For us mere mortals, whose musical abilities only stretch to strumming along to Heart of Gold, the idea of actually being in a band or a successful songwriter would be the fulfilment of our dreams. Yet for many musical artists that is not the limit of their talents. Joni Mitchell was a dab hand with a paintbrush, Leonard Cohen wrote poetry, Nick Cave and Steve Earle have both published novels and Roseanne Cash's short stories received critical acclaim when published. The greatest of them all could write songs, paint and even go on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature!

Time to go to Reno, Nevada! The very name conjures up images of black and white Westerns with one man standing tall against a hate mob; Johnny Cash famously 'shot a man in Reno just to watch him die'. 'The Boss' himself has a song called “Reno” on his Devils and Dust album. Give it a listen, it all happens in Reno it seems. And it is from Reno that perhaps the finest musician as storyteller hails. Born in that city at the height of the summer of love, Willy Vlautin would go on to be to the 21st century what Dickens was to the 19th, who would relate to us the stories of the real America, of the lost and lonesome, of those plagued by bad luck seeking a way out. He is our generation's Steinbeck and one feels the spirit of a Tom Joad or a Lennie Small in every page of his heartfelt hard-hitting tales.

The Motel Life (2006)
Northline (2008)
The Free (2013)
Don’t Skip Out On Me (2018)
Post to Wire (2003)
The Fitzgerald (2005)
Thirteen Cities (2007)
We Used To Think The Freeway Sounded Like A River (2009)
Colfax (2014)
The Imperial (2019)
Mr. Luck & Ms. Doom (2025)

The first indications that Vlautin had what it takes to be a novelist are there for all to see and hear on his albums with Richmond Fontaine, a band he formed in Portland, Oregon in the mid-nineties. It was through Uncut magazine's then editor Allan Jones that many were first alerted to their albums, and specifically 2003's Post to Wire, a literary slice of downtrodden Americana whose desperate characters seem lost in the vastness of their landscape yet live on in hope. The songs evoke the glory of John Stewart's “Sweet Dreams Will Come” or Gram Parson's “She” navigating a trail between country and the softer side of rock with male/female duets in the style of John Prine and dear Nanci. Indeed, Jones was so taken by this outfit that he named the follow-up - 2005's The Fitzgerald - his album of the month too. It was about this time that Vlautin started flexing his literary muscles and published his 2006 debut novel The Motel Life, in which we follow down-on-their-luck brothers Frank and Jerry Lee coming to terms with a drunken car accident. His next tale - 2008's Northline - even had an accompanying CD of music with it to seal the mood as the protagonist Allison Johnson escapes an abusive boyfriend in her search for some crumb of an American dream. More novels followed, most notably personal favourite 2014's The Free, films were made (the acclaimed Lean on Pete) and the characters ranged from returning soldiers from Iraq to wannabe boxers and reclusive failed musicians, the latter portrayed in 2024's The Horse.

Trailer for Lean on Pete, which was released to critical acclaim in 2018.

With the support of Uncut, and the novels establishing him as a contemporary Raymond Carver or even Charles Bukowski, it was a surprise when Richmond Fontaine announced they would be disbanding, but re-forming with Vlautin at the helm as a new band called the Delines. Luckily for their fans, a final 2016 tour brought them to the renowned El Lokal bar in downtown Zurich (Reno it ain't!). I was there, as were twenty-seven other hardy souls (I counted). I apologised to the drummer afterwards for the apathy of the Zurich public, but he was OK with it, claiming we had outscored the previous night's Paris gig by some 22 people! Why, I wondered, was the world so unaware of this great writer and his long-standing loyal band?

The Delines have continued in the tradition of Richmond Fontaine taking us on road trips across the gloomier, grittier, grimmer side of American life at a time when our screens are parading billionaires by the dozen.

Vlautin's novels and music introduce us to worlds of bars, racetracks, fights, romances (broken and fresh), good people, bad people, petty crime, enforced poverty and barren landscapes, winners and losers in a land where losers outnumber the winners by the score. He helps to remind us of this simple fact. As mentioned earlier, he should be catalogued on the bookshelves somewhere between Steinbeck and Bukowski, maybe next to the Yorkshire social realism writers of the 1960s such as Barry Hines and David Storey. Dare we say he is America's Emile Zola…

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