The Felice Brothers are getting a tribute album. Felice County Fair: A Celebration of the Felice Brothers will be released on October 16 on Sony Records, featuring more than two dozen songs from artists across the roots music world.
According to Rolling Stone, the full list of contributors has not yet been revealed, but confirmed acts include the Lumineers, Bright Eyes, Old Crow Medicine Show, Nathaniel Rateliff, Dawes, Brandon Flowers, Bebe Stockwell, and Deer Tick. Old Crow Medicine Show will cover Penn Station, and Dawes will take on Jazz on the Autobahn.
The Felice Brothers were founded by brothers James, Ian, and Simone in the mid-2000s. Over the following two decades, the upstate New York group became one of the more widely influential roots acts of their generation, even if commercial success remained limited. Simone Felice left the group years ago. For the past eight years, the band has been anchored by bassist Jesske Hume and drummer Will Lawrence, with James and Ian Felice continuing to write the songs.
The Lumineers and Bright Eyes provide the first two tracks from the album. The Lumineers cover The Kid, a 2017 Felice Brothers song. Bright Eyes interpret Wonderful Life, a standout ballad from the band's classic 2008 self-titled record.
Lumineers frontman Wesley Schultz spoke at length about what drew him to The Kid. "There's a lot said with very little," Schultz told Rolling Stone. "It's like Steinbeck. He's saying so much with so few words. You think about a song like a weapon and these blunt sledgehammers move people, but they don't get the same reaction as a very small dagger that can get past your ribs and into your heart. You have to choose the weapon. Sometimes these weapons move the masses. But when it's little and it gets you so deep in there, the people who have heard it don't forget it.… [The song] changed my perception about drug addiction and empathy for people through songwriting. You're crying for and rooting for the character in the song."
Schultz first heard The Kid after attending the Felice Brothers' annual New Year's Eve shows in Kingston, New York.
Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes has a longer history with the group. He released their 2024 album Valley of Abandoned Songs on his own label and recruited them as his backing band. His statement about the tribute reflects that closeness. "Whatever little checkmarks in my heart need to be checked to make the perfect music, they check all those things," Oberst said. "I want people to have the same experience I've had with how they've transformed my life with their ar..."
Schultz summed up what drives the project. "They've been this underground secret," he told Rolling Stone. "And we don't want them to be the best kept secret in music anymore."
