#77 "Frankie's Gun!" by the Felice Brothers

I first encountered The Felice Brothers at a Bright Eyes concert I went to a few years back. Though I was there to see Conor Oberst and co., I ended up beind enthralled by this ramshackle group of performers who opened the show. They looked like a bunch of street corner hobos who been pulled into the venue to put on an impromptu performance, but man... they were great. No bullshit. No show. They were just sincere musicians clearly getting lost in the songs. I remember thinking, "This is what The Band must've been like back in the day."

The Felice Brothers are made up of three actual brothers from upstate New York and another member, a big accordion player named Christmas. Despite playing on a large stage with a lot of room, the brothers occupied an intimate space the size of a closet. They danced and stomped around. They banged on their instruments, dropping drumsticks and bumping into one another along the way. They whooped and hollered through a bunch of songs that sounded like good-ole whiskey-soaked sing-a-longs from some Irish bar. And actually, one of the tunes was called “There’s Whiskey In My Whiskey.” Three of the four guys sung lead at one point or another, and they all chimed in throughout their set.

The thing that struck me about the Felice Brothers was how much fun they were having. They smiled through every song and just genuinely seemed to be enjoying what they were doing. They were real musicians too. It seemed like they were playing for the playing, not for the money or the crowd or for anything else. The music just banged out of them, echoing through their limbs with every note and beat of the drum. I don’t know that I’d say they were great musicians or guys who were adroitly skilled at their instruments, but they were obviously swept away by their songs and their enthusiasm was infectious. I loved them. LOVED them!

The Felice Brothers' albums have never, for me, lived up to the joy of that show I saw. Their records are usually slower, more mellow tales of sadness and desperation. They tell a lot of great stories in their songs though, and I've always found something on their recordings that I loved listening to and could visualize in my mind. One of those tunes is "Frankie's Gun!"

"Frankie's Gun!" is a little romp about drug-running, but it's got this heart of gold when the singer talks about his love for his mom and his little sister. What I like about The Felice Brothers' lyrics are their very natural conversational lines. In the beginning, Ian Felice says "I think I know the bloody way by now, Frankie, so turn the god-damned radio down... thank you." I love the thanks in the end of that. And even though they're singing about drugs, crime, and shooting people, it's hard not to admire them for the lines, "I saw a man hit my mom one time, really. I hurt 'im so damn bad, I had to hide in Jersey." Every mother will beam at that line. I really like the first three lines of the last verse too. I use it in class to teach internal rhyme.

"Spit makes a fender shine. Frankie's a friend of mine... helped me off a bender after long-legged Brenda died." That's just fantastic. There's a lot to like about The Felice Brothers. Check 'em out!

"Frankie's Gun!" is from the Felice Brothers' self-titled debut. To hear the song, click on the icon in the widget jukebox along the side of the blog.