Best known as the frontman of alt-country group Richmond Fontaine, Willy Vlautin is now also an author. His debut novel, The Motel Life, takes the same bleak, resigned-to-fate look on life that fuels his music.

The story centers around the relationship of brothers Frank and Jerry Lee, who flee town after one of them accidentally kills a boy in a drunken hit-and-run accident. They find a strange kind of freedom in their ensuing travels; it's a fuck-up's American dream.

The brother's journey through the underbelly of the America finds them homeless, working as day laborers, hopping from one cheap motel to the next, sleeping in beat-up old cars, and living on gas station food. There's a a Beat-novel quality to it, but in the end the overarching sentiment that "freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose" takes on less of a romantic quality and more of a desperate one.

Vlautin's writing proves he's just as adept as a novelist as he has been as a songwriter. His sparse, gritty style has garnered comparisons to both Steinbeck and S.E. Hinton. Though Richmond Fontaine has had to venture to Europe to find the success they deserve—English music critics have hailed most of their albums as masterpieces—Vlautin's literary career is already flourishing stateside.

Vlautin has adapted The Motel Life into a screenplay and sold the movie rights to Guillermo Arriaga—the man behind Babel, 21 Grams and The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. His next two novels are already sold, though not published, and he's teamed up with steel-guitar player Paul Brainard (Austin's Bearded Clam Diggers, Alejandro Escovedo, Ian Moore and others) to record an instrumental soundtrack to accompany his next book.

Currently touring bookstores instead of bars, in support of a book instead of an album, Willy took some time to let Austinist pick his brain a bit.

Willy Vlautin presents The Motel Life
Friday, Sept. 21st
BookPeople
7:00pm

Illustration of Willy Vlautin by Nate Beaty on BrainFag

Before we get into talking about your book, and perhaps this will even lead us tangentially to the book, I have to know about the name of your band. Where does the name Richmond Fontaine come from?

The bass player in the band and this other friend of ours would drive down to Mexico once a year in whatever car they could find. This time it was an old station wagon and they got it stuck out in the desert, out in the boonies of Baja. They camped by the side of the road and waited. After two days a guy drove up and introduced himself as Rich Fontaine. He got them unstuck and led them to his trailer. He was an ex-patriot of sorts, and I guess he was from Michigan originally. Supposedly he was a sort of burned out angry hippy with a dresser full of drugs, and my two friends stayed at his place and had a party for a couple days. When Dave got back to town we were in the process of forming the band and he mentioned the guy and we all laughed like hell and thought it was the right name for our band.

Where does [The Motel Life] come from? It's weighty and sad but devoid of melodramatics. In other words, there's a sense of detachment. So clearly this isn't rooted in any personal experiences but is it based on someone you knew?

Originally I think I was just trying to write a story about two brothers who helped each other out, who didn't fight, who didn't abandon each other. That was what got me up every morning [to write]. I needed to live in a world where two brothers stuck it out together. Then, as I got deeper into it, I thought of myself and the friends I had — I realized how we'd all just bounced around, went from one job to the next, from one shaky situation to the next. That way of living had always been the way I lived and I was trying to figure it out.

Being a musician and/or a writer is the kind of career that is destined to make a person anything but rich and famous. They're career paths that are often compared to share-cropping. No matter how hard you work, you are usually a little behind at the end of the year. Yet you have had a reasonably successful career writing and performing music. Where did you get your start with that and why now are you talking this sudden left turn into the realm of author-dom? Isn't that "out of the frying pan and into the heat"?

Well, I've always written stories... since I was twenty and read Raymond Carver. The week after I read him, I was writing stories. I guess more than anything I'm suited to be a writer. I like being alone, I like working on them, editing them, thinking about them. I joined a band because I love music so much [that] I wanted to be a part of it. But I'm not a natural musician. I just wanted to be in a band that had a flyer on a telephone pole somewhere. Plus, I wasn't that great of a student; I never imagined [that] I was smart enough to be a novelist, so I just stuck with playing music and wrote for myself.

And as far as money, I don't mind working a straight job. I'm a house painter by trade and I haven't sold my gear yet. Luckily I'm on a bit of a vacation from it [now]. I sure I hope I get to sell it some day, 'cause I've painted enough to last a lifetime, but in the end it's not so bad.

Where did you write your book? I always hear about writers spending a year locked away in a Scottish castle swilling whiskey or a in cabin in the woods where they constantly fight off bears. I kind of imagined this book was written while staying in a cheap motel with hookers yelling and fighting a few doors down and strange indigents coming and going at all hours. How far off am I?

I write at home or at the local horse track here in Portland. The track's nice, 'cause it's like a library during the week. No one's there and you can just sit there and watch the workouts or bet on a couple of races on TV. It's a more entertaining library. As far as writing next to hookers and fights and cheap motels and drug addicts, it's hard — all that sorta stuff makes me nervous. It doesn't calm me down; it makes me want to drink, not work. It's hard to disappear into a world if there's a drunk hooker banging away on some guy next door.

Touring with a band must make you a sort of expert on cheap hotels and motels. Also, I understand you grew up in Reno, Nevada. How did this influence your choice in the setting for the book?

Even though I don't live in Reno anymore, it's always been the place I love the best. I lived there until I was 26. Then I left for Portland so I could get in a band. But my heart has always been there. And as far as the motels, I've always viewed them as an escape. As a kid all I wanted to do was live in a motel, and Reno has hundreds of them. But now they are more like weekly apartments, and there's a whole segment of society stuck in these motels and I tried to get into that as well.

Both your music and your writing have a resigned and fatalistic edge. I guess that kind of comes with the roots-rock, alt-country territory, to a degree anyway. What do you credit that to and what musicians and writers have influenced you over the years?

I've always had a dark edge to me. Maybe it's because of that that I was drawn to punk and folk music. I grew up listening to the Blasters, X, Tom Waits, Willie Nelson, Los Lobos. There was also a great cow punk band from Reno called the Boston Wranglers and they were always big heroes of mine. As far as writers, I like Raymond Carver, Barry Hannah, James Welch, William Kennedy, Larry Brown, Frank O'Conner.

People have said your literary equivalents are John Steinbeck, Denis Johnson and Raymond Carver. And your musical equivalents, at least in mood, are Shane McGowan and Tom Waits. It's a hell of a compliment, what do you say? No need to be humble... at least not too humble.

Well, to be honest, I'd be the janitor of that group. I can't compare myself to those guys 'cause they really are all great. I'm a huge fan of John Steinbeck. He's gotten me through a lot of years. When I get down I always read Tortilla Flats or Cannery Row. I collect his paperbacks. And Tom Waits and Shane McGowan—a week doesn't go by without me listening to them. But I'm not in their league, and that's okay. I'm just glad I found them 'cause they've made my life a lot better. And really that's the best part of books and music. When you find something that moves you, that becomes yours, there's nothing better.

The word on the street is that the film rights for The Motel Life were sold to 21 Grams writer Guillermo Arriaga, and that you're adapting the screenplay yourself. How did this come about?

I'd just seen The Three Burials, which he wrote, and I really loved it. I couldn't stop talking about it or thinking about it. For days that's all that was in my mind, that movie and that story. Then a couple days after that I got an e-mail from Guillermo Arriaga saying that he'd read my novel and really liked it. So it all kind of lined up. I was a big fan of his.

He also wrote a novel called The Sweet Scent of Death that I think is amazing. So we just started talking, and then we met at a literary festival and became friends and so I sold him the rights to the novel.

As far as the screenplay, hell, I don't know. It's a hard craft but I just finished it and we'll see how it comes out. I was nervous as hell showing him 'cause he's a real hotshot at them, but at least I gave it a try.

I also heard you're recording soundtracks to your next books. Could you tell us a little bit about the next books and how the concept of writing soundtracks for them came about?

Writing a soundtrack for a novel might seem pretty off, but when I was working on my next novel, Northline, I just started writing these instrumental pieces that I imagined were playing during the story. So the pedal steel player in RF, Paul Brainard, and I recorded a soundtrack to the story. I did it for fun more than anything else, but it came out pretty good and the publisher decided to put the CD with the book. My hope with it was that after people read the novel they'd listen to the CD and if they liked the CD maybe when it played they'd once in awhile think about the story and the novel and the characters in it. I was just hoping the music might keep the story alive a bit longer.

What do the other guys in the band think of your foray in to the literary world? What plans do you and Richmond Fontaine have for the near future? Any shows in Austin again soon?

The guys have had to hear my drunken stories for years and years so I think they were happy that maybe I'd start telling them to someone else. And so they've all been really great about it, really supportive. And as far as RF, we're touring this fall in Europe and then we're taking a break for a bit. We've been touring pretty hard this year. Sorry to say we won't be in Austin before Christmas. I sure wish we could, but I guess it just ain't in the cards.

Grand Champeen have been gigging around Austin forever. I hear you guys are all friends. What is the story on your relationship with those guys?

Champeen are one of my favorite bands in the world. If I was a better songwriter/guitar player I'd love to be in that band. I met Channing Lewis in Boulder, CO when RF were passing through. He and his girlfriend, Kelly, made us Thanksgiving dinner. They were young and I don't think they'd cooked much before, but Kelly did everything. You could hear her on the phone with her mom and her trying to make this big dinner, and really it was one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for the band. So I was a huge fan of Channing as a person and then I heard his music and it was just amazing. I think he's one of the best songwriters around.

Now, be brutally honest even if it is embarrassing. Who are you listening to lately. Is there any new band you just cannot get enough of? Same goes for books. Whatcha reading lately?

I'm reading Sarah Hall's new one which is amazing. Also just read Vegas by John Dunne. It's funnier than hell. Been on a big Roddy Doyle kick. Just finished both
The Woman Who Walked Into Doors and Paula Spencer. I thought both of those were terrific. Also I just discovered Chester Himes. I've been listening to Edith Piaf 'cause I just saw that movie about her. There's a great band out of Portland called Dolorean and there new one is amazing. Been listening to a lot of Rush and Thin Lizzy as well.

I can't help it, Rush is really something.

Photo from Richmond Fontaine Web Site. Book Image from Willy Vlautin's Web Site. Illustration by Nate Beaty on BrainFag