Their names alone spark curiosity: Later Fortune is the Philly-based duo of Chet Delcampo and Heyward Howkins.

Both are busy musicians and songwriters working at the front, back, and on stage, as well as appearing on each other’s recordings. This makes their upcoming two-song “Lateral To The Devil” single (out Feb. 11th, 2022) a rare thing. The previous Later Fortune release dropped three years ago, but patience pays.

Even at a mere two tracks and even with one being a cover (David Bowie’s Young Americans album cut “Win,” which Bowie biographer David Buckley called “one of the most gorgeous melodies Bowie has ever written”), it’s enough to underscore the taste and talent that results from decades of adulting in music.

Delcampo has two earlier album releases to his name, as well as another pair as Hong Kong Stingray, and in real life, he’s called Chris Madl. His list of current and former collaborators is long, including Kid Congo Powers, Joel RL Phelps, Dave Lovering of The Pixies, and Karl Blau (who contributes the cover art for this release). Maybe Delcampo’s affinity for an alias is an extra wrinkle to the choice of a Bowie deep cut.

“I remember hearing ‘Win’ as a kid, lying on the bedroom floor with headphones, Christmas lights flickering,” Delcampo says. “It’s just one of those implanted youth-related feelings that invoke a warm recall, and when we were considering doing a cover, I thought we could do something interesting. Hopefully it’s a fresh take.”

“I think my tween Depeche Mode influences crept in,” says Howkins, who has released two full-length albums of his own, co-founded the choral group The Silver Ages with members of Dr. Dog and The War on Drugs, and is known during the day as John. “As a kid, I practiced my singing to Depeche Mode songs. I had never heard David Bowie’s ‘Win,’ but Chet thought we could make it bold. The melody is weird, so it was challenging. I’m psyched with how moody and dark our version is.”

Delcampo is impressed.

“Heyward wasn’t initially aware of the song,” he explains. “It was a real kick when I heard him carving a space for his voice to reside and owning it.”

“My solo music is not typically electronic,” Howkins explains. “This palette gave me freedom to be more emotive and to sing out more.”

Maybe the lyric by Howkins that opens “Lateral To The Devil” also harkens back to his life-long love of Depeche Mode. It could easily have come from that band’s mid-career catalog and is satisfying in its intelligence without being too smart for its own good.

“Sat lateral to the devil, not above him more on equal,” Howkins sings over quivering electronics and a spare piano figure that gives way to pulsating bass and washes of drums. He continues, singing, “Asked if he knew what it’s like to be human, he said I wouldn’t choose it.”

“I enjoy trusting Heyward’s lyrical strengths,” Delcampo states.

Coupled with his equally powerful vocals –soulful, stirring, and silent at the right moments – the song is like porcelain. Beautiful and sturdy, but delicate and temporary. It makes the case for brevity.

Their names spark curiosity and this brief statement in song does too.

Chet Delcampo (aka Chris Madl) is currently in the final stages of wrapping up a new album as Hong Kong Stingray. Heyward Howkins is in the final stages of recording a new solo EP.

“Lateral To The Devil” b/w/ “Win,” the upcoming single from their collaboration Later Fortune, arrives Feb. 11th, 2022.

Later Fortune - Win (David Bowie Cover)

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 - So Cool

Fanatic is a music marketing company established by Josh Bloom in 1997 to build fan-to-fan connections between artists and the media. For 25 years, Fanatic has continued to help launch and maintain careers through the strategic advocacy of creative talent.

Later Fortune - Win (David Bowie Cover)

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