For his fifth full-length album, Dylan LeBlanc headed to Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama to self-produce and record COYOTE. Dylan spent over three years of his childhood in Muscle Shoals, where his father worked, brushing his young shoulders with industry legends such as Rick Hall, Spooner Oldham, David Hood and Jimmy Johnson. An album that is most likely to cement his reputation as one of the standout artists in the Americana genre of the past decade, the collected stories in COYOTE are rich in detail and content, and feature Dylan’s most personal writing to date. When we spoke recently with him, we heard of those early years in Muscle Shoals – where he currently lives – his absolute passion for his art and the recording of his latest project.
As a child, you spent some years there while your father worked at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio. Did you appreciate the importance of that studio at the time, or did it go over your head?
It definitely did not go over my head because I was obsessed with music. I moved in with my father in 1999, and we moved to Muscle Shoals shortly after that, I lived there for three and a half years. I pretty much lived at Muscle Shoals studio because my dad worked there. Back then, he would write a song and record it at that studio, and I would sleep on the couch there a lot late at night, and all these guys would be coming in to play. I did not know who they were or what they had done because when you meet people like that, they do not talk about their accolades and also, I was so young. It wasn’t like ‘Hi, I’m Spooner Oldham and I play with Neil Young,’ people don’t do that. As a kid I only listened to what was on the radio and it was only later when I started paying attention to older music. I remember when I was twelve or thirteen hearing My, My, Hey, Hey from the live version of RUST on a classic rock radio station. I asked my dad who that was, and he told me it was Neil Young. Right after that, Babe I’m Going to Leave You came on by Led Zeppelin, and I thought: ‘who are these people?’ I just started diving in and started talking to people like Spooner who told me he had been on the road with Neil Young for years. It was crazy. So, the whole Muscle Shoals thing didn’t go over my head.
Did your father encourage your interest in music?
Absolutely, he was almost like a coach and very intense about it. He’s an intense guy period and old school in a way that if you’re going to dedicate your life to music, go all the way, don’t waste my time or anybody else’s time. If you’re going to write a song don’t write half of a song. I made the mistake of doing that one time and bringing him half a song. He just said: ‘I don’t want to hear half a song – bring it to me when it’s finished.’ He’d then tell me to play it to him or someone else. He was all business about it in ways and that was good for me because it disciplined me to take things seriously, and treat things with respect if I was to choose to do this as an occupation.
I understand that the legendary producer at Muscle Shoals, Rich Hall, used to practically foster you when your father was on the road touring.
The Hall family were the only family that I really had in Muscle Shoals. They had grand-daughters, Rebecca and Mary Elizabeth and I was really close to them, and also Rick’s son Rodney. Mr. Hall was like a surrogate grandfather to me and they all treated me really good. I stayed with them a lot, and they were really kind. It was a lonely time for me in many ways because I was on my own in Muscle Shoals, well my dad and me. The secretary at the studio would pick me up from school and take me to Wendy’s to get a hamburger and she would help me with my homework. I was not a good student as my head was always elsewhere. Rick’s wife still runs the studio. Just yesterday I was recording there for a live video session. I just love them all, they are still a big part of my family. Like my dad, Rick was also a very intense guy. I was surrounded by very intensely passionate people about music. Rick could be downright militant about music sometimes. I remember when my first album PAUPERS FIELD came out, he called me to his office and pressed play on that record. He had a killer stereo system in his office, it was amazing. I was sitting across the desk from him and it felt like I was sitting across from Don Corleone. He was sitting back in his chair and looking at me and he said: ‘I want to talk to you about this recording.’ My blood literally ran cold because he was ‘the man.’ He basically told me he would have done things differently. He would have put a different mic on me, but he also told me that my voice was interesting and that the song he played from that album was a really good one. I had never played Mr. Hall my stuff because I was too scared to because he was a bit intimidating. So that was a terrifying experience for me. But it was cool to hear him go through the album and he didn’t mince words. He would tell you if he didn’t like something but there was also a lot of encouragement.
You had people with serious work ethics around you. Did that rub off on you because a work ethic isn’t necessarily something you’re born with?
It’s a silly thing to think that every time you sit down, you’re going to write something great. Young people often get discouraged if it’s not happening for them. I’ve always written alone, which can be extra hard because that well of creativity has to be refilled. It simply gets drained and has to be refilled. The hard work is sitting there when it’s not happening and just doing it. That’s simply discipline and that got bred into me. I always wanted to be a songwriter and I wrote every single day when I was eleven years old. I was always told that to have songs you have to build the foundation before you can finish the house – and I had to learn how to crack a song. By the time I was nineteen, I had written a ton of songs, not all of them very good, but I just wrote all the time. I did the work then and I still do the work and, as you say, work ethic is not naturally bred. It comes with discipline. I don’t write as much nowadays. I write when I’m getting ready to make a record. When you’re on the road a lot its hard it’s hard to write so a year or so before I make a record, I’ll write for that project.
Regarding your latest album, COYOTE, was it always your intention to record a concept album?
It didn’t start out like that. A lot of those songs, like Dark Waters, are deeply personal. I had the idea for this character Coyote, but I didn’t solely focus on making the story come together because I kind of knew that that would happen naturally by the ways that the songs were set up. Sonically, it was working out pretty much the same the whole way through. I really started putting it together as the songs were playing themselves out and that built the central character even more as I went on. I love writing through a character because you can say things from that character’s point of view that maybe you’re uncomfortable saying because they are so personal to you. So, on the album I used the character as an outlet in some ways to express my own feelings. It’s a personal album as much as it is a concept album for me.
How much of Coyote is Dylan LeBlanc?
A lot of it is, especially Dark Waters and Forgotten Things – those are things that I’ve lived through. So much of life is getting through the pain to find the beautiful experiences, it’s up and down as life can’t be beautiful all the time. A lot of the album has to do with expressing my own feelings through the eyes of the character, plus I wanted it to be exciting. I feel I can be more dramatic writing through a character and also make it more cinematic through the music. I just love the idea of that.
The title track emerged from an extraordinary and bizarre encounter, didn’t it?
Yes. I was with a friend of mine in Austin, someone whom I always seem to get into trouble with. I’m from Shreveport, Louisiana, which is a dangerous city; there’s a lot of gang warfare and a lot of poverty there. I always used to lean into the more dangerous things in life, they’re the things that excited me. I was due to play at Anton’s in Austin and I was hanging out with this buddy, who had moved there from Shreveport, and we were walking through the Green Belt, which is a fault line that runs through Austin. Every time I hung out with this guy, I got into some sort of trouble, we always seemed to get into a fight when we hung out. So, he started climbing the face of this rock wall – I didn’t want to do that, first of all, because I don’t like heights. So, I started climbing and following him up and he got up to the top, which was like a steep hill where you had to hang on to the trees to pull yourself up to get to flat land. He was already gone; I couldn’t even see him at this stage and I was trying to pull myself up to the safe zone. Next thing I could smell this really musty animal smell and I saw this racoon fly by me while I was still barely hanging on. Then, this coyote comes to a screeching halt and just stares at me. His bottom jaw was literally hanging off and he looked as menacing as shit, and he starts walking around me and started growling at me. I didn’t know if he was rabid or not. I thought, ‘Now you go around me and I’ll stay where I am, you don’t try anything and I won’t try anything.’ But he just took off and went somewhere else for his meal. It was unreal, like a cartoon.
You engaged Jean Paul White and Dave Cobb to produce your last two albums. Did you feel you had enough studio experience to self-produce this album?
No, I was going to work with another great recording engineer and producer in Memphis. I had wanted to work with this guy for a long time but we were going to have to do this in Memphis. I asked if we could do it at Fame, but he didn’t want to. I had a budget set aside and he wanted quite a bit of money and I also wanted to hire really great A-list session players for this record. I’ve never had the opportunity to do that before. I wanted this record to be the best I’d ever done, a really world-class record musically, not that the musicianship wasn’t great on my other records, but I wanted the best for this new one. My budget didn’t allow for both that producer and those players, and it was taking a long time to negotiate back and forth. So, I called John Salter, who is the head of ATO. I didn’t expect him to say ‘yes’, but I told him that I could book ten days at Fame, hire incredible players and that I’m a pretty good producer, and can do this myself if you give me the budget. He told me that he’d called me back and he did an hour later and agreed to do this but added: ‘you’d better deliver.’
You indeed hired the best, bringing Fred Eltringham, Jim ‘Moose’ Brown and Seth Kaufman on board.
They are A-list session players from Nashville who play on everything from pop country music to Willie Nelson – their resume is huge and wide. When I’d hired that level of professionalism in people, I didn’t feel that I’d actually produced anything, because they were so good. Fred is an incredible drummer, and drums to me are so important, and he nailed it. I’m a huge J.J.Cale fan and I was referencing a lot of his records and also all that Tulsa, Oklahoma mix and Laurel Canyon sonically. I always think of those people when I write and draw so much inspiration from that era. They were all incredible players; Moose is an incredible keyboard player and he got it, as did Seth on bass. They just took one listen to the demos and they all just got it. We did seventeen songs in four days; that’s how good those guys were, but only thirteen made the record.
You are due to tour Europe for six weeks at the end of this month. How important is the market for you over here?
I started my career in Europe with PAUPER’s FIELD and spent a lot of time laying groundwork in Europe. My girlfriend and my daughter are both European and I want to continue to build and have a steady career in Europe. I’ve been doing this for thirteen years and desperately need to get a step up. I’m hoping that this record will do that.
I expect that the shows will be as passionate and full-on as usual.
They will. I‘m not the type of singer songwriter that stares at the floor and talks about how sad I am when I’m playing. I like to rock.
Interview by Declan Culliton