Dylan LeBlanc returns to South Louisiana for an up close solo show Wednesday, February 16, 7:30 p.m.at NuNu’s Arts and Culture Collective, 1510 Bayou Courtableau Hwy, Arnaudville, LA 70512
Go here for tickets.
LeBlanc, singer/songwriter in the Americana genre, utilized his time when the pandemic first hit to record and recently release, Pastimes, a six-song EP that covers Glen Campbell (“Gentle On My Mind”), Rolling Stones (“Playing With Fire”), JJ Cale (“Sesitive Kind), Bob Dylan (“Blind Willie McTell”), Led Zeppelin “Going to California”) and, of course, Neil Young/Buffalo Springfield (“Expecting to Fly”).
Despite our best intentions, Bayou Hack Press was unable to connect with LeBlanc about the upcoming show. That said, what follows is an interview with the musician from June 10, 2019.
By Dominick Cross
BREAUX BRIDGE, LA. – It was late spring/early summer of last year when I (DC) helped Dylan LeBlanc (DL) remove the porch swing from the Breaux Bridge house he’d just moved out of and put it in his vehicle. The singer/songwriter was making a move back to Nashville, but planned on keeping a foot in nearby Lafayette, too.
In the meantime, he was also working on his new release, Renegade, with The Pollies, on the label ATO that picked him up.
Renegade dropped Friday, June 7, 2019, and Dylan LeBlanc backed by The Pollies (Jay Burgess, guitar; Spencer Duncan, bass; Jon Davis, drums; Clint Chandler, keyboard) have kicked off an extensive tour in the U.S. and Europe.
Check out Rolling Stone’s Joseph Hudak’s review of Renegade.
That said, LeBlanc’s Cautionary Tale (2016) killed it, while his 2010 release Paupers Field caught the ear of music writers and music aficionados alike.
A Shreveport native, LeBlanc, pretty much grew up at Muscle Shoals where his father, James LeBlanc, was a singer/songwriter and sessions musician.
DC: Did you pick up some pointers from your dad, maybe, about doing this sort of thing; or just from being in that atmosphere at Muscle Shoals?
DL: Well, he toured with a lot of country acts back in the early 2000s. And that was when he was kind of out on the road. He always did it on such a high level. He doesn’t understand. I’m in what you’d call, I guess, the Americana/Indie role where it’s very DYI. My label was great, but they didn’t do tours, so it was up to me to kind of like fund my own touring. But what they did what was really cool was give me my records at a portion of the price. It was, like, super cheap. So, that helped; they’d sell to us cheap so we could sell them and pocket the money and use it for the tour. Luckily, people bought records. And then we got on CBS This Morning.
DC: Yeah, I saw that. That was nice, huh?
DL: Yeah. That was interesting ’cause as soon as we did that we sold like 5,000 records the next day. So we saw a large spike in sales. That was cool. I feel like, just now, starting to make a bit of a mark and get a little bit further along in my career.
DC: Cautionary Tale and the other songs that are online, that’s some good stuff. (DL: Thank you). You’re young, man, what are you 28, 30? (DL: 28). And you’ve taken out some big chunks of time that takes people a long time to get where you are.
DL: Yeah. I’ve been touring pretty heavily since I was about 18. So, I’ve been doing it a long fucking time. I guess 10 years isn’t that long, but it seems like a long time.
DC: All the business stuff, to me, would be the biggest pain in the butt.
DL: I have a business manager, but, basically, that record that came out a couple of years ago, Cautionary Tale, was kind of like my first record that kind of put me on the map. I had put two out before that, but that record put me on the map and I had to do everything myself. Luckily, I had a publisher. I gave him half of my publishing and he gave me $30,000, so that was like my start-up money. It was like starting a small business. So I took that thirty-grand and put it to use in the best ways I knew how. It was like our tour support, basically, for the next few years.
I had to tithe it out to where like, ‘Okay, we’re not making money at shows right now, so I got to save this money and use it for gas and hotels and staying with friends when we can. And then gradually we started making money at shows because we started playing for bigger audiences and getting better guarantees. So it all kind of timed out and I was just able to maintain that money, you know, over time. And so that’s kind of the way it’s been ever since and we started finally making more money. We’ve just been sort of growing it, slowly, but surely. It’s been interesting.
DC: So, this record. Have you narrowed down to the songs you want it?
DL: Yeah, I’ve been working on it for a couple of years, really. I’ve been writing a lot. I’m not as prolific as I’d like to be. I’ll probably write one song for a fucking month. I’ll just stay on it and try to make sure that the verses are tight… And I’ll get about 15 to 20 together for a record that I think are really strong. I’ll start things and then leave them and then come back to them later. Sometimes I never go back, you know, just depends. But I usually try to tighten up 15 to 20 and it takes me a while because I want them – especially this record – I feel it’s really important that we make a record that’s very accessible to a lot of people because I’ve never really focused on that.
And this time, I’ve sort of focused more on making it more accessible to the vast majority of people and writing a lot more hooks and stuff like that. It’s more upbeat. That was one of the things the guy at ATO, John Salter and I had talked about. He said, ‘If you ever do you want to make a rock and roll record, call me.’ That was when I was playing at the Mercury Lounge in New York in 2016. And after we were done with the majority of the campaign of Cautionary Tale and the touring was winding down, I called him and I said, ‘Hey, I don’t know if you were serious, but I’ve been wanting to sort of go in the direction and make an upbeat record. It’s kind of naturally evolving into that anyway. Were you serious?’ And he was like, ‘I was absolutely serious. Let’s talk.’
And so we start talking. I sent him some songs and he started working on the contract after that and I was thrilled. So they’re going to put my next two albums out, which is fucking great. And that’s a machine of a size that I’ve never been on before, so I have no idea what can come of it, you know. But they have a lot of power and a lot of manpower and a lot of resources to really make, or break, someone.
DC: So, is this going to be a huge departure (from previous releases)?
DL: Not a huge departure. The songs, in essence, are the same structurally, they’re the same, but it’s driving more. More electric guitar. A lot more guitar solos. I made it a point to just try to like bring back that late 70’s bass and drum tone. It’s about the songs, but they’re performed in a rock and roll fashion. But it’s still all about the songs. And, you know, creating really good strong hooks with a message that speak about current events, or things that are happening today. But also about the human condition and things like that. It’s just about the songs, man, but they just have more powerful instrumentation. It’s just a lot more electric guitar and heavier drums. But it’s not, I would say, a huge departure from what I do, which I was worried about, you know.
And then I played my stuff for this producer I was working with and he was happy to hear that it wasn’t a big departure. He was like, ‘I was worried that when he said you were making a rock and roll record it was going to be something totally different. But it’s still very much you.’ And I don’t think I can help that, you know, because I definitely have a thing that I do. I’ve always sort of had that thing. It still sounds like me, just a more rocking band. So that’s cool. Hopefully, the audiences will feel the same, and hopefully we’ll make new fans.
DC: When you say ‘current events,’ is there anything political?
DL: Some of its political. I don’t really like to write politically; I never write directly politically, but I do write things that sort of hint at what’s happening at the moment. I wrote this one song called ‘Inner City Hero.’ It’s about the perspective of a Black man, what was happening when there was all the Black Lives Matter was stuff going on. By the time my records come out, the current events have always moved on. But I can’t help but write about it because the atmosphere is so thick with all the vibe of, you know, mass shootings. I wrote one song, ‘Bang Bang Bang.’ It’s about the mass shootings, and it’s a heavy tune. I had actually met a dude in New Orleans and we were talking about it and he was like, ‘Man, they’re publicizing it more, but this shit’s been happening for years. It’s been happening since the 60’s. You just hear about it more now because we have more outlets for information.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, you’re probably right about that.’ And if you look back in history, this shit’s been going on forever. It’s just now becoming more widely acknowledged and people are getting tired of it. And I will say there’s increase of the events that are happening. But it’s nothing new.
The march, back in the day, in Kent, Ohio (at Kent State University, May 4, 1970, four students were killed by the Ohio National Guard protesting U.S. bombing of Cambodia) and fucking the government killing people and things just getting out of hand. You don’t have the right protest like you might in France or England. If you get too out of hand, they’ll just teargas your ass.
DC: It’s a tricky dance there when you write political songs.
DL: Well, yeah, you want to appeal to everyone, obviously, but you can’t help be moved by certain things. I love that quote where Nina Simone says, ‘It’s our responsibility as artists to write about the things that are happening around us,’ and inform people if we have the resources to do so. Artists provoke thought, at the very least, because that’s where ideas come from and change comes from is from simple thought. I mean, the world has never been more liberal than it is right now. We’re going in a very liberal direction. And sometimes I don’t always agree 100 percent with that, either, but I think it’s better to raise awareness and thought, call things out, rather than ignore them and pretend like nothing’s happening. All these Netflix documentaries coming out; I don’t know if you saw ‘The Keepers’ about Joseph Maskell, this guy who ended up murdering a nun because she discovered he was raping children. And then the Catholic Church is covering it up. Instead of being reprimanded, they just moved him to a different place.
DC: That’s status quo.
DL: Yeah. You see, I didn’t know that kind of shit. I mean, I knew that that happened, I just didn’t even realize how little they did about that kind of stuff. It’s like, you don’t do anything to change the situation, you sweep it under the rug; and you, in fact, help these people to continue what they want to do.
DC: Are you going in with session musicians? Are you going to have your band?
DL: I’ll have my band, The Pollies. They’ve been playing with me for a couple of years now. I’ve known those guys for 15 years. I’ve known Jon and Jay and Clint for a long time; Spencer, the bass player, I met him just a few years ago but he fits like a glove. He’s one of us, for sure. That band, man, we’ve been through a lot together and I just feel like we can make a really great record together.
I feel like we have a good connection on stage and off, which is really unusual. And we love each other and we care about each other and I think it shows in our music, and people really think about what we’re doing. They put a lot of work in my things and I really appreciate that.
DC: So, you have a song and then do you work on it in a group? Do you work together on the songs and they’ll add to it?
DL: Sometimes. I mean, we wrote one song kind of as a group. I had the progression and then we worked out the progression, and then I wrote all the lyric for it. So that was cool. We did a bunch of songs. I wrote the song and brought it to them and then we flushed it out as a band. That’s usually how it goes. I’ll write the lyric and then we’ll figure, well, what are we going to do here, what are you going to play, you know. Or Jay will come up with a part on the guitar, and Clint will do a little whirly thing.
We have a little demo studio in Muscle Shoals that we’ll go into and start recording demos of these songs, and start working out the kinks and figure out what sounds good here and there. That really helps figure out what sounds good because the recordings don’t lie, obviously. So, you can figure out what’s working and what’s not. We do that a lot.
And then we go out and play these songs live and check out how the audience responds to it. And then we get a feel for what’s good that way. Are people really into it, or do they start meandering during the song? I watch that. But, yeah, that’s our M.O., that what we do.
DC: When you are writing a song, do lyrics come first, the melody?
DL: The melody and the phrasing always comes first. The melody and the phrasing and the cadence of the way I’m going to sing this line and this verse – that always hits me first. And then I’m basically struggling to say what I want to say within this phrasing and within this piece there. To me, phrasing is extremely important in songs ’cause it’s what makes the words and the melody get stuck in somebody’s head. It’s not about so much about what you’re saying as it is how you’re saying it, and the way you’re singing it.
And melody is extremely important to me. I think that it doesn’t really matter what you’re saying if you don’t have a good melody to go behind it, you’re not going to reach that person. So, you’ve got to make sure that it’s an earworm. You should throw earworms as much as you can. I mean everywhere; on the guitar, in the vocals, in the chorus. The harmonies we do in something memorable, you’re trying to hook people with anyway you can because that’s what makes a listener crave the song and want to hit the back button and listen to it again. That’s what makes me crave a song and I can only go off of what I like, you know, so little things like that.
One of my favorite songs ever recorded is that song, ‘Baltimore,’ by Nina Simone. It’s like a reggae beat and it’s a Randy Newman song. It’s about the city of Baltimore. It’s a fucking great song, man. She has this reggae beat and this really funky, chanky guitar playing and the bass line is just amazing – follows the kick drum – and it’s just a really tight groove. And then she has this beautiful string section playing in the background, which to me is amazing that nobody’s done that before, like, played a beautiful string section over a reggae song.
That song is incredible, and the production is incredible and the musicianship is incredible. And there’s this little thing happening in that song that makes you, like, ‘Wow!’ When the chorus opens up and then you hear that guitar coming with the ‘ch-ch, ch; ch-ch, ch.’ And that just hooks you, man. Then, you know, that huge, like, ‘doo-do do dooo,’ and then she sings, ‘Oh, Baltimore…’ It’s just so fucking real and fucking raw and good. I love the way those records sound, sonically. I almost can’t stand to hear the way new records, sonically, sound because they’re so over compressed and processed with this digital shit that it just waters it down; drum machines and all that and everybody’s so in love with all that shit and I just can’t, I can’t get up-to-date with it.
I love the organic sound of an instrument; you get little bits of people’s personality in their playing that you just don’t get out of that digitized stuff. And I can enjoy it, too, but it doesn’t make me want to go back to it years and years and years later to try to listen to that piece of people that gets left into the recording. It’s what they’re playing, man. No one, real musician sounds like another. James Burton sounds like James Burton, you know, James Jamerson sounds like James Jamerson. Carol Kaye sounds like Carol Kaye. You know, Leon Russell sounds like Leon Russell. You can tell their personalities; it’s the small things. It’s the small details that make records so great.
DC: Do you record on tape?
DL: Yeah. Every single thing, man. We do bounce tape down to Pro Tools after, and we’ll mix down from the tape. But while we’re recording, it’s strictly a tape. It’s really neat because it reveals how far along you are and it makes you reach down and become better when you aren’t even sure if you are that good. Like I listen to songs like ‘Kodachrome’ (Paul Simon). And when I’m recording, I do it completely analogue; I do it exactly like those people did. I make records like those people made records and it really makes me appreciate the fucking musicianship that those people have because you have to be really good to make a record sound great. Your time, your tempo has to be great. You’ve got to be creative and innovative. You’ve got to work the mic. You actually have to work that microphone. You back up if you want it to be a little bit less loud in volume. There’s just certain things about that that are so much more fun when you’re making a mix and making a record. It’s just cool.
And then you listen to ‘Kodachrome.’ That song is like ’How did y’all make that fucking masterpiece on an 8-track? How did y’all do that?’ And a lot of that – it’s just them playing live – ’cause you only had eight tracks. The drums and the bass are in one track. Just one. And then you’ve got to, like, fucking think about it and be like, ‘Okay, we’re going to do the drums and bass cut to this track. We’re going to split this track and do vocal and have the background singers in the chorus. And we’re going to have the room mics over here, all on this track. You’d never put room mics on a vocal track because, one, it would bleed over. And then you’ve got your keyboard tracks and strings on track four. I mean, you play it fucking live, man. Or, you play this live and then you record over on track four and have them overdub the keys. And then you can split that track. And then you bounce down the tape. That’s where bouncing down to Pro Tools is really cool because when you run out of tracks, if you want to put a bunch of shit in, say, you just can’t play it live, then you bounce down to Pro Tools and then we’ll open up like another few tracks. That’s usually how I do it.
But back in the day, there was no Pro Tools and there were no computers. You just had to play it live and that’s why that’s why that shit is so fucking good.
DC: How did you come to reside in Breaux Bridge/Lafayette?
DL: I met this guy named Caleb Elliott. Are you familiar with Caleb Elliott? (DC: Oh, yeah.) I played at the Blue Moon. I had some shows. (DC: Where were you based?) I was living in Nashville. And I had booked a tour and I did the Blue Moon. And Todd Mouton, you know him? (DC: Oh, yeah.) Todd was kind of helping Elliott at the time. And he was like, ‘Hey, man. I’m bringing my friend Caleb to the show. Check him out. If you want him to sit in on cello with you that would be really cool, he’s really great.’ And I was like, ‘Ehh, that’s just kind of weird.’ You know, like, ‘I don’t know him. We’ve never played together.’ And he was like, ‘Just send him a couple of songs.’ So I sent him like four or five songs and he learned them, which was really cool to me that he took the time to learn them really well. And he just played them really well when we played live and I was like, ‘Hey, man. I’m playing in Austin. I have a couple more gigs. You want to just jump in the car and fuckin’ finish them out. And he was like, ‘Fuck it. Why not? I’ve got nothing to do.’ After that, we just started playing together. (DC: And how long ago was that?) That was in 2014. So after 2014, me and him were like birds – we just fuckin’ hung out all the time – two peas in a pod there for a little while.
Then I started writing Cautionary Tale and he played on the record. So then, the story of how I got here, I met Jen Gray. She needed help on her farm and Caleb was staying out there, so that’s how I met her. And she was needing help on her farm and I was going through a break-up at the time. And so I was like, ‘I’m ready to leave Muscle Shoals’ ’cause I was living in Muscle Shoals at that point – and come down somewhere else, just for a fresh start. And I just came down here and started living in her big house and she was basically like, ‘You can work on the farm, just pay the utilities, and you can stay here.’ It was such a great farm, just write songs, work in the day, I’d write at night. Caleb was in and out doing his thing. And so I just fell in love with this place. I fell in love with Breaux Bridge and I fell in love with Lafayette and the culture and the music and the dancing, you know. I just love it. I didn’t want to leave.
DC: It either grabs you or it doesn’t.
DL: Yeah. I love it.
DC: All that creative stuff just seems to come up from the ground.
DL: There’s so much that time hasn’t touched here like other places, you know, that makes me enjoy the atmosphere and enjoy the culture and the scenery. Even the dispositions of people, it seems, time hasn’t even touched. The way people interact here is different from the way people interact in other places. People are very open here, lively and welcoming and enjoyable. You see people talking and communicating and not so much staring at a phone sitting at the table with one another. And that grabbed me. I was like ‘Wow. Here’s a place where people are still very much in tune with one another and communicating and dancing and laughing.’ Living in small, rural Alabama town where everybody kind of keeps to themself and does their own thing and goes to church on Sunday, you know. It’s very syllabus religious. What’s the right word? I mean it’s like this religious lingering thing in the air. People are very polite but it’s almost like infused with this weird judgmental thing. I got so fed up with the pretense of all that. And then here, it’s just like you don’t even talk about that. I mean everybody’s either Catholic or they’re not. They don’t give a fuck, you know. It’s like they don’t care, it’s like, ‘Hey, we’re going to have a good time on Saturday and then Sunday, we’ll deal with tomorrow, tomorrow.’ I like that.
I love Muscle Shoals, it’s great town. And it’s a great town for getting music done and recording records. But as far as a social atmosphere, there’s slim to none. Even though it’s getting better, you know, over the years, it’s gotten a lot better. But at the time when I was there and growing up… And being from Louisiana, I’ve always gravitated back toward it. It’s because, and I’m not even a social fucking person, you know what I mean? I’m probably one of those anti-social people you’ll ever meet, but I just really enjoy being around other social people. It’s just a lot of muse here that I find.
DC: Keeping that in mind and going to Nashville and not getting lost in the shuffle, here you kind of got this community you were just talking about. Have you thought about that? Are you going to get lost – not that you don’t know what you’re doing – but lost in The Machine?
DL: You know what’s weird? The way I’ve always operated, it’s different for me because I have never succumbed to any one scene; I’ve always sort of done my thing. So, for me, I’ve never identified with The Machine to get lost in. You know what I mean? I don’t identify with that, nor do people identify me with that. So I think people look at me as a separate entity, which is really nice and I’ve designed it that way.
So, as far as The Machine, I’ve never been a part of it so there’s never something for me to get lost in, if you know what I mean.
Up there, I do my own thing like I do here. I go up there I know my people and I have my people and I kind of hang with them. And I meet new people, but I just go up there to work. That’s why I’m there, basically, is just to work. We write songs for film and TV and for other people. I do stuff like that. It’s just a good place for me to be at the moment and spend at least half of my time there. But its never been a place where I thought I was going to stay forever, even though I do like Nashville.
Now, it’s cooler than it’s ever been. And there’s a growing community of camaraderie and support there that I’ve noticed. It’s like all these young people. And luckily, after touring, I lived there in 2013 and 2014 and I didn’t know anybody there. But now that I’ve kind of made a name for myself, it’s easier for me, and I’ve also toured a lot and met a lot of people who live in Nashville and made friends. So it’s like, ‘Hey, man. What’s up?’ So I can go to a coffee shop and there’s Lera Lynn – people I’ve known for years – Kenny Vaughan, Buddy Miller, all those guys who are hanging around. Cool, cool people who make great records. And I’ve just been lucky enough to sort of slip my way in the back of this scene. And the attitude of the people there is different than it used to be. It’s not so cutthroat. It’s like, ‘Hey, man. We’re all in this together.’
And I think everybody also has an attitude of like they want to be polite because they know that you could probably do something for them; you can probably help them in some way. So, that, too. Everybody’s pretty cool, man. It’s an interesting scene. It’s a good scene.
Post Script
Dylan LeBlanc on the South Louisiana culture
It blows my mind the quality of musicianship in this town. Everybody is really good at what they do because you can tell they just live it daily and breathe it. They are fucking music.
It’s like a well-kept secret, almost. Even though it’s not and we do get tons of tourists here. A lot of people from up north, like people from Jersey and people from New York, they come down here to enjoy the culture and the atmosphere. It’s a Mecca for culture and music. People just don’t get it until they come here and then they go, ‘Wow!’
You just can’t get that anywhere else. You can’t eat that fucking plate of food that is amazing and listen to this band who sounds just as good as anyone standing at Broadway at Robert’s Western World, you know, playing the shit out of the pedal steel; playing the fuck out of an electric guitar; singing their ass off playing killer tunes, great country songs. Dancing, laughing, drinking, you know, having fun. It’s just a fun fucking place to be around. People just don’t get it.
If you’re too involved in their own ego, this place is not for you. I will say that. If you’re too involved in your own identity and your own story, don’t come here because it’s not for you. But if you can step outside of yourself and try to be a part of the culture and sort of observe as a visitor, as someone enjoying it, you’re going to love it.
