Biography
Willy Vlautin channeled his fixation on Amy Boone’s smoldering, atmospheric delivery into the Portland, Oregon ensemble the Delines, whose sound fuses alt country and country soul to animate his world-weary protagonists.
Stepping away from Richmond Fontaine in 2012 to concentrate on fiction, Vlautin nevertheless wrote new songs shaped expressly for the Austin-based singer, formerly of Damnations TX. He recruited Richmond Fontaine drummer Sean Oldham, the Decemberists’ Jenny Conlee on keyboards, bassist Freddy Trujillo, and pedal-steel player Tucker Jackson, centering the group on Boone’s resilient yet fragile and haunting timbre. The musicians convened in Portland with producer John Askew—whose prior credits include Laura Veirs and Neko Case—to track their first album, Colfax. Issued at the start of 2014, it paired Vlautin’s celebrated portraits of marginalized lives in the American hinterlands with Boone’s expressive singing; the band then toured Europe later that year.
Summer performances in 2015 prompted an intended single, yet the sessions yielded ten tracks instead. Released that September as Scenic Sessions, the collection captured the expanded material.
Boone sustained multiple injuries in a 2016 car accident. At that point three-quarters of another album had already been recorded with Askew; her prolonged recovery imposed a four-year interval before The Imperial surfaced in January 2019, introduced a month earlier by its lead single “Eddie and Polly.” Two further cuts from those sessions—“A Room on the Tenth Floor” and “Eight Floors Up”—appeared as non-album singles later in 2019. That November, Vlautin issued a spoken-word rendering of his short story The Kill Switch, accompanied by the Delines’ instrumentation. By then Jackson had exited, leaving the band without pedal steel.
Vlautin’s sixth novel, The Night Always Comes, was published in April 2021; initial copies contained a Delines soundtrack CD that included a cover of Spiritualized’s “Broken Heart.” October brought the advance single “Little Earl,” heralding The Sea Drift, which followed in February 2022. Late 2022 saw the two-track release The Lost Duets, pairing the Vlautin-Boone duets “The Golden State” and “My Blood Bleeds the Darkest Blue,” the former dating to the Scenic Sessions. Although activity remained low in 2023, a limited vinyl edition of the Night Always Comes soundtrack appeared, followed in December by the standalone single “Christmas in Atlantis.” November 2024’s “Left Hook Like Frazier” previewed the band’s fourth proper album, Mr. Luck & Ms. Doom, issued on Valentine’s Day 2025.
Stepping away from Richmond Fontaine in 2012 to concentrate on fiction, Vlautin nevertheless wrote new songs shaped expressly for the Austin-based singer, formerly of Damnations TX. He recruited Richmond Fontaine drummer Sean Oldham, the Decemberists’ Jenny Conlee on keyboards, bassist Freddy Trujillo, and pedal-steel player Tucker Jackson, centering the group on Boone’s resilient yet fragile and haunting timbre. The musicians convened in Portland with producer John Askew—whose prior credits include Laura Veirs and Neko Case—to track their first album, Colfax. Issued at the start of 2014, it paired Vlautin’s celebrated portraits of marginalized lives in the American hinterlands with Boone’s expressive singing; the band then toured Europe later that year.
Summer performances in 2015 prompted an intended single, yet the sessions yielded ten tracks instead. Released that September as Scenic Sessions, the collection captured the expanded material.
Boone sustained multiple injuries in a 2016 car accident. At that point three-quarters of another album had already been recorded with Askew; her prolonged recovery imposed a four-year interval before The Imperial surfaced in January 2019, introduced a month earlier by its lead single “Eddie and Polly.” Two further cuts from those sessions—“A Room on the Tenth Floor” and “Eight Floors Up”—appeared as non-album singles later in 2019. That November, Vlautin issued a spoken-word rendering of his short story The Kill Switch, accompanied by the Delines’ instrumentation. By then Jackson had exited, leaving the band without pedal steel.
Vlautin’s sixth novel, The Night Always Comes, was published in April 2021; initial copies contained a Delines soundtrack CD that included a cover of Spiritualized’s “Broken Heart.” October brought the advance single “Little Earl,” heralding The Sea Drift, which followed in February 2022. Late 2022 saw the two-track release The Lost Duets, pairing the Vlautin-Boone duets “The Golden State” and “My Blood Bleeds the Darkest Blue,” the former dating to the Scenic Sessions. Although activity remained low in 2023, a limited vinyl edition of the Night Always Comes soundtrack appeared, followed in December by the standalone single “Christmas in Atlantis.” November 2024’s “Left Hook Like Frazier” previewed the band’s fourth proper album, Mr. Luck & Ms. Doom, issued on Valentine’s Day 2025.
Albums
Singles
