Modest men of the people

CONSIDERING that Willy Vlautin has just published his first novel, is the lead singer of a critically acclaimed alt-country band and, in a few hours, will play to a packed Dingwalls in London, it is surprising to hear him repeatedly pepper his responses to questions with phrases like "I'm not good at it" or "I'm not eloquent enough."

"I know what it feels like to hate yourself and have a horrible job and work for bosses that take advantage of that," says the 39-year-old frontman of US band Richmond Fontaine.

Unlike his hero Bruce Springsteen, Vlautin has first hand experience of the darker side of the American Dream, working for a trucking company for 10 years, in a warehouse and as a house painter.

Indeed, what distinguishes Vlautin as one of the best songwriters working today is the immense empathy that he has for the beaten and broken-down characters whom he writes about.

Richmond Fontaine's new album Thirteen Cities is littered with such people drifting through the American West - an area that he knows well, having been brought up in Reno by his mother.

According to Vlautin, the album is about the idea that, if you are "always thinking something is better round the corner, then eventually you run into yourself. You run out of places to run."

He continues: "There comes a time when you figure out you are who you are and your faults are your faults and there is not a better girl round the corner or a better job or a better place to live."

But it's not all unremitting bleakness. Name-checking Springsteen's epic Born to Run, Vlautin also believes that "there is something so romantic about running, especially when you are stuck and have nowhere to go."

Many Richmond Fontaine songs, such as the motel poetry of Westward Ho! and Four Walls, romanticise escapism. "There is a certain really nice time when you kind of hide out and you feel very hopeful that the world could be a much better place for you or you could be a much better person in it."

Thirteen Cities is also further evidence of Vlautin's rare talent - shared with songwriters such as Tom Waits and Jarvis Cocker - of being able to create a recognisable world, with its own characters, geography and mood.

"When I was in high school, I listened to The Jam a lot. I'd never been to England, I'd never been anywhere they were talking about but it created this whole world that was really interesting for me."

As a chronicler of the US underclass, Vlautin has "strong beliefs on women's right to choose, workers' rights, the 40-hour week, health insurance," but he is wary of writing political tracts.

"I don't think I write very good political songs. You gotta be really careful as a dumb rock guy to write a song about Iraq - I don't think I'm eloquent enough."

Although he has always been against the war in Iraq, Vlautin says that, rather than talk about the wider issues surrounding the US invasion, his "heart is always with the 18-year-old kid who joined up to get free college because he had nothing else going on."

Likewise, the songs The Disappearance of Ray Norton and I Fell into Painting Houses in Phoenix, Arizona both deal with social issues - racism and the exploitation of immigrant workers respectively - but on a localised, personal level.

At home, Vlautin gets upset by the dire state of the US health-care system.

"Big corporations will work their employees 35 to 39 hours a week when, to get health care, you have to work 40 hours a week."

On top of this, "while they classify them under 40, they work them over 40."

With approximately 45 million US citizens without health insurance he says: "Most working-class Americans just go to the emergency room. They don't take care of themselves and then, when it really comes down to it, they have to go to the emergency room and they are in debt. I understand they have to make a buck, but when does that stop? When does a nation become a horrible place to live?"

Richmond Fontaine are currently in the middle of a European tour, while Vlautin's first book The Motel Life is being published in paperback in April. His second novel Northline is due to be published next year.

Sharp-eyed fans will recognise the main character Allison Johnson from the song of the same name on 2003 album Post to Wire. A busy man, Vlautin has also just finished recording an instrumental album with Richmond Fontaine's pedal steel player Paul Brainard as a soundtrack to the book.

So, is Willy Vlautin becoming a success? "I don't drink in old man bars with weirdoes as much any more - I'm trying not to drink as much. But my heart is always with people's struggles with weakness and making bad decisions because they don't like themselves or they are at a weak time."

?Thirteen Cities is out now on El Cortez Records. The Motel Life is published by Faber & Faber, priced £10.99.