclaimed band of Brothers, drummer and vocalist Simone Felice and Robert Chicken Burke unveil their Acoustic-Glam-Gospel combo The Duke And The King at The Bush Hall, London on May 26th where they'll debut new album Nothing Gold Can Stay.
Simone has always been considered the driving force behind The Felice Brothers - by not only adding a loose-limbed rhythm to his brothers' soulful take on the Great American Songbook but also through his wild-eyed and occasionally unpredictable behavior onstage.
This from Uncut editor Allan Jones on The Felice Brothers' triumphant sold out 100 Club
show last year in London: "they look like the people who could cause mayhem and a fair
amount of havoc for no better reason than the sheer hell of it, drummer and occasional singer
Simone Felice looking from the off tonight like he's especially in the mood for a certain amount wildness. He's wild-eyed and shirtless by the gigs climax and hanging from a monitor fitting in the ceiling by the end of the second song, a raucous take on Ruby Mae, a boozy waltz from the recent The Felice Brothers album, which if you haven't heard it yet is one of the records of theyear so far"
Whereas Simone Felice and his brothers tapped into one of the richest veins of America's folk tradition on their last three albums; for his debut with new band The Duke & The King, Simone and old friend and new partner Robert Chicken Burke together now combine elements of blue-eyed soul, Topanga Canyon and even Bolan-esque inspired acoustic musings.
"Nothing Gold Can Stay" was recorded in splendid isolation in a makeshift studio in Bearsville, New York State then taken down The Hudson to be mixed and mastered by Grammy award winning hip-hop maestro Bassy Bob Brockmann (Notorious B.I.G's Ready To Die). It's an album that is populated by those on the brink of fame and fortune, those just getting by and those who have lost their way. Inspired by the sights and sounds that surrounded them both as they grew up in New York City, from The Summer Of Sam and the beat box's bass heavy boom to BB guns shooting Challenger from the sky - and by the flip side of the not-so-great American dream - boyhood friends turned scarred veterans. The Duke And The King's debut album celebrates adolescence's not so innocent times while grudgingly accepting the occasionally harsh reality of the streets of a city that they both grew up on.
It’s a time and a place they can never return to - as they say on the closing track One More American Song - "there ain’t no gasoline gonna take us back that way again/when the years have rusted out our fenders/when our jeans were torn/ and we were all the best of friends/when the music sewed us together” - but once you've let this album take hold it's a time and place you'll never forget.
