'Life' imitates rock

Band frontman's novel finds praise in literary circles

Mark Brown, Rocky Mountain News

Published June 29, 2007 at midnight

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The same lost, struggling souls who inhabit Willy Vlautin's songs in the band Richmond Fontaine find themselves turning up in his critically acclaimed new novel, The Motel Life.

Fans of Richmond Fontaine's somber alt-country rock will find the book to be a fleshed-out version of the themes Vlautin has written about for years - isolation, downward spirals, finding a small bit of temporary grace in an unforgiving world.

Wildly acclaimed in Europe but still under the radar at home, Richmond Fontaine plays a rare Denver date on Saturday night promoting the new album, Thirteen Cities. The Portland, Ore., band mainly tours overseas, Vlautin explained, and comes to Denver only because it's a chance to visit their friend, graphic artist/local music scene player Jefferson Holland.

Rocky: You've written forever but you just published your first novel.

Vlautin: "I've been writing novels since I was 21. I've written five of them. I'll write a draft and put it away. That one was the one that started shaping up. They're real similar to the songs. A lot of times I'll be writing songs while I'm writing a novel, so they criss-cross quite a bit."

Rocky: Why the delay in putting it out?

Vlautin: "I was so gun-shy about it because the band is so up and down. My confidence level has always been a hard thing for me. I kept my novels to myself. I enjoy it so much that I didn't want to fail at that. It's hard to embrace something you know you're not very good at. I'd rather not know. So I kept it like that for 17 years. I met this agent and she offered to look at my work. I'd be crazy if I didn't at least try. That's like a gift from God, really."

Rocky: And now it is getting rave reviews internationally.

Vlautin: "It's crazy. Beating my head against the wall in the band for years, then getting a novel published kinda falls in your lap. The New York Times just gave it a good review. I got the e-mail about that three days ago and I couldn't look at it. I kept staring at the e-mail but didn't want to open it up."

Rocky: The brothers in the novel, Frank and Jerry Lee, keep blaming bad luck for the things that happen to them and never have any awareness that their bad decisions have consequences.

Vlautin: "I've always been interested in the idea of weakness, the decisions you make due to weakness whether it's lack of confidence, self-hatred or those kinds of things. You think you're a bum so you make decisions like a bum. I've struggled with that my whole life. The brothers are decent guys. They're the kind of guys who need to be guided. They make pretty poor decisions throughout the novel. They just haven't figured out how not to make them. They know they're screwing up, and they don't want to screw up but they somehow figure out a way to screw up worse than before."

Rocky: Worse than a bad decision sometimes is indecision.

Vlautin: "You get scared. In my life or watching other people's lives around you, you see people stay in situations that they don't want to stay in. Maybe 49 percent of them really wants to get out but they don't have the extra little bit to get them over the hump, to get enough courage to get out. They stay in the same bad job or be in a relationship they can't quite get out of, even though it's killing them. Once you lose your confidence it all tumbles down and you start making bad decisions."

Rocky: You explore the same territory in your songwriting but it never seems repetitive.

Vlautin: "I always worry about being repetitive because I haven't grown that much as far as what haunts me and what worries me. That's all I've ever written stories for, to figure out that side of me. My stuff is really dark and unrelentingly dark sometimes. Some people don't like that and I totally understand. I wish I could write lighter stuff or different stuff."

Rocky: You get rave reviews but your commercial success hasn't caught up to that.

Vlautin: "We've been doing good in Europe. Maybe 75 percent of our tours are over there. We make most of our money over there to keep the band going. I can't promote myself. I'm the worst at that. Most of the time I don't even like looking at myself in the mirror. None of us have taken ourselves very seriously and that's OK. That's the way it is. As long as the guys and me are happy, if we can sit in a van together and drink beer together and be buddies, that's the way we've always gauged things. And hopefully make a record that somebody wants to listen to."

Mark Brown is the popular music critic. Brownm@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2674

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