Alberta & The Dead Eyes is the giant-sounding band that in reality is the majority work of one real-life carpenter, David Boone (or D. Boone as he often signs off, evoking another literal and figurative giant of musical history, D. Boon of The Minutemen.)

In fact, Boone’s songs contain that same ramshackle joy and conversational, inclusive tone that Boon’s do. It’s the sound of a natural talent letting it fly.

“I’m a carpenter by day and sometimes even by night,” Boone says. “A fine carpenter at that, but a better musician.”

You may want to leave the page now to find out more about Boone, but don’t bother. He made the right choice. The choice that none of us made and many wish we had. Boone is nowhere to be found on social media. 

He lets the songs do the sharing.

Alberta & The Dead Eyes will release its new 11-song album Give or Take on March 15, 2024. The album will be preceded by “Ghost Kitty,” a four-song EP of additional songs on Dec. 22, 2023.

The songs on Give or Take represent a man in withdrawal from a two-packs-a-day cigarette habit that went on for 15 years.

“Mama, did it fuck me up more than I expected,” Boone confesses. “I wrote the entire record pretty much curled up in a ball.”

Grieving his relationship with nicotine while composing, Boone kept company with his influences, numerous and varied. So numerous and varied that mentioning a handful isn’t going to help you any more than looking for Boone online will.

“I love Billie Holiday. And The Stooges. And The Band. And Outkast. And Duke Ellington. And Cole Porter. And David Sedaris. And Bill Watterson. And the Detroit Pistons. And John fucking Prine.”

Boone doesn’t mention The Minutemen, but likely would, if prompted.

“I mean Jesus, should I keep going?”

Get it?

The thing about Boone as musician that isn’t likely is how much Boone as carpenter makes it into his music. He doesn’t mention the Grateful Dead either, but the steadfast focus that underpins Boone’s freestyle nature is kinda Alberta & The Workingman’s Dead Eyes.

“I’m a complete ‘no one is coming to save you’ type of person,” he explains. “Keep your head down and
do your job. Musician schmoosician. Do what your supposed to fucking do. Write good songs. Play good
shows. Show up on time. Be humble and be fucking nice.”

A real-life carpenter keeping it real-life real. Refreshing.

It should be even less surprising now that musician Boone rejected Instagram squares for T-squares just like he painfully swore off smokes cold turkey for the clean lungs that arrived with the songs, or as Boone sees it, he arrived to them.

“The songs are just there, hanging out, waiting for someone,” he says.

Now that someone is you.

Alberta & The Dead Eyes will release its new 11-song album Give or Take on March 15, 2024, preceded by “Ghost Kitty,” a four-song EP of additional songs on Dec. 22, 2023.

Alberta & The Dead Eyes - Spiff

Give Or Take

Alberta & The Dead Eyes - Slow Fool

Alberta & The Dead Eyes - So Cool

Alberta & The Dead Eyes - Bundled Up Blues

Jan. 12, 2024, saw the reissue, in a newly remastered edition, of New American Language, the 2001 album by acclaimed American songwriter Dan Bern. Surprisingly, the occasion marks the first appearance of a Bern album on vinyl, during a career spanning more than 30 releases.

The remastered, first-time-on-vinyl edition of New American Language is followed by the launch of a six-week Dan Bern tour in Atlanta on Jan. 17. An all-new Dan Bern album Starting Over, arrives on March 1, 2024, via Grand Phony preceded by the single “Bible,” another in a long line of outspoken Bern songs.

Bern is accompanied on Starting Over by the band Jane’s Great Dane.

He explains, “I started playing with the Jane’s Great Dane guys out of Boston after a snow blower incident that cost me a couple of fingertips and put me out of commission as far as playing the guitar for a while.

“Then, In the middle of the pandemic, Jonathan Plaut, from the band, suggested I come out to Connecticut and record some songs with them. I hadn’t been in a room with other musicians for over a year! Those sessions led to a second session, some months later, and eventually, Starting Over.”

“Dan’s epic ‘Thanksgiving Day Parade’ literally took two years to record,” says the song’s producer, Wil Masisak, in the liner notes of the New American Language reissue. “The sense that we’d made something worth hearing coupled with the knowledge that we couldn’t have done this alone or without difficulty was immensely rewarding.

“Unfortunately, the release date was set for Tuesday, September 11th, 2001, and so it is that this incredible collection of American songwriting seemingly meant for those who did their best to carry on after 9/11 finds itself a little lost to time.”

“With Dan Bern’s large and acclaimed catalog, I have no idea how he has never had a vinyl release,” says John Young of Grand Phony Records (Mike Viola, Trapper Schoepp), the label that will reissue Bern’s landmark album. New American Language is my favorite Dan Bern album, Young says. With “fresh and vibrant” remastered audio, it is literally clearer that Bern’s lyrics “have proven to be prescient, as if they were written yesterday,” according to Young.

“National treasure” is an overused phrase to denote something Americans acknowledge as important—someone whose contributions to the American fabric are numerous, never in doubt, but rarely at risk.

Bern and his work is something more ingrained than what “national treasure” can measure. What Bern has offered throughout a 30-album and counting career speaks to something deeper in us than any two-word workaround for actual criticism could define. Bern’s work takes those risks, and New American Language is his career’s most precarious statement. In a world filled with plenty of “safer” controversial subjects to write about, Bern could do that if he felt like it. We are better for his decision not to.

In addition to being a Jeopardy clue, Bern has written thousands of songs, among such other notable career and personal highlights as writing songs for the Judd Apatow film “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story,” and Jonathan Demme’s film about Jimmy Carter (which Carter recognized Bern for when introducing Bern to his wife Roslyn, saying, “This is the fellow that wrote that song.”) Bern has opened for The Who (Daltrey has covered Bern’s songs), is a member of the Iowa Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and taught tennis to Wilt Chamberlain.

Starting Over

Dan Bern - Bible

Jan. 12, 2024, saw the reissue, in a newly remastered edition, of New American Language, the 2001 album by acclaimed American songwriter Dan Bern. Surprisingly, the occasion marks the first appearance of a Bern album on vinyl, during a career spanning more than 30 releases.

The remastered, first-time-on-vinyl edition of New American Language is followed by the launch of a six-week Dan Bern tour in Atlanta on Jan. 17. An all-new Dan Bern album Starting Over, arrives on March 1, 2024, via Grand Phony preceded by the single “Bible,” another in a long line of outspoken Bern songs.

Bern is accompanied on Starting Over by the band Jane’s Great Dane.

He explains, “I started playing with the Jane’s Great Dane guys out of Boston after a snow blower incident that cost me a couple of fingertips and put me out of commission as far as playing the guitar for a while.

“Then, In the middle of the pandemic, Jonathan Plaut, from the band, suggested I come out to Connecticut and record some songs with them. I hadn’t been in a room with other musicians for over a year! Those sessions led to a second session, some months later, and eventually, Starting Over.”

“Dan’s epic ‘Thanksgiving Day Parade’ literally took two years to record,” says the song’s producer, Wil Masisak, in the liner notes of the New American Language reissue. “The sense that we’d made something worth hearing coupled with the knowledge that we couldn’t have done this alone or without difficulty was immensely rewarding.


“Unfortunately, the release date was set for Tuesday, September 11th, 2001, and so it is that this incredible collection of American songwriting seemingly meant for those who did their best to carry on after 9/11 finds itself a little lost to time.”

“With Dan Bern’s large and acclaimed catalog, I have no idea how he has never had a vinyl release,” says John Young of Grand Phony Records (Mike Viola, Trapper Schoepp), the label that will reissue Bern’s landmark album. New American Language is my favorite Dan Bern album, Young says. With “fresh and vibrant” remastered audio, it is literally clearer that Bern’s lyrics “have proven to be prescient, as if they were written yesterday,” according to Young.

“National treasure” is an overused phrase to denote something Americans acknowledge as important—someone whose contributions to the American fabric are numerous, never in doubt, but rarely at risk.

Bern and his work is something more ingrained than what “national treasure” can measure. What Bern has offered throughout a 30-album and counting career speaks to something deeper in us than any two-word workaround for actual criticism could define. Bern’s work takes those risks, and New American Language is his career’s most precarious statement. In a world filled with plenty of “safer” controversial subjects to write about, Bern could do that if he felt like it. We are better for his decision not to.

In addition to being a Jeopardy clue, Bern has written thousands of songs, among such other notable career and personal highlights as writing songs for the Judd Apatow film “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story,” and Jonathan Demme’s film about Jimmy Carter (which Carter recognized Bern for when introducing Bern to his wife Roslyn, saying, “This is the fellow that wrote that song.”) Bern has opened for The Who (Daltrey has covered Bern’s songs), is a member of the Iowa Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and taught tennis to Wilt Chamberlain.

Dan Bern - Starting Over

Gina Volpe, prolific NYC-based artist and founding member of punk rock royals, Lunachicks, enters the next phase of her career as a solo artist with the release of the debut album Delete The World on Feb. 23, 2024.

Produced by Barb Morrison (Blondie, Franz Ferdinand, Rufus Wainwright), who deftly captures Volpe’s soaring, crunching riffs and sultry magnetic voice while also delivering flashes of Brian Eno, Delete The World follows closely on the heels of a Lunchicks renaissance.

The late 2023 premiere at the world-renowned DOC NYC documentary film festival of “Pretty Ugly: The Story of the Lunachicks” featuring Debbie Harry and Chris Stein of Blondie, Dexter Holland of The Offspring, Donita Sparks and Jennifer Finch of L7, and others, is the perfect primer on Lunachicks’s lasting influence, which began when Volpe co-founded the ferocious punk band with her fellow high school classmates in the 1990s. Lunachicks released a half-dozen albums, toured the world numerous times, and staked a claim in rock history.

Now Volpe brings decades of chops, experiences, and attitude to Delete The World, adding brooding, textured, and experimental sounds that combine on lead single and video “Drink Me,” recently called “a catchy, swaggering dance-punk song” by Brooklyn Vegan. Heavy bass riffs and retro synth sounds pair perfectly with the visually arresting music video created by award-winning pop surrealist Stänzii.

“‘Drink Me’ was inspired by my occasional tendency to lean precariously on vices — wine in this case — but also the collective experience of friends I had been in conversations with about obsession and addiction,” Volpe explains. “The lyric, ‘one foot in the grave, the other in my mouth,’ is a cheeky observation of how messy and dangerous our habit of running to the nearest exit can be.”

While Volpe is known for her furious guitar solos, Delete The World proves that she is a true musical nomad at heart, a fact that becomes even clearer when asked about her influences.

“I am always so careful about who I cite as an influence because it doesn’t make a lot of sense in relation to what I’m doing,” Volpe explains. “Pink Floyd, I mean, I sound nothing like them. David Bowie’s Scary Monsters, Donna Summer’s ‘I Feel Love.’ I also love Death From Above, but I sound nothing like them. ZZ Top... I don’t hear any of them in my music either!”

Volpe also mentions her fondness for newer bands such as Idles, Dry Cleaning, and Viagra Boys before using this question about influences to point out a reality that follows proactive female artists like herself.

“I feel like there can be a binary way of thinking in the music industry,” she says. “Even in the streaming platform’s algorithms, which suggest gender is a genre in and of itself. This conversation vexed me my whole career. My influences span the gender spectrum.”

Like the societal borders that Volpe rightly reminds us about, she describes Delete The World as “a disintegration of not just traditional stylistic borders, but also mental ones.”

Many of these songs reflect on coping mechanisms gone awry, unintended consequences, and how perception can cut you loose or keep you confined. It is a dubious assumption that humans are in control of anything,” she says.

Volpe is absolutely in control of her ability to take everything she has absorbed during her prolific career and turn it into a singular solo statement. “With Delete The World, I get to color outside the lines and be as messy as I wanna be.”

Delete The World by Gina Volpe arrives on Feb. 23, 2024. The lead single and video “Drink Me” are streaming now.

Delete The World

Gina Volpe - Delete The World

Fanatic is a music marketing company established by Josh Bloom in 1997 to build fan-to-fan connections between artists and the media. For nearly 30 years, Fanatic has continued to help launch and maintain careers through the strategic advocacy of creative talent.

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