When the nebulous they say rock is dead, they’ve clearly never heard Fortune Child play. The Jacksonville trio – lead guitarist Buddy Crump, bass player Jon Ward and drummer-vocalist Christian Powers – have been busy melting amps across Florida with their confident psychedelic take on rock’n’roll, ever since a chance encounter brought them together.
Christian: Buddy called me in late 2020. He’d seen me play a gig in Jacksonville, I was singing in a blues band called Kapowski. He was like “I saw you singing, man, it was sick. I would love for you to sing in this band that I want to put together.”
Buddy: I’d waited almost two years. But from the start, I knew, if I ever really want to start something serious, [Christian] would just have to be the guy. He’s got this husky Paul Rogers blues voice with a touch of RnB and it sounds great.
Christian: And it immediately clicked. We pulled Jon into the fold and the rest is history.
It was a case of perfect timing, as in the liminal space of the early pandemic years, it was easier to come together, write, jam, when band members weren’t out touring or playing gigs. By that point in their lives, they were already experienced veterans of local clubs and stages.
Buddy: I started playing guitar when I was nine. I used to get a ride to school and the girl that I would ride with was in the guitar club. I wasn’t. She had to stay, so if I wanted a ride home, I’d have to stay with her. And so one day [the teacher] was like “there’s an extra guitar over there”. So I just grabbed it and fell in love with it. Went on to play bluegrass in bands and at festivals. Then I started breaking strings, bending them, listening to [Led] Zeppelin.
Christian: I was gigging in a band by 12 or 13. We became like the little dancing monkey band when we were young because we were playing like CCR [Creedence Clearwater Revival] and [Black] Sabbath and The Who and stuff around town and all these 50-60 year old guys were getting really excited, like “you got check out what these kids are playing”. This was in high school, we would play three or four gigs a week until two in the morning. And the guitar player and I, we were on the swim team, so we had to wake up at five in the morning to go swim. Yeah, it was ridiculous. Like I can’t believe our parents allowed us to do that.
Jon: I grew up learning classical piano and I studied jazz trumpet in college, and over the years I switched into playing bass and keyboard more. I don’t play trumpet much anymore, it’s a very brutal instrument. I’ve toured with a gospel band before, had weekenders away playing corporate bands.
Christian: I played drums with The Dewars (great musicians) – we would never know where we’d end up, just hopping on a tour leg with one band, then the next. But the way we do it now, it’s been incredible.
Undeniably, with a 12-date tour of some of the most picturesque towns in northern Spain and southern France, culminating in a sold-out show in Anglet, where we had this conversation.
Jon: People here are great. I think we’ve had better turnouts here than when we tried a tour at home.
Christian: Even the first couple of shows, there’d be 15 people maybe, but they were all going crazy for an hour and a half. The A Coruña show was wild. We showed up and it was a small club, packed!, and people were super into it. We didn’t know what to expect, but from the start, the shows have exponentially increased. I think the longevity and the respect for the art is different here.
Jon: I think that’s just part of the culture. I think that it’s easier here to get people to go to shows.
Christian: You do it at home and it’s the same couple of people, which is great, they come out and support, but here I feel like people really do go out and they want to see something new and support it and maybe bring their friends the next time.
Buddy: That spirit to really dive in and get involved is amazing here.
Christian: We had a couple of people singing along to songs which was so bizarre. We’re coming over here for first time and we’re just expecting nobody to be anywhere, but it’s been a really good experience, very well received, and we’re already excited for the next one.
Speaking of which, a new album has been heavily teased, with over two years’ worth of EPs and singles released.
Christian: Yeah, we’ve been teasing it ourselves!
Buddy: We write a ton of music, we have a lot of stuff. We just don’t know what the hell to do with it. A lot of it is just us defining, whatever it is that we want to be.
Christian: We’re finding all these new directions through just playing, which every band does. Especially back in the day, that’s how everybody did anything. You played on the road, you played your songs, you got them tighter, you went and recorded them and that process still holds true.
Do they get time to write?
Jon: These days? Together, it’s a luxury. We all have crazy calendars. We have periods where we get together a bunch and turn out a bunch of music over the course of a few weeks and then we’ll have other periods where we’ll take some time to let it breathe.
Buddy: The cool thing for me is that every time we get a chance to sit down and really play together, some sort of new musical idea, some new inspiration just pops out of nowhere. You don’t really think about it, it just happens and whatever starts happening will happen, you know? It’s just natural.
Christian: We have a really good bad habit of rehearsing which just turns into writing.
Jon: It happened so many times. We were like “let’s write down the whole set. We’ll run the set twice. We’ll get everything super tight.” And then we’ll write something new for three hours.
Christian: We got a cool thing and the chemistry’s right, so it’s impossible not to want to go down every avenue that comes to us, cause every idea deserves it.
Buddy: It’s working so far!
This free-flowing approach extends to the lyrics as well.
Christian: I’ve been primarily the lyric writer so far and it’s been a toss-up. A majority of it is just showing up and listening to the song in the room, kind of spontaneously writing, capturing whatever is channeling through you. We’re like little antennas. The first 10-12 songs we wrote, Buddy would have a lick and I just wrote on the spot.
Buddy: I’ve never seen him take any notes or write lyrics out.
Christian: We have so many different ideas and things we want to do. And one thing I really want to start doing more is coming up with cool lyrical content and sitting down and really making it thoughtful. For some songs, just throwing some crazy words out, it totally works. Especially some of the crazy psych stuff, like TEOTB.
A concept album may not be off the charts, especially as a key element has entered their music production: sound engineer and overall cool dude Ben McLeod, lead guitarist of the Nashville rock’n’roll and blues band, All Them Witches.
Christian: Ben was my surf camp instructor when I was seven years old. Everybody called him Surfer Ben. Years later, ATW came through St Augustine and one of my friends was like, we gotta go check them out. And there he was, Ben from surf camp! Years go by, we end up both looking at the same studio space, him to open his own recording studio, I was looking for a rehearsal space for us [Fortune Child], and we decide to go on it together. He came to see us play and he was like “you guys are fucking sweet” and we were like hell yeah, Ben thinks our band’s cool! We started immediately recording with him. It’s really nice, we’re super fortunate. It’s always magical with Ben. The flow with the four of us in the room is so good.
On top of engineering the latest singles to come out of their St. Augustine studio, Jon and Ben play together as the country/bluegrass outfit El Castillo (“it almost started as a joke”, but as Christian adds “they’re every band’s favourite band”).
Christian: He’s an incredible engineer. He won’t talk about it ever, but he’s a ridiculous producer. He really wants you to drive the session as the band, but sometimes you see the look and he’ll say “let’s try it this way”.
Jon: They all turn into monsters.
This close collaboration also led to a surprise opportunity for Christian, when All Them Witches needed a drummer on their tour in May of this year.
Christian: That’s been a wild ride. We were recording a lot, building up this friendship. Then one day he calls me, like, “hey I need your help” and I was like, what? “Can you play a couple of shows?” “For what?” “ATW” and I was like “Bullshit. What do you actually need my help for?” So it went from there and it’s awesome. I’m learning so much with that band, the level they are at is amazing. And it’s really cool because they are very supportive of Fortune Child. The very first thing Ben said about playing for ATW? “If this will never get in the way of Fortune Child, cause that’s your thing”. Everybody’s really supportive, the fans are so supportive, throwing around Fortune Child songs, checking us out. It’s like a big family.
Like with any creative project, progress is not linear, but in the trio’s case, it’s certainly picking up speed.
Christian: It’s cool to see that the work we put in is being seen at this level right now. It gives us a ton of motivation to want to create more and do better and then come back and make it even bigger than it was the first time.
Jon: We’re excited and inspired. We want to keep doing this and make it better every time.
Thank you again to Fortune Child for having us for a chat and Tres Hombres for helping make this tour and this conversation happen. You can check out the complete interview over on Spotify and Apple Music.
Check out Fortune Child on Instagram, Facebook, Youtube and listen to their awesome music on all streaming platforms.
As a Christmas gift, here are some bonus questions.
Q: Any Spotify Wrapped surprises?
Jon: I only use Spotify to learn songs for corporate gigs, so my top five songs were Miley Cyrus and Stars Fell On Alabama by Renee Olstead. My Apple music has all the weird metal.
Christian: Yeah, same here, mine must have been just ATW stuff, cause I was learning the songs.
Q: Any bands you want to shout out?
Jon: I’ve been on a big drone metal phase. We’re in the van for eight hours, so I’ve been playing Sunn O))) and Earth and Om.
Christian: Check out Flahoola! Our buddy Cole, our sound engineer on tour, he’s in a killer band out in Colorado, good rock metal, just solid shredding.
Artists: All Them Witches, Black Sabbath, Creedence Clearwater Revival, earth, el castillo, fortune child, kapowski, led zepellin, sunn o)))