Willy Vlautin of The Delines: ‘I don’t think I wrote a song I consider good until I was 27’

Whether he’s making beautiful music with country soul collective The Delines or writing highly successful novels, two of which – The Motel Life and Lean on Pete – have been made into films, Portland, Oregon-based Willy Vlautin is first and foremost a storyteller chronicling life in working class America.

Formed in 2012, The Delines’ line-up includes three members of Willy’s previous outfit, Richmond Fontaine, a much-loved alternative country group active for over 20 years.

The Delines, who have released five studio albums to date – the most recent of which is 2023’s The Night Always Comes – will be performing in Cambridge on 12 June.

When we spoke, via Zoom, Willy, 56, was due to fly to the UK the following day for a short solo tour – a mix of conversation and solo musical performance – to tie in with the release of his latest novel, The Horse.

“I’m a bit nervous,” he admits, “I’ve been hiding behind The Delines for a few years and I’ve gotten to like that, but I’m really grateful to get the opportunity to do the gigs.”

On the subject of The Horse – which has been described as his “most personal novel yet”, and has also received praise from Irish writer Roddy Doyle – Willy says: “It’s the life story of a journeyman, a musician who was based out of the town where I grew up, Reno, Nevada.

“It’s kind of the life of a casino musician; when I was a kid, casinos still were good gigs for musicians.

“I mean they’re hard, miserable gigs but you made good money, and Reno had tons of places for musicians to play in.

“As the casinos got bought out by corporations, the music kind of dried up… So it’s just about the life story of a journeyman musician, and man. I’ve been working on it for years.

“I’d never really written about music so it was the first time I’d ever really thought a lot about songwriting in terms of a novel. It’s just my take on music, I guess.”

Joining Willy in The Delines are the unmistakable voice of singer Amy Boone, Cory Gray on keyboards and trumpet, Sean Oldham on drums and vocals, and Freddy Trujillo on bass and vocals.

The excellent The Night Always Comes includes among its standout tracks the utterly gorgeous Don’t Think Less of Me, as ever wondrously sung by Amy.

“The voice of real America, timeless and beautiful” says a comment below the song’s video on YouTube.

Is that ‘voice of real America’ something that Willy, the recipient of three Oregon Book Awards and the Nevada Silver Pen Award – he’s also been inducted into the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame and the Oregon Music Hall of Fame – strives to capture through his novels?

“As far as writing novels, I think I just always wanted to write novels that were simple and about people that I lived around,” he replies.

“I think if I had any gift as a writer when I first started it was that I knew what I wanted to write about, and maybe that is an influence of having read so much Steinbeck as a kid.

“But it’s the idea that my mum was a secretary, why can’t she be a hero? One of my first jobs was a janitor and I was like ‘Well why can’t a janitor be a hero?’

“So I think at a very young age I wanted to write those kind of stories about just working class people – that was always really important to me.

“Music was always a lot tougher for me to figure out; I did know from an early age I always wanted to end up being in a band with a woman singer, where I wore a suit and hid in the back. And once in a while you get lucky in life and that’s where I landed with The Delines.

“I just love Amy Boone’s voice so much that writing those songs for her is heaven for me.”

Willy, who says he writes “the stories that make sense to me, that feel like they have blood and soul in them”, started writing songs “obsessively” at the age of “11 or 12”.

He was inspired by songwriters and novelists such as Willie Nelson, Tom Waits, William Kennedy, Raymond Carver and the aforementioned John Steinbeck.

“The thing to know about me is I never had any talent at all,” he states, “I just really believed in the power of a song to make you disappear from where you were.

“I mean you put a song on and suddenly you’re not you anymore, you’re living inside this song.

“I loved the idea that you could put on a song and all of a sudden you’re in a different world. So I chased that from say 11 on.

“I don’t think I wrote a song that I would consider pretty good until I was 27, and I was an obsessive songwriter too – that’s all I did was write songs and think about songs.

“I think in my early 20s I probably was dreaming about being in a band with Bobbie Gentry, say, or Sammi Smith, these kind of melancholy women songwriters, but I was in Richmond Fontaine at that point and still kind of had an edge to me, and we were going non-stop pretty much for a lot of years.

“But in the back of my mind I always wanted to just write ballads. My favourite singers have always been women singers so I always wanted to be in a band with a really cool woman singer.”

Other favourite songs of mine from The Delines’ impressive repertoire include The Imperial, Little Earl, Kid Codeine, Cheer Up Charley, Saved from the Sea, and Hold Me Slow.

Willy, who has already started work on his next novel, reveals that a new Delines album is almost ready to go and that fans will get to hear some of it at the Cambridge show, alongside more well-known – and some lesser-known – material.

Come along and enjoy the sweet, sweet sound of The Delines when the captivating quintet play the Cambridge Junction (J2) on Wednesday, 12 June.

Tickets, priced £30, are available from junction.co.uk. For more on the band, go to thedelines.com.