Podcasts about vlautin

Willy Vlautin is an American author, musician and songwriter. He was the lead singer, guitarist and songwriter of Portland, Oregon rock band Richmond Fontaine from 1994–2016 and is currently a member and main songwriter of The Delines who will be touring Australia from June 8 to June 18 (tour details at lovepolice.com.au) Born and raised in Reno, Nevada, Vlautin released 12 studio albums with Richmond Fontaine and has released another four with The Delines. He has also written six novels: The Motel Life, Northline, Lean on Pete, The Free, Don't Skip Out On Me and The Night Always Comes. The Delines were formed when singer Amy Boone was touring with Richmond Fontaine and singing the female parts from that band's 2003 album, Post to Wire, which had been performed by her sister Deborah Kelly with whom she had been in the Texas band the Damnations. Vlautin then formed the Delines centred on Boone's vocals.  Rhythms Editor Brian Wise caught up with Vlautin to talk about the forthcoming tour and The Delines' music.

I wrote a sonnet based on a couple of things writer Vlautin said in an interview many years ago. Yes, it contains a certain bleakness, but its final question is a question. Now over a decade later I've performed this as a song for this Project.

p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Times} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Times; min-height: 14.0px} I want to talk to you this morning about a book that simply fell in my lap, loaned me by a reader friend. The book, Don’t Skip Out On Me, by Willy Valautin is not one I would have picked up on my own. For one thing it is a book about a boxer, and I don’t care for boxing. It is also one that is written in simple, almost flat prose, and I tend to favor books by accomplished word-weavers, but this short little novel gabbed me and would not let go. I finished it in the Salt Lake City airport with tears streaming down my cheeks and surrounded by passengers waiting for a New York City flight. I was not ashamed of the tears; the author had somehow so transported me that I felt as if all those around me were also finishing the book and so would understand. Horace Hopper is a young man half Paiute, half Irish, whose Indian father abandoned him and whose very ill mother could not really take care of him. Lucky for Horace, he spends most of his young life on a sheep ranch owned by Mr. and Mrs. Reese who love him like a son and fully intend to leave the ranch to Horace. But Horace, ashamed of his mixed heritage decides he must prove himself in the world, and he decides the way to do that is to becoming champion of the world in his weight class. He has read (many times) a self-help book that challenges the reader to build his boat one brick at a time, and to devote everything to become a champion.Although Horace is very close to the Reeses (whom he always addresses as Mr. and Mrs. Reese), he tells them he must leave the ranch in order to pursue his dream.  While Mr. Reese pleads with him not to leave, and Horace is well aware that Mr. Reese will not be able to maintain his twelve hundred head ranch much longer without Horace, who has been his right hand man for many years, still he feels honor-bound to make it on his own. Horace is convinced that Mexican boxers are the best and toughest in the world, so when he leaves the Nevada ranch and travels to Tucson, He changes his appearance and his name. He becomes Hector Hildago , and tries to learn Spanish and tries to like Mexican food (though it is too spicy for him).Hector manages to find a trainer who will train him for a price, and he soon gets a golden gloves fight. Mr. Reese has offered to drive Horace/Hector to Arizona, but the boy says “That there were certain times when you had to do things alone.Mrs. Reese asks her husband why Horace needs to be a boxer.I’m just not sure, he whispered. I’ve thought about it over and over and I’m just not sure. But remember, he’s young, and a lot of young men want to prove themselves.It turns out that Hector is an incredibly hard hitter, but not really a boxer, so from his very first fight, he takes a lot of punishment. Diego, his trainer tells him: “You hit as hard as any kid I’ve seen in a long long time. You walk into punches but man oh man do you have power.”  While he wins his early bouts, he is very badly beaten in almost every one. While the descriptions of the fights are grisly, they are well done and soon the reader becomes used to the fact that in almost every fight Hector’s nose is broken, and eventually it will just not stop bleeding. In addition, his retina is detached in one fight, and a doctor tells him he should not fight again, and that if he does, he risks losing sight in one or both eyes.While I have concentrated so far on Horace’s life as a fighter, I think the book is really about honor. In his dealing with women, with managers, and with poor folks he simply meets on the street, Horace is utterly honorable. He gives away his money simply because he sees others that need it more. Mr. Reese has taught him that the important thing in life is to be honorable and truthful, and Horace is both almost to a fault. On the book cover, one critic says, “No one anywhere writes as beautifully about people whose stories stay close to the dirt. Willy Vlautin is a secular—and thus real and profoundly useful—saint.”And yes, the simplicity, the simple elegance of Vlautin’s prose carries this story along. I intend to read all that he has written. When it becomes obvious that Horace will not become champion of the world, and really can’t fight anymore, he knows he can go back to the Reeses and the ranch; he knows they want him to come home, and in most ways he wants to go home.When  he got back to his room each evening he crawled into bed paralyzed with anxiety and shame. Why did he have to tell Mr. Reese everything? Why couldn’t he have just kept to himself that he wanted to be Mexican and wanted to be a world champion boxer? The nights crawled by. Hours seemed like days. He would get lost in thoughts of Mr. and Mrs. Reese, the ranch, and the horses and dogs, and when he did his stomach would give out and he would feel like he was falling. He wanted more than anything to go back to them, to the comfort of them, but always something inside forded him not to.Will Hector Delgado revert to Horace Hopper, and will Mr. Reese finally find him and take him home. The answer to this question will require you to read the book. It is a wonderful little book and you will be glad you read it. I feel I really learned something about honor and truthfulness. 

2nd episode of Space Heater features Angel Olsen, Vic Chesnutt and Richmond Fontaine and no musings on life. Maybe next time.

Born and raised in Reno, Nevada, Willy Vlautin started playing guitar and writing songs as a teenager and quickly became immersed in music. It was a Paul Kelly song, based on Raymond Carver's Too Much Water So Close to Home that inspired him to start writing stories. Vlautin has published four novels: THE MOTEL LIFE (2007), NORTHLINE (2008), LEAN ON PETE (2010), and THE FREE (2014). He is the winner of multiple awards, including the Oregon Book Award and the Ken Kesey Award for Fiction. Vlautin founded the band Richmond Fontaine in 1994. The band has produced nine studio albums to date, plus a handful of live recordings and EPs. Driven by Vlautin's dark, story-like songwriting, the band has achieved critical acclaim at home and across Europe. 2014 will see the debut album from Vlautin's new band, The Delines, featuring vocalist Amy Boone (The Damnations). He came to speak and read at the college where we work last year. While he was here, Vlautin spoke with us about his life as a writer and musician, the allure of the Drifter archetype, and why he is so drawn to stories of working class people trying to find themselves in the chaos and oblivion of modern America. “Willy Vlautin is one of the bravest novelists writing. Murderers, cheats, sadists, showy examples of the banality of evil, are easy, but it takes real courage to write a novel about ordinary good people. They don't fit into the cynic's little boxes — they're way too big. The guy working two eight-hour jobs who still can't meet the mortgage but won't let his kids down, the hospital night nurse coping with her crazy mean father and trying to rescue a lost girl — common people, the ones who never get the breaks, the ones who need, and know, compassion. An unsentimental Steinbeck, a heartbroken Haruf, Willy Vlautin tells us who really lives now in our America, our city in ruins.” --Ursula K. Le Guin

We're broadcasting live today from the Portland Art Museum for the city's biggest book extravaganza, Wordstock. We're going to be talking with a couple of our literary superheroes.Ursula K. Le GuinThink about the pleasure you felt when a favorite teacher showed you something new. That feeling takes on an entirely new dimension in this year’s revival of Ursula K. Le Guin’s "Steering the Craft." Le Guin, one of Oregon’s most decorated living writers, gave us epic novels that set the template for so much in science fiction and fantasy, plus poetry and nonfiction that changed the way we think. We’ll hear about how she pulls off her best literary tricks, along with her reflections after almost a half century in the industry.Patrick DeWitt and Michael HurleyPatrick DeWitt has a gift for laying out a very complete situation with very few well-chosen words. The Booker Prize Foundation, when awarding him a prize for his 2011 western, "The Sisters Brothers," called DeWitt’s writing “stark, unsettling and with a keen eye for the perversity of human motivation.” Those words also apply to his latest novel, "Undermajordomo Minor." But it’s a completely different story — less "Deadwood," more Magic Mountain. Patrick DeWitt is going to read for us today, accompanied by one of the most singular performers you will meet, today, or ever: Michael Hurley.Patterson Hood and Willy VlautinPatterson Hood and Willy Vlautin are both the voices behind two breakthrough country rock bands — The Drive-by Truckers and Richmond Fontaine. Aside from their Southern-tinged vocals, they also turn to literature as a creative outlet. Hood has published stories for The New Yorker and Vlautin’s new novel “The Free” is his fourth title to date. They join April Baer to talk about the relationship between music and writing along with a look at what’s on their bookshelves.We'll be rolling out more Wordstock interviews in the coming weeks with myriad authors, including Jesse Eisenberg, John Irving, Diana Nyad, Colin Meloy, Carson Ellis, Sandra Cisneros and more. Sign up for the "State of Wonder" podcast to make sure you don't miss them.

Disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong is the subject of Oscar-winning documentary-maker Alex Gibney's latest film, The Armstrong Lie. In 2009 the film-maker, whose previous documentaries include Taxi to the Dark Side and Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, set out to make a film about Armstrong's comeback year after a four-year retirement from the sport, but found himself with a bigger story in the wake of his doping confession on Oprah. Michael Carlson reviews. Juliet Stevenson stars as Winnie in Samuel Beckett's play of resilience and self-reliance, Happy Days, at the Young Vic. Juliet tells Kirsty about her reservations in playing this major role, seen by some as the female Hamlet, and about the challenges of acting when submerged from the neck up. In American writer Willy Vlautin's new novel The Free, a young member of the National Guard is returned home after suffering serious brain injury as a result of a roadside bomb in Iraq. The Free charts his slow recovery and the struggles he faces in a country which seems not to care. Vlautin discusses his novel and the dispossessed who feature so much in his work and his songs. The poet Ahren Warner, who recently took up his position as poet-in-residence at London Zoo, joins Gillian Clarke - who had a similar role at the Museum of Zoology in Cambridge - to discuss the experience of writing from nature, and the inspiration it can bring. Producer : Dymphna Flynn.

Episode #50 of the Nevada Magazine radio show features respective interviews with Willy Vlautin, Reno native and author, and James Lee Reeves, a Northern Nevada musician known for his album, "I'll Take Nevada."In the first half-hour, Vlautin discusses his novel, The Motel Life, which was recently made into a movie. Read more about that here. Also, read a Q&A with Vlautin from the November/December 2008 issue of Nevada Magazine, here. He also talks about his other novels, including the newest, titled The Free. He is also a member of the Richmond Fontaine band.In the second half-hour, Reeves performs his Nevada songs, including his new tunes "Nevada Magazine" and "We've Been Everywhere (in Nevada)." Listen to the show below.Subscribe to the Nevada Magazine Radio Show on iTunes.