Review: AA Bondy / The Felice Brothers
A new week brings a new contributor. Please welcome Daniel Schneier to the team. Dan recently caught two HT favorites and filed this report…
When Catskills natives, Simone, Ian and James Felice left home to a peddle music for pocket change on the New York City subways, they banded with some dicey local musicians and honed their craft hustling cross-town commuters by the thousands. A group of modern day fly-by-night grifters with a taste for big-band style country-rock and electric circus-folk, The Felice Brothers have surfaced from Manhattan’s underbelly to become a bonafide hot-ticket touring act, easily selling out the house at Maxwell’s in Hoboken, NJ on Saturday September 13.
[All Photos By Jennifer Kirk]
Idling in the crowd and chatting with friends before the show, the hometown Felices have a distinctively laid-back-country demeanor, sporting dusty denims and flannels and growing out just about all the facial hair they can muster. The crowd barely takes notice to the equally unassuming musicians in the audience however, as the opening act, singer-songwriter AA Bondy commands the stage.
The Alabama-born Bondy looks road weary with sunken eyes and a scraggly black beard, though his attitude is as upbeat as it is informal, and he laughs and banters with cat-callers in the crowd in between songs. Strapped with acoustic guitar and harmonica, the throaty folk singer hushed the room as he plucked and crooned on original tunes like Witness Blues, while a gutsy rendition of Springsteen’s I’m on Fire had the crowd hollering, up in arms with applause (no small feat in the Boss’ home state). Bondy holds a branch on the Felice Family Tree (married to sister Clare), and he’d later reemerge to collaborate with his in-laws on a number of songs throughout the headlining set.
READ ON for more about the Felice Brothers’ performance at Maxwell’s…


















