Richmond Fontaine’s new album “The High Country” is released in September but visitors to Truck are lucky enough to catch one of just a handful of UK summer dates by Richmond Fontaine Acoustic – Willy Vlautin and guitarist Dan Eccles.
Playing brittle and evocative literate rock with lyrics that draw powerful and sometimes troubling portraits of life along the margins of the contemporary American West, Richmond Fontaine is the brainchild of singer, guitarist, and songwriter Willy Vlautin, who was born in Reno, Nevada but moved to Portland, Oregon in 1994, where he formed the band.
“The High Country” is their tenth studio album and completes a tendency that the band has virtually invented, namely the meshing of music and storytelling. Willy’s third novel, “Lean On Pete” has just been released by Faber and Faber in paperback, while his first, “The Motel Life” has just been made into a major motion picture filmed by the Polsky Brothers (Bad Lieutenant) and featuring Dakota Fanning, Stephen Dorff and Kris Kristofferson.
Recent projects such as “A Jockey’s Christmas” and “A Motorcycle For A Horse” have seen Willy’s song-cycles turning into mini-music backed stories, and “The High Country” completes the transition. In the words of drummer Sean Oldham, “It’s a gothic love story set in a rural logging community in Oregon. Something more than a concept record, it’s a novel-sized story set to music… a “song-novel”… and its pretty dark with romantic ballads, dialogue sequences, raw Northwest Garage rock and cinematic songscapes”. Three of the songs feature Deborah Kelly on lead vocals, known for sharing verses on the band’s iconic “Post To Wire”.
The UK has embraced the music of Richmond Fontaine and anyone familiar with them will see Truck as the perfect festival for them to play. Unsurprisingly, their music and lyrics demand attentive listening, swallowing audiences with tales of pathos, tragedy, humour, love and the travails of everyday life. Don’t miss them!
Words by Oliver Gray
