XPN Fest Recap: The show goes on for The Felice Brothers, power or no power

The Felice Brothers | Photo by Noah Silvestry | silvestography.com

Unexpected things have been happening all weekend here at the XPoNential Music Festival, but this last event turned out to be pretty special.

A power outage on the River Stage forced The Felice Brothers to end their set early. But rather than walk off stage and head for the greenroom, the ramshackle folk outfit walked off stage and into the crowd to continue playing, unplugged and intimate.

Before all that, though, we were treated to a high energy burst of four Felice Brothers songs from their new Life In the Dark LP. The accordion announced the beginning of “Aerosol Ball,” a baroque folk song that went all in with no instrumental subtlety (in a good way). The hootin’ and hollerin’ “Sally” was a fast-paced, fiddle-focused number, leading into the electric, catchy “Plunder.”

At this point the sound started to cut out, but the band played on for two more songs before the power completely dropped.

In the face of technical difficulties they could have called it quits, but the Felice Brothers would never leave their fans high and dry like that.

Instead, the River Stage crowd was treated to a makeshift, unplugged sing-along set on the bricks in front of the stage. They began with “This Land is Your Land” and ended with “Frankie’s Gun,” but only those who were up close and personal will know what happened in between.

Leave it to the Felice Brothers to give us one of the most memorable sets of XPN Fest so far – check out photos below, and watch a quick video of their unplugged set over via our Facebook page.