GuilFest 2006. The 3 Day Guildford Music Festival on 14th, 15th and 16th July 2006

About the bands
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Artist: Richard Fontaine
Performing: 15th July 2005 / The UNcut MagazineStage

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The Fitzgerald , Richmond Fontaine’s sixth and most recent studio recording, is a quiet departure from the raucous, visceral send-ups and live shows that got the band compared to the likes of the Replacements and Whiskeytown. Written when singer/songwriter, Willy Vlautin was holed up for two weeks in a Fitzgerald Casino hotel room in Reno , Nevada , the album is a stark collection of songs about the people who live in the shadows of a casino town. If you think Springsteen’s “ Nebraska ” as written by a young Tom Waits on a acoustic guitar, you’ll be close.

It’s a record about the gamblers, the runaways, and the derelicts -- folks who Fontaine front man Vlautin is intimately familiar with, seeing as he hails from the Biggest Little City in the World, Reno.

Produced once again by JD Foster (Dwight Yokam), who was at the helm for the critically acclaimed Post To Wire, and recorded in Portland , Oregon at Blue Room Studios, this is the first late night Richmond Fontaine record. Gone are the distorted guitars, replaced by Vlautin’s light-fingered touch on the acoustic. Multi-instrumentalist Paul Brainard again steps in for studio duties and trades his pedal steel in for a piano. The band’s rhythm section is reigned in to a soft rumble. From the opening track “The Warehouse Life” about a run-in with a debt ridden gambler and his bookie, to “Laramie, Wyoming” the harrowing tale of runaway’s trials and tribulations on the road, to “Don’t Look and it Won’t Hurt” the story of a woman’s escape from her abusive boyfriend only to end up living her life alone in a motel next to a casino, these are the most vivid and compelling songs Richmond Fontaine have written to date.

The past year brought all kinds of new ground being broken by Richmond Fontaine. Playing stellar shows in clubs from the world famous Winnemucca Hotel in Nevada , to headlining the Spirit of Austin festival in London , to selling out theatres in Mallorca , Richmond Fontaine cut a wide swath through uncharted territory in 2004. The hard work paid off. Uncut magazine named the band’s Post To Wire album Number 4 of the year, right behind Brian Wilson, Wilco and Loretta Lynn and said it was “UNCUTs discovery of the year…a dark mesmerising masterpiece”. They were on over 20 year end top ten lists. Their shows became packed with fans who bought up all their back catalogue religiously and a book deal was done with Faber and Faber for Willy’s first novel “The Motel Life”. And Richmond Fontaine felt the first warm rush of commercial success – meaning they could finally book hotel rooms rather than sleep on some kind soul’s living room floor.

And while the Portland Oregon band came on the radar of tons of new music fans around the world, Richmond Fontaine has been doing what they do for more than 10 years now. To Richmond Fontaine newcomers, the band’s new offering, the subdued and shattering The Fitzgerald may seem like a 90 degree left turn. But to long time fans who’ve ridden with the band since their 1996 debut Safety through to the present, the new work will be an introspective, challenging new chapter of one of the most surprising bands to come out of the United States .

Formed in 1994 at the Portland Meadows horse track by Vlautin and Dave, when the two took their mutual love of Hüsker Du, Willie Nelson, X, The Blasters, and The Replacements and began playing music together. The band was named after a down and out American expatriate Harding had met while hitchhiking through Mexico .

Look for the band playing the Lyric Theatre on May 19 th plus shows in Manchester and Glasgow and a full European tour following as well as playing the UNCUT showcase at this years SXSW on March 16 th at the Vibe Bar – 508 East 6 th St with American Music Club, Willard Grant Conspiracy, Micah P Hinson and others.

Here’s what they said about the last album Post To Wire:

“Uncut’s discovery of the year….Fans of a certain kind of orphaned Americana are likely to fall on Post To Wire like apostles on The Grail. By which I mean anyone who’s been touched where it hurts by American Music Club, The Replacements, Uncle Tupelo, Ryan Adams, Dave Alvin or Gram Parsons will soon be entirely enthralled with this dark and mesmerising masterpiece, brilliant. UNCUT ALBUM OF THE MONTH

“Those of you alienated by the roisterous flash of Ryan Adams should hitch your horses to Richmond Fontaine’s post right now.” TIME OUT

“Every now and then it happens, Every now and then an album comes and grabs you by the throat and doesn’t let go. These songs whistle though your brain as if they were always there, the melodies follow you from café’ to street corner to late night platforms and unlit hallways. It’s been a long time since I loved every track on an album. What Songs, what fucking great songs. This is one of those times. Without a doubt, the best album of the decade so far” Comes With A Smile
”the seasons must have Americana purchases. A little dictionary of dashed hopes bathed in the half-dead ennui of the latter period Replacements, but Richmond Fontaine singer Willy Vlautin has inherited Paul Westerberg’s nose for Big Star power-pop choruses as well as his half-empty glass eye for a novelistic lyric” MOJO

This time out reviewers will be looking up synonyms for ‘magnificent’ and ‘otherworldly’. 4/5 LOGO
"Burnished Americana ; ringing Fender guitars, lachrymose pedal steel, dark balladry - imagines a less feral Uncle Tupelo, but winningly so." Q

A dynmamic study of the American underbelly, it puts Vlautin’s songwriting on a par with that of his heros Jay Farrar and Paul Westerberg” 5/5 Stars – Independent

“Post To Wire emerges somewhere between Gram Parsons’ slide guitar majesty and Lou Reed’s narrated New York . The Characters become your neighbours and the tunes as familiar as friends, making Post To Wire a faboulous addition to the all-too-slim canon of passionate, literary rock’n’roll”4/5 Stars – Guardian