Bright Eyes & The Lumineers cover The Felice Brothers for new tribute comp ‘Felice County Fair’

A new compilation will pay tribute to Felice Brothers. Felice County Fair, featuring covers of them from Bright Eyes, Old Crow Medicine Show, Nathaniel Rateliff, Dawes, Brandon Flowers of The Killers, Bebe Stockwell, Deer Tick, The Lumineers, and more, is due out on October 17 via Sony. The first two singles, Bright Eyes’ rendition of “Wonderful Life,” and The Lumineers of “The Kid,” are out now, and you can hear them below.

“Whatever little check marks in my heart need to be checked to make the perfect music, they check all those things,” old friend and collaborator Conor Oberst, who released their 2024 album Valley of Abandoned Songs on his Million Stars label, says. “The poetry is there, the soulfulness is there, the song craft. Everything is so genuine. I want the world for them, and I want people to have the same experience I’ve had with how they’ve transformed my life with their art.”

Wesley Schultz of The Lumineers says, “When Brandy and I first started dating, we each made a mix CD for each other, like a playlist. We each put Felice Brothers on our playlists. It was then I knew she was a keeper. A lot of our initial falling in love was listening to the Felice Brothers.”

Ian Felice also shared a lengthy statement about the compilation, which reads:

Dear friends,

It’s high summer now and love is in season and I’m writing to share some news. I’m sitting on Hermit Island and I can smell coffee boiling on a campfire but that’s not the news. The news is that there’s a new record coming out called Felice County Fair, a Celebration of the Felice Brothers.

A couple years ago, a friend and advocate of the band named Brandy Schultz called us with a vision to create tribute record to our band and wanted to ask for our blessing. Brandy is a uniquely powerful force of nature who usually has the ingredients to make margaritas in a cooler in her car and so of course we agreed, with the understanding that we would not be involved in its creation.

It’s two years later now and somehow, by her sheer will and the devotion of many wonderful musicians and producers her vision has become reality. The fact that so many artists have contributed to this project simply out of a love for our music fills us with both bewilderment and gratitude.

As I get older, I feel as if I know less and less about myself and the world I live in. Bewilderment is a good, liberating feeling. I once saw a figure skater spinning on the ice of a pond when I was a kid and somehow she’s still spinning in my mind, the ice never gave way. The things we do in this world leave imprints in ways we don’t understand.

It’s been twenty years that we’ve been a band now and in the words of Bertolt Brecht, “so much has changed but nothing’s changed at all.” We are still searching for ways to express the things we feel and I believe that’s what propels us forward. The future is a puddle and its reflection is unclear but I’m still holding out hope and think music has importance for society.

Folk songs belong to the people and to the land from which they emerge. They are one of the few things still held in common in an individualistic society. They should be passed along like family recipes, used and adapted. In his poem eulogizing Yeats, W.H Auden wrote, “Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.” What does it mean to be hurt into poetry? Can the act of creating art be an immune response to the harmful forces of society?

Now imagine animal crackers, goldfinches, quiz shows and chestnut vendors and just know that things will continue as they always have. The only difference is that there will be a tribute record to the Felice Brothers, but know that, in general, things will progress more or less as they always have; the coyotes will continue to chase rabbits through the heather and the windblown tents of circus folk will tumble down the canyons.

Thank you to everyone who brought this record to life and t hank you to the wonderful people who have supported us over these past twenty years. We are truly honored and grateful to each and every one of you.

Ian

The full tracklist for Felice County Fair is still to be announced, but you can see the cover art below.