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Willy Vlautin (Richmond Fontaine)
  
 
 
 
   
 
     
 
 
   
 
‘As one boy’s journey, Lean on Pete is as real as blood: as a novel it is remarkable. Willy Vlautin, romantic and realist, has written something special that will make you shudder, weep, rage and wonder at how such things happen and do, and how some individuals such as Charley can suffer them, absorb the grief, and somehow survive. How good is contemporary US fiction? This good: catch your breath good.’
Eileen Battersby, Irish Times Book Review "Lean on Pete"

Willy Vlautin
New Novel "Lean on Pete"

Available on Faber and Faber
www.willyvlautin.com ~ www.richmondfontaine.com
Willy Vlautin, the critically acclaimed novelist and frontman of the band RICHMOND FONTAINE, returns to Ireland to promote his new novel "LEAN ON PETE" and perform acoustic shows accompanied by bandmate Dan Eccles.   ::: LIVE ::: Irish Dates
Willy will be accompanied by Richmond Fontaine guitarist Dan Eccles
March 10 - Galway - Rosin Dubh
March 11 - Limerick - Dolans
March 13 - Dublin - Whelans (two shows 7:30 & 10:00)   For Information / Interview requests:

Stevo Berube / Berube Communications info@berubecommunications.com or +353 (0)87 244 2695

"Lean On Pete":   Fifteen-year-old Charley Thompson wants a home. Food on the table and in the cupboard; a high school he can attend for more than part of a year; and some structure to his life. But as the son of single father working at warehouses across the Pacific Northwest, Charley’s been pretty much on his own for sometime.

Lean on Pete opens as Charley and his father arrive in Portland, Oregon and Charley takes a stables job, illegally, at the local race track. Once part of a vibrant racing network, Portland Meadows is now seemingly the last haven for washed up jockeys and knackered horses, but it’s there that Charley meets Pete, an old horse who becomes his companion as he’s forced to try and make his own way in the world.

A portrait of a journey - populated by a vivid cast of characters against a harsh landscape - Lean on Pete is also the unforgettable story of a friendship and of hope in dark times.   Willy Vlautin:   Born and raised in Reno, Nevada, Vlautin started playing guitar and writing songs as a teenager and quickly became immersed in music. It was a Paul Kelly song, based on Raymond Carver’s Too Much Water So Close to Home that inspired him to start writing stories. Vlautin has published two novels, The Motel Life (2007) and Northline (2008).
Vlautin founded the band Richmond Fontaine in 1994. The band has produced eight studio albums to date, plus a handful of live recordings and EP’s. Driven by Vlautin’s dark, story-like songwriting, the band has achieved critical acclaim at home and across Europe.
Vlautin currently resides in Scappoose, Oregon, and has just released Richmond Fontaine’s eighth album We Used to Think the Freeway Sounded Like a River. His third novel, Lean on Pete, is out spring 2010. An avid fan of horseracing, Vlautin can often be found writing behind a closed circuit monitor at Portland Meadows racetrack.
“This guy writes like the secret love child of Raymond Carver and Flannery O’Connor–just plain, true, tough, irony-free, heartrending American fiction about people living in the third-world sections of our country.”
Michael Gruber   “If McMurtry, Johnson, McGuane, and Carver need a fifth to make up a literary five-a-side team, they need look no further than Willy Vlauin.”
Niall Griffiths   Richmond Fontaine:   We Used To Think The Freeway Sounded Like A River is out now on Décor Records (American Music Club, Franz Nicolay). We Used to Think…, Richmond Fontaine’s eighth studio album finds the band at their peak both artistically and commercially.  The Independent recently called singer/songwriter Willy Vlautin “the Dylan of the dislocated” and the band has been a firm critics favourite since the release of Post to Wire in 2004 and were given two albums of the month from UNCUT in 04 and 05..  Fontaine’s sound has continued its decade-long evolution and is now  fully realized on We Used to Think…  Featuring epic songs like “Lonnie“ and “Two Alone” and beautiful folk tunes like “Ruby And Lou” and “The Pull”, the new album delivers Vlautin’s classic storytelling backed by Fontaine’s most interesting and accomplished musical performance to date.
 
The birth of We Used To Think… began at the tail end of a year-long tour in 2007 supporting Thirteen Cities.  Singer/songwriter Willy Vlautin’s mother died suddenly, two days before Vlautin was scheduled to return home.  This prompted the road-weary band to take a year’s sabbatical.  Holed up at his home in rural Oregon, Vlautin reflected on family, relationships, and love and began writing songs. Two months into a writing streak, he was bucked off his horse and forced to spend months nursing a badly broken arm.  Finally able to get back to writing, Vlautin retreated to his writing shed and emerged a year later with a new novel (Lean on Pete, release date Feb 2010, Faber & Faber) and twenty songs about love, heartache, and loss.

After arranging and rehearsing the songs that would become We Used To Think…, the band decided to stay close to home and record with old friends Larry Crane and JD Foster (Dwight Yokam, Calexico) at Crane’s Jackpot Studios (The Go-Betweens, Elliott Smith, The Decemberists, The Shins) in Portland.

The core of the band remains Willy Vlautin (guitars, vocals), Sean Oldham (drums, vocals), Dave Harding (bass), and Dan Eccles (guitars).  For the session, Fontaine also brought in family members and friends, Collin Oldham (cello, cellomobo), Paul Brainard (pedal steel, trumpet), and Ralph Huntley (piano).

Willy will be playing a set at the Latitude Festival on July 19th   and the full band will be heading out on a full UK & Ireland tour in September with a stops at the End of the Road Festival (UK) and The Electric Picnic (Ireland).  The album will be preceded by the limited  7” single “You Can Move Back Here” out July 20th released on Trash Aesthetics and will feature a short story written by Willy inside the silkscreen cover.

Willy Vlautin has released two novels to great acclaim, The Motel Life and Northline on Faber & Faber. Movie rights to both novels have been optioned.  Oscar-nominated screenwriter and award-winning director Courtney Hunt (Frozen River) is adapting and directing Northline. 
 
Here is Willy’s rough guide to the tracklisting of "We Used To Think The Freeway Sounded Like A River":
1) We Used To Think The Freeway Sounded Like A River – Living next to an abandoned house, the romance and cost of a young couple getting their first place in a rough neighborhood.
 
2) Northwest – Instrumental featuring JD and Dan
 
3) You Can Move Back Here – Getting a call from an old pal drowning in a city.
 
4) The Boyfriends – A mom’s series of boyfriends and the kid who has to endure them, featuring trumpet by Mr. Paul Brainard.
 
5) The Pull – The anxiety and struggle of trying to stay sober.
 
6) Sitting Outside My Dad’s Old House – Instrumental featuring Collin Oldham’s cellomobo and radio trowel.
 
7) Maybe We Were Both Born Blue – A high school romance and a neighbor who ruins both of them
 
8) Watch Out – Instrumental for the most part except some “Watch outs” by me and Kendra.
 
9) 43 – buried in debt, working at a paint store, and a basement full of weed.
 
10) Lonnie – Running into your friend’s aunt at a grocery store and listening to her rant about the horrible things he’s done.
 
11) Ruby and Lou – A romance and a couple believing there's a place where the darkness doesn’t exist.
 
12) Walking Back To Our Place At 3AM – Instrumental. A couple walking back to their apartment after a good night at the bar.
 
13) Two Alone – Moving to a new town, working as forklift driver, living with your pregnant girlfriend who loves credit cards and doesn’t have a job.
 
14) A Letter To The Patron Saint Of Nurses – A nurse having a nervous breakdown while drinking wine coolers and listening to Mariachi music.  
Recent Press Quotes:   Thirteen Cities: “Quite simply, Vlautin’s one of the most compelling songwriters working today, compared equally to great American novelists llike Raymond Carver or John Steinbeck and musicians such as Bruce Springsteen or Tom Waits” The Sun   “Heartbreakingly great” 7/10 NME   "Nothing less than the Dylan of the Dislocated” Independent 5/5, UNCUT 4/5 and 4/5 Mojo

 The Fitzgerland:“..is mind-blowing…absolute perfection”, UNCUT’s “Album of the Month” 5/5                                      

“the most beautiful sad album of the year” Q Magazine 4/5 stars  
“downbeat masterpiece…bleak but brilliant” 5/5 The SUN      and   4/5 MOJO

Post To Wire: “Uncut’s discovery of the year….Fans of a certain kind of orphaned Americana are likely to fall on Post To Wire like apostles on The Grail….soon be entirely enthralled with this dark and mesmerising masterpiece” UNCUT ALBUM OF THE MONTH  5/5  (listed as the 4th best album of 2004) “Without a doubt, the best album of the decade”   Comes With A Smile, ”the seasons must have Americana purchase.  4/5 MOJO
 
 
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