The last time I was in Whelans, it was to see We Were Promised Jetpacks; I remark, once I get settled in for the Simone Felice Group’s show, that the atmosphere couldn’t be any more different now. For one thing, it is an all-seated gig; and for another, a quick glance around at the audience (which had a considerable amount of posteriors on seats for Simi Stone’s set, impressively enough) confirms that I am the youngest person in attendance by an extremely comfortable margin of at least 10 years. I stick out like a sore thumb, but then again, I would have been a fool to turn down the place on the guestlist that I was offered. Regardless of the audience makeup, pretty much all of us end up enjoying ourselves a hell of a lot.
On the night, The Duke & the King member Simi Stone opens proceedings with a lively acoustic set. It must be said that there is only so much that can be done with one person, one voice and one guitar, but Stone’s work showcases an impressive variety, getting the crowd warmed up for the headline act in style. The announcement that she’ll be part of Felice’s live band for his set is greeted with raucous cheers; clearly, a lot of us have been won over by her marvellous voice and honest lyrical style.
The two things that stand out the most about her set, however, are things that will be repeated later on in the night: a Neil Young cover, and a dedication of one of her songs to the recently-deceased former drummer and singer for The Band, Levon Helm, the latter of which gets a goosebump-inducing round of applause. She also does a fine job of slotting into the Simone Felice Group; she plays both guitar and violin, and it is on the latter that she spends most of the headliner’s set.
In hindsight, I certainly wouldn’t have blamed Felice for tailoring his set list to a rather downbeat affair, because this show was essentially dedicated to Helm’s memory; and the fact that the band opens with the rather sombre ‘New York Times’ makes me wonder about things. I also wonder where some of the slower songs off his recently-released debut solo album will fit in, but as it happens, I am wrong on both counts: in a 14-song set list, just over half of the 10-track album is performed, so there isn’t as much room for new material as I had guessed. Oh, and the show actually turns out to be rather celebratory – I didn’t see that coming at all.
The set’s balanced between more upbeat songs and slower ones, meaning that Felice and his band are able to mix it up to an impressive degree. Dedicating the second song of the night to his daughter, the frontman tears through ‘You & I Belong’, before bringing out the mid-tempo Duke & the King song, ‘Summer Morning Rain’, after which he slows things right down with the highlight of his debut album, ‘Charade’, which is delivered to an almost entirely silent crowd and receives one of the best responses of the night.
Older material takes up the bulk of the remainder of the main set, with ‘Shaky’, ‘Don’t Wake the Scarecrow’ and a breathtaking rendition of ‘If You Ever Get Famous’ (which is of course met with hearty cheers) appearing either side of the opening song from ‘Simone Felice’; ‘Hey Bobby Ray’ is prefixed with the frontman’s tale of how he came to write the song; it found its origins in a ghost story he heard when he was 13, and he admits that, now all of 33, it took him ’20 years to even be able to write about it’. It goes down very well indeed, but it is what that comes afterwards is truly unforgettable.
The sole Felice Brothers song brought out on the night, to close the set, is a life-affirming take on ‘Radio Song’; Felice dedicates it to Helm, relating the story of how he’d heard of his passing, before stunning every single member of the audience with an impassioned – and timely – performance. It ends with the whole room on their feet, completely awed by what they have seen. Helm would no doubt have been proud, because the sheer power that radiates from the set-closer is enough to power a small town, and Felice and his band duly receive a standing ovation.
Moments later, Felice returns to the stage with his band absent, to lead us through a much more subdued encore, which features a heartbreaking solo cover of Pink Floyd’s ‘Wish You Were Here’, given extra weight due to the circumstances under which it’s performed, before the Simone Felice Group itself returns to the stage, and they all close proceedings with a medley of Neil Young’s ‘Helpless’ and Bob Dylan’s ‘Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door’, bringing the curtain down on what has been an amazing show. If I start taking random guestlist opportunities, I have this show to thank. It’s one of the best gigs I’ve seen all year, and it came out of absolutely nowhere.
Simone Felice’s self-titled solo debut is out now via Reveal Records.
Posted by Gareth O’Malley
