Fellaheen

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 anythus 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.

DIY, Tom Waits, Beatles, Kurt Weill, Joe Strummer, Marc Ribot, Walter Benjamin, Joe Henry, Susan Sontag, Replacements, Harry Partch, Big Star, Leonard Cohen, The Minutemen, phosphenes (those flashes of lights you see when you close your eyes), synaesthesia (seeing colors whenever you hear sounds), Lester Bangs, Dr. Cornel West, Mad Magazine (1950s-1970s), Roberto Clemente, Jack Kerouac, John Coltrane, Jean-Paul Sartre, Barney Kessel, Vittorio De Sica, George Carlin, albert Ayler, Tenzin Gyatso, Elliott Sharp, Thomas Pynchon, Madeline Kahn, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Patti Smith, Captain Beefheart, Dante Aligheri, Wes Montgomery, Robert Frank's photographs, The Who, Impulse Records (1950s-1960s), Kenny Burrell, Rainer Maria Rilke, The Clash, Sam Phillips, Jim Jarmusch, John Sayles' "Matewan", "Reds", "American Splendor", "Until the End of the World", ferrets as household companions, Randy Newman, Bugs Bunny, Mott the Hoople, Paul Auster, Haruki Murakami, megaphones, insomnia, buffalo wings, red red wine, and a thousand other malcontents recorded, unrecorded, celebrated and forgotten.