Simone Felice – King Tut's, Glasgow 11/04/14

It’s partly down to the whisky, of which less than a quarter of a bottle remains, partly the joy of still being alive to do this thing, and partly the inner showman, but Simone Felice looks like he’s having the time of his life up on the King Tut’s stage, and as he reaches the end of his encore, rousing covers of “Wild Mountain Thyme”, “Atlantic City” and “Helpless” safely delivered, Felice does look like he’s slightly struggling to focus on the appreciative crowd in front of him. He’s given everything, and drank everything and exhausted he exits stage left.

Before all that, Felice (now no longer a part of The Felice Brothers since 2009) played songs from his new radio-friendly country rock album Strangers plus some tracks from his time with his brothers and also dipping into The Duke & The King’s back catalogue. There’s little reinvention of the wheel tonight, this is simple alt. country played well: Felice flits between acoustic guitar and drums (behind the kit he looks like a young Levon Helm, if the Band’s drummer ever looked young), backing provided by a cellist and a slide dobro player, and the songs are split as trad country balladeering or the sort of countrified rocking you’d find on Wilco’s Summerteeth or when Ryan Adams is at his most pop.

Felice, with a voice that has echoes of Gram Parsons and Cat Stevens, starts downbeat with a stirring version of “New York Times” and a reading of “Bye Bye Palenville” that’s more tender (despite his message to the crowd that it’s a “sexy” song) a love song to his place of birth than the one found on Strangers. Once Felice gets behind the kit, things get a touch more raucous: “Molly-O” is basically one big sing-along chorus, and that vibe is repeated on the giddy “Radio Song” and “The Devil Is Real”.

The songs where Felice gives it the big (if slightly obvious) build up are the ones that work best and provide the highlights: “If You Ever Get Famous” (from his time in The Duke & The King) brims with slow-burning emotion, while once again the live versions of “If You Go To L.A.” and “Running Through My Head” from Strangers are filled with more passion than the album recordings. It helps, of course, that many of the crowd are hardcore Felice fans and there are a few moments when he’s helped by a hundred backing singers.

There’s always a faint whiff of cheese in the air but Simone Felice lives for being on stage; being stuck behind a drum kit was never going to be an option for this guy when there’s an inner showman bursting to be released, and watching him flail away at his kit or falling to his knees as he plays guitar, giving it everything, you sometimes have to forget your reservations and let yourself be carried along on the euphoria and join Felice on what he called his “magical journey”. Tonight, that’s what we all did.