January 28, 2009 From LOOSE MUSIC
Debut Single 'If You Ever Get Famous' released in the UK & Europe on March 9th 2009
The track was recorded in Bearsville, New York by Simone Felice (The Felice Brothers / author of "Hail Mary Full Of Holes" Uncut Book Of The Month March '09) and Robert 'Chicken' Burke (George Clinton) and then taken down The Hudson to be mixed in Brooklyn by their friend the Grammy award winning hip hop maestro Bassy Bob Brockmann (Notorious B.I.G's Ready To Die).
If You Ever Get Famous is the first single from The Duke And The King's forthcoming debut album for Loose. Two further digital releases are slated for April 6th (accompanied by double A side 7" single) and May 11th before the album is released on June 22nd (CD/LP/Download - UK & Europe). Details of a Summer UK tour will be announced soon.
~ THE CAST ~
The Duke .......... Simone Felice
The King .......... Robert Chicken Burke
~ PLACE & TIME ~
Bearsville, Woodstock NY
- Winter 2008/2009
Simone had just come home after three straight years of touring on a handful of widely acclaimed albums with The Felice Brothers. As fate would have it, his best mate Robert Chicken Burke had also landed back in their favorite woods after a whirlwind of soundtrack work for french cinema, writing, producing and touring with the likes of George Clinton and the legendary gospel choir Sweet Honey and The Rock. With over a decade of brotherly love up their sleeve, the duo finally had the chance to settle in for a long winter's nap in a little timber-heated cabin in the mountains, catch up, drink tea, maybe write a few songs together, a tradition of theirs.
But in the cock-eyed world of The Duke & The King, nothing ever quite goes according to plan.
What actually happened on those snowy, candle-lit, home-cooked nights is a bit of a mystery, even to them. What is clear is that they didn't get much rest. Something intended as a golden slumber somehow turned itself into days and nights of reckoning, guilt-ridden fables of love and loss, honest self-exposure, disarming with a sad smile. And what to do with all that they had stored inside the remote cabins of memory? The two did what they knew best: hit record. So from conversation to revelation to frozen pipes to old mic to tape machine The Duke & The King came clean. Oh come let us adore them, or abhor them, whatever you please.
So where'd the name come from? The Duke & the King are the two roving charlatans from The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn, (which Simone read for the thirteenth time as Chicken scratched out his signature vocal harmonies by the woodstove), a couple classic American grifters who's lay was to masquerade as European royalty, put on bad accents, find a bandstand, dress up like Romeo and Juliet, stage on an obscene parody and skip town after the first act, ultimately getting them tarred and feathered. And so the name is a reminder, a sort of scarlet letter they'll happily paint over their hearts to help them keep it honest, the music, the poetry.
These songs speak of a time just out of arm's reach. Days when kids rocked to We Are The World on a new thing called the Walkman, shooting BB guns into the sky only to see The Challenger come crashing down, tweaking bunny-ears cause boy do I want my MTV. A time when pop wasn't a dirty word, when the golden era of 60's and 70's radio still sailed from the boom-box, still echoed in people's heart. If it's true that nothing gold can stay, well no one bothered to tell these dreamers. Or maybe they just don't care. The Duke and The King are putting on a show and you don't need no ticket, you just get on board. Come one, come all!
