BY BILL HOLMES

It was Friday the 13th, still close enough to a full moon to fool the nearsighted, so the howlers were out in force. It was also the first day of the unofficial four-day St. Patrick's Day weekend (God Bless Tuesdays), and most of the crowd seemed to have started early. Syracuse had just played the basketball game of the Millennium the night before (a six-overtime classic in the Big East Tournament) and was back on the TV over the bar a mere twenty hours later. And the crowd was pouring in like clowns from a circus car, reuniting after Spring Break weekend, a massive throbbing amoeba of texting, chatter and hugs. All opening act Taylor Hollingsworth had to do was win the crowd over with an acoustic guitar. (And you thought the Bataan Death March was rough!)

Murder ballads, folksy blues, odd but intriguing stories and a lot of haunted characters, all dished out in a twisted but engaging set. The one man troubadour approach was the antithesis of the fury that fueled 2008's Bad Little Kitty, but fascinating on its own terms. There were a small group of witnesses at the lip of the stage who soaked it all in like apostles, but most of the masses unfortunately missed the gospel. Their loss; he was excellent.

The crowd continued to pour in and the buzz became audibly palpable, and I was surprised that there were that many Felice Brothers fans in my midst. The DJ from the local college station was probably equally surprised after he asked if the crowd had heard the band on his radio show; only a small group offered support. (Turns out the bulk of them got hip thanks to one of the band's YouTube videos going viral.) As the quintet took the stage behind him, I flashed back to the first time I played their CD. The music intrigued me, but I was puzzled - no pictures, no info, no song titles? Well, welcome to the live Felice Brothers Medicine Show experience - no band intros, no song announcements, just "how ya doing, alright?" and on to the music.

Loose as a bag of marbles, the band is somehow one with the audience and isolated on their own planet at the same time. It's as if you broke into Big Pink expecting to find The Band...only to discover that some of the Pogues were jamming too (and Dylan, of course). Bob Dylan can't really sing, but nobody really cares as long as he does everything else well. The Felice Brothers seem to be following Zim's program, so hopefully they have nothing to worry about either. On the very first song, Ian Felice let loose with a nasal whine, Greg Farley jumped up and down playing the washboard like he was chopping wood with an axe, and the drummer somehow juggled their two tempos to hold it all together. I don't even think Christmas (the bass player) faced the audience half the time, let alone spoke (Bill Wyman lives?) and as the sound of the organ pumped into the mix like it was like the pulse of the crowd's heart.

And just like that they were off and running. There were a few dissonant chords and tunings, some experiments (maybe on purpose, maybe not) and a sheer defiance of technical obstacles. I swear the drummer was changing tempos from time to time just to mess with the guitar player's head. And sometimes it worked - during one song Ian just gave up and started spinning like a top, although in fairness that could have been because James the accordion player kept bumping into him. Farley also doubles as a madman on the fiddle, and James also plays keyboards (his piano playing in particular adds a rich texture to the music). Their sonic wallop and highly physical presence infuse the songs with a sense of whimsy that's infectious.

Sometimes the band seemed to be learning the song during the song, or maybe they tried playing two different songs at once, daring to trip each other up with false starts and stops. But not drunken Replacements stops, where the band literally forgot what they were singing and started something else they could remember. Rather this is where people claim to see the similarities to The Band, who in their earlier days were somehow simultaneously structured and chaotic. I'm not certain how they do that, but they didn't seem to care and neither did the crowd. They could kick a rousing Cajun/Irish shanty one moment and a heartfelt pensive somber note next, but mostly they came across like a band of pirates who captured the stage and figured, since the flag was already theirs - what the fuck? Let's have fun!

I'm pretty sure they did "Penn Station" from the upcoming album Yonder is the Clock, also "The Big Surprise", which sounded like a slowed down version of Stones' "Prodigal Son" (actually "That's No Way To Get Along" by Robert Wilkins, but I digress...). "Greatest Show on Earth"? "Memphis Flu"? I think so. They might have done "Boy from Lawrence County", which is as close to a vintage Dylan song as you can get without stalking Bob. Damn, guys, can you introduce a tune once in a while?

Most songs were met with a decent response but the audience went nuts if the song was a call to arms, or in this case, drinks. "Whiskey In My Whiskey" was huge, "Take This Bread" evoked a huge sing-along and the place exploded during either "Run Chicken Run" or "Chicken Wire" (probably both - I was told long ago not to count my chickens before...ahhh, forget it). After that song, it was beyond having the crowd in the palm of their hand; it was more like we were hand puppets. Sing along? OK. Make train noises? No problem. Stomp feet for down-home percussion? Wait a minute, where's my feet...ok, I'm on it! The audience demanded - and got - a four song encore which started with "St. Stephen's End" just to "turn it down a notch", then wrung the place out.

No doubt The Felice Brothers make good records, but they are much more fun to watch. Unlike so many artists that leave their magic in the studio hallways, these guys need the stage to light the full rack of fireworks properly.