Drinking from the Fontaine of knowledge

Portland’s finest purveyors of vintage Americana, Richmond Fontaine, have rounded up an impressive selection of songs for their seventh long-player Thirteen Cities.

Lyrics drenched in hopelessness and songs haunted by desperate characters drifting through the small town motels of Arizona suggest the work of a dark and troubled soul.
The reality is quite the contrary. Willy Vlautin, vocalist and songwriter, is a charmingly cheery and enthusiastic individual (even at 8.30am, an ungodly hour by anyone’s standards). Speaking from his Oregon home, he chats animatedly about the new record, which features guest appearances from Calexico’s Joey Burns and Jacob Valenzuela and Giant Sand’s Howe Gelb.
“I didn’t really know those guys except as a fan,” he admits. “I'd met Joey Burns a couple of times but only to say, ‘I love your band!’ I think he's one of the great ideas men, a great arranger, so it was really fun to get his input.”
The album, which follows on from 2005’s lauded , has already garnered glowing reviews. The varied instrumentation (accordions, organs, mandolins, glockenspiel, pedal steel and dobro) merges sublimely to create the perfect sonic landscape for Vlautin’s troubled tales. Recorded in Wavelab studios in Arizona, each song’s story is rooted in arid terrain, and you can almost taste the dust.
“Once we decided on Tucson, all I thought about was that area,” Willy says. “I grew up in the desert, so I always dream about leaving Portland and living down there. I just got obsessed with that and started writing all those songs.”
The next few months see the band embark on a European tour, headline the Kilkenny Rhythm and Roots festival and squeeze in a visit to SXSW in Austin. Vlautin relishes the prospect of returning to these shores.
“I’m really looking forward to playing Whelan’s,” he enthuses. “It's one of my favourite venues. I love Ireland. One of the only grown-up vacations I ever took was to the Galway races. After a tour my girlfriend came over and we spent almost a week there.”
His compelling narrative style led to a book deal last year for Faber and the resulting novel, A Motel Life, was well received in literary circles. Contrasting the different disciplines, he explains, “Writing, you have to keep your act together, you have to put in the hours and stay focused. Writing songs is more emotional. Most of my best ones have been written when I'm really hungover and fragile. They're different ways of thinking. I've always written darker songs, it's just my natural way.”
Touring a book was quite a change of pace, one would imagine, but Vlautin points out that, “Some of those book people and writers are the funnest hardest partying people. But I always love being around the guys from my band, we've been together for 11 years and so I always enjoy hanging out with them. Drinking doesn't go with writing books, but it does go with guitar playing!”
Thirteen Cities is out now on Décor Records. Richmond Fontaine play Whelan’s, Dublin (February 16); Cyprus Avenue, Cork (17); and the Roisin Dubh, Galway (18).