Q: Duke & The King Interview
Wednesday, 9th December 2009
Q discusses the power of music and one of 2009's under the radar gems with it's creatorsImagine, if you will, a cross between Marvin Gaye and James Taylor; Smokey Robinson and Paul Simon; Sly and the Family Stone and Neil Young. Okay, got it? You're halfway towards getting a feel towards the gorgeous and painful, yet warm, country-soul sound of The Duke & The King. They've released one of the year's best albums with their debut Nothing Gold Can Stay (recorded in a cabin in the Catskill Mountains of New York State) and are utterly devastating live.Named after the travelling Shakespeare hustlers in Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Duke & The King are made up of Simone (pronounced Simon) Felice (The Duke), former drummer and writer for the equally wonderful The Felice Brothers, George Clinton collaborator Robert 'Chicken' Burke (The King), Nowell Haskins (The Deacon) and Simi Stone. Qthemusic had a chat with the band before they took to the stage at Manchester's Ruby Lounge and left a beer-soaked, rowdy crowd in a hushed awe.How did you and Robert get together? And what inspired you to record as The Duke & The King?Robert: Love and friendship.Simone: It's the same thing that brought us all together. Nowell is on the record that we made. He's a featured singer on Lose Myself. And Simi is our most recent chosen one.How did you enjoy playing on Jools Holland recently?Simone: My friend said we looked like an Oreo version of The Mamas and the Papas.Being a drummer with The Felice Brothers was there a desire to be centre stage or is that just a by-product of the fact that you had these songs to sing?Simone: No, I love playing the drums and even in The Duke & The King I still get to play a couple of songs that Bobbie gets the lead on. We swap up. Nowell grabs the bass sometimes or hits the drum kit. We started out us three guys; it was a trio first. And we're three singing drummers. I'm proud to be a singing drummer and I hope I always will be one.Being singing drummers how was it playing a show with Levon Helm, the legendary drummer for The Band?Simone: It was a milestone for us. We'd done about 100 shows before that, but the one at Levon's we'd been working hard in my barn on getting all of our band really united and feeling really glued up together with our songs and our harmonies. We really considered Levon's show to be the launching pad for what this band can be live. Levon fell in love with our band and we got a standing ovation at the show and he called us up at the end to sing The Weight with him. And we sang with our hero, one of our biggest heroes ever. One of the most magical moments of my life.The name The Duke & The King comes from Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn and the new Felice Brothers record 'Yonder is the Clock' comes from a more obscure Twain book, Mysterious Stranger. What is the deal with the southern thing for guys born in the New York area?Simone: It's the devil saying, 'that guy's going to die at this hour, that guy is going to die at that hour, she's going to die at this hour'. Yonder is the clock. It's Northern Gothic. The inspiration for The Duke & The King is that in the book there are these two drifters setting up the Shakespeare camp that was going up and down the river. And it's that tradition of being on the river, or on the road, getting up on stage and putting on a show. And we like to bring theatre into our music. We want it to be like a travelling theatre. In the future Nowell said he would like two horn players on either side of the stage to introduce the band.Your album Nothing Gold Can Stay seems to be about recognising your own mortality and a yearning for the innocence of childhood, yet it doesn't sound like a sad album. It actually sounds very warm. Was that a conscious decision or did it happen naturally?Simone: Like a glass of wine. That's what we wanted. I think as writers and singers all of us have looked darkness in the eye. You can be rest assured. And sometimes when you have to look down that dark tunnel it forces you to create an inner warmth. D'ya know what I mean? It's cold down there. If you face death or you face sadness, or the abyss, you have to create an inner fire.That same warmth comes through from the letter you wrote to fans about why you had left The Felice Brothers and all the tragic personal events that had happened to you