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| Webpage: http://www.fellaheen.com | ||||
| Location: Hightstown, NJ, United States | ||||
| Description: A lyrical melange of rock 'n' roll, scratchy blues, downbeat jazz, and murky existential wit. | ||||
| Biography: Q: What’s
“Fellaheen” mean? A: It’s an Arabic term for peasant farmers. Philosophically (or so said Oswald Spengler), "fellaheen" refers to the great mass of people who adapt and survive from one civilization to the next without becoming part of any—thus remaining separate from the great movements of history. Q: What’s the band sound like? A: A lyrical mix of sit-down alt rock ’n’ roll, scratchy blues, and downbeat jazz, informed with a murky existential wit. Q: Uh-huh. What’s the band sound like? A: OK. Let’s say: comparable to the likes of -- and influenced by -- Tom Waits, Joe Henry, Sam Phillips, Wilco, Marc Ribot, Kurt Weill, and the Velvet Underground. More deeply-rooted influences include Beggar’s Banquet-era Stones, Beatles, Captain Beefheart, Barney Kessel, Randy Newman, Leonard Cohen, and Mose Allison. The lyrical approach is borne out of a head space created in part by the works of Walter Benjamin, Susan Sontag, Mad Magazine, Jack Kerouac, Jean-Paul Sartre, George Carlin, John Coltrane, Tenzin Gyatso, Thomas Pynchon, Madeline Kahn, Bugs Bunny, Haruki Murakami, insomnia, moderately-priced red wine, and Dante Aligheri, along with the movies of Vittorio De Sica, Jim Jarmusch, John Sayles, and Wim Wenders. Q: Seriously? A: Yep, no foolin’. But please feel free to arrive at your own conclusions. Q: Who plays in Fellaheen? A: For the most part, me, Bruce Hanson, a 44-year-old, substantially-grizzled, slighty off-kilter songwriter and musician born in Chicago and raised in New Jersey. My friends Joe Borthwick, Dan Trent, Kerry Watson, and Mark Orlandini join me for live performances. Q: What’s the band’s operational business model now that the record industry has collapsed under the weight of its own gynormous greed and stupidity? A: What you're listening to now was made with love in the same place it was recorded (a home studio in rural NJ), so Fellaheen is pretty much a DIY entity. Q: What are the band’s goals? A: (1) For you to listen to our music, and (2) world peace. | ||||
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