Exciting news arrives from Loose Records that Ian Felice – of, as you may have realised, The Felice Brothers – has recorded a solo album that will released on 25th August. Entitled In The Kingdom Of Dreams, the album was recorded in Ian’s childhood home of Palenville NY, with his brother Simone Felice on production duties. Simone has also produced (and co-written) recent hit albums from The Lumineers and Bat For Lashes. On the album, Ian was joined by the original Felice Brothers line-up of James Felice on keys, Simone Felice on drums and Josh Rawson on bass.
In The Kingdom of Dreams is a collection of songs Ian wrote in 2016, the recording was completed over the course of 4 days in February this year. Talking of the album, Ian has explained where the idea came from originally: “When I began writing the songs that would become In The Kingdom Of My Dreams many were based on memories of my past but not necessarily all literal or in a logical sequence. I became interested in the pull between reality and unreality and also in how time affects memory. By the end of 2016 I was run down from touring America, riding out the storm of political mania and juggling a few personal dilemmas (including the revelation that I would soon be a father). The Kingdom Of Dreams became a place where I could escape from the numbing flood of data that permeates modern life and try to unravel pieces of my past, rearrange memories with dreams or lines from my imagination and construct something that functioned outside the limits of reality. Many of the songs deal with childhood memories of Palenville and its people, like the song In Memoriam which is partly about the death of my stepfather when I was 8, Water Street that confronts my fears of becoming a father, or 21st Century that deals with mental illness and politics on a more universal level. It only seemed right that I should make the album there, along the green banks of the Katterskill Creek and with my brother Simone as producer. The result is a pretty reflective record that hopefully blows some cobwebs from the window of my psyche. Many of the things that I was writing at the time didn’t work as songs and so I published a companion book of poetry, Hotel Swampland.”
If that wasn’t exciting enough news on its own – and it really is – then the clincher can be revealed: Ian Felice will be embarking on an intimate solo tour of the UK in November.
22 Nov – MANCHESTER, Night And Day
23 Nov – EDINBURGH, Voodoo Rooms
24 Nov – NEWCASTLE, Live Theatre
26 Nov – NOTTINGHAM, The Maze
27 Nov – LONDON, Borderline
28 Nov – BRISTOL, Thekla
29 Nov – BIRMINGHAM, Hare & Hounds
30 Nov – LEEDS, Brudenell
