James Felice Surprise Releases Debut Solo Album 'The Little Ones'

As his Valentine’s Day gift to the world, James Felice has released his debut solo album The Little Ones via Conor Oberst’s Million Stars Records. Tonight, Felice kicks off a tour supporting Shovels & Rope before a run of headline album release shows in Carrboro, Washington D.C., Philadelphia and New York City. Find a full list of tour dates below.

About the album, James Felice explains: “I wrote this record over the course of a summer, mostly in an unfinished attic. It was so hot up there I could only work at night. I had to sing softly, so as to not wake the people sleeping below me. And so night after night, I would sing softly and sweat prodigiously in my stupidly hot attic, and these characters would somehow emerge and I would try to write songs about them. 

Little stories about little people up against the enormity of the universe and the hideous length of eternal time, and the endless confusions of love and being loved. Big serious ideas, funny little people. All sung softly in a song. 

I’ve spent my whole adult life in service to the song. Writing, recording, and playing music in ornate theaters and around campfires and rotting picnic benches in the tall grass, and gross, awesome bars and legendary clubs and sweltering attics and under overpasses and in $2000-a-day studios and in freezing cold garages and chicken coops, and my friend’s parents basements, and my brother’s girlfriend’s cousin’s kitchen, and in churches with collapsing roofs. Listening to and playing and writing songs all over the damn place for my whole life. Nothing hits like a song. I fing love songs. So here’s some songs for you.” 

On The Little Ones, James joins the long lineage of winking American tearjerkers, the great crying-in-your-beer smart alecks like Warren Zevon, John Prine, or even Tom Waits. With a similar rollicking ease on keyboard instruments, Felice sidles up next to Doctor John and bears Randy Newman’s torch, frequently squeezing the blood of a catchy chorus from the stone of an unlikely song subject. And his sometimes wounded, side-of-the-mouth vocal delivery brings longtime collaborator Bright Eyes to mind. But this album is far more intimate than the music of his forebears - captured mostly at home and often late at night, these songs are spacious and confessional, a simple drum machine pattern just barely keeping them lashed to the Earth, longtime Felice Brothers producer Jeremy Backofen keeping it simple, direct, and effective. More often than not the record is James and his chords, with a hint of the occasional bass, drumset, or fiddle gilding the edges of the frame. These songs sound like the things you can only say after most everyone else has fallen asleep.

The Little Ones follows the release of The Felice Brothers 2024 full length Valley of Abandoned Songs, the first release on Million Stars. The album was praised by NPR’s World Cafe, BrooklynVegan, Glide Magazine, PopMatters, NPR Music, and AllMusic, who calle it one of their “most cohesive works to date” and “an album of beautifully conveyed balance and duality.”

James Felice Solo Tour Dates:

2/14 – Memphis, TN – Growlers *
2/15 – Little Rock, AR – Revolution Music Room *
2/16 – Fayetteville, AR – George's Majestic Lounge *
2/18 – Oklahoma City, OK – Beer City Music Hall *
2/20 – Dallas, TX – The Kessler Theater *
2/21 – Houston, TX – The Heights Theater *
2/22 – Austin, TX – Antone's Nightclub *
2/23 – Austin, TX – Antone's Nightclub *
2/25 – New Orleans, LA – Tipitina's *
2/26 – Birmingham, AL – Saturn *
2/28 – Nashville, TN – Brooklyn Bowl *
3/1 – Atlanta, GA – Terminal West *
3/2 – Macon, GA – Society Garden *
3/4 – Jacksonville, FL – The Bier Hall at Intuition Ale Works *
3/6 – Ft. Lauderdale, FL – Culture Room *
3/7 – Tampa, FL – The Crowbar *
3/8 – Orlando, FL – The Social *
3/11 – Carrboro, NC – Cat's Cradle
3/13 – Washington, DC – DC9
3/14 – Philadelphia, PA – First Unitarian Church - Side Chapel
3/15 – Brooklyn, NY – Union Pool
* - with Shovels & Rope

Photo Credit: Wyhndam Garnett