Felice Rosser’s FaithNYC has just released new album Love Is A Wish Away via Good Deeds Music. Born in Detroit, she experienced Motown, the 1967 riots, Funkadelic, The MC5, The Stooges and The New York Dolls before moving to NYC for college.

Blown away by Television at CBGB’s, she became part of the scene, befriending Patti Smith, and Samo, which was Jean Michel Basquiat’s tag at that time, and starting to write songs and play bass.

Inspired by Punk’s DIY attitude, Rock & Roll, Funk, Free Jazz, Dub, Reggae and the new Hip Hop scene all became part of her musical language. She was the bass player in Brooklyn’s all-female Reggae band Sistren before she formed FaithNYC in 1988, which became part of Vernon Reid’s Black Rock Coalition.

Love Is a Wish Away, was produced by Justin Adams, a Robert Plant, Tinariwen and Sinead O’Connor collaborator, who also plays guitar on the album.

Punk, Rosser says, “was a liberator for women. Young black women didn’t play instruments when I was growing up –you could just play in church, or sing. There weren’t so many black people on the scene at that time”.

Justin Adams shares about Rosser:

She is a commanding musician, with a big muscular voice. And I love the songs because they have got that feeling of walking around the streets of New York, or Detroit…the ghosts of the city… this is part of New York’s cultural history…she came over here and we found we had so much in common. I’d start a riff, and she’d know it, whether it was Howlin’ Wolf, Martha and the Vandellas or Nass El Ghiwane.

Joined by percussionist Fin Hunt, this album showcases Felice’s songwriting skills, vocals and bass lines.