Richmond Fontaine
Don't Skip Out On Me

The long farewell of Richmond Fontaine is probably completed with this last unexpected album (El Cortez/Decor Records), a sort of appendix that the group wanted to add to "You Can't Go Back If There's Nothing To Go Back To" (2016) and which was recorded on the occasion of the release of the singer, musician, and writer Willy Vlautin's latest novel. The vocalist and guitarist of Richmond Fontaine is no stranger to literary experiences: his writing activity has always gone hand in hand with his music career. His latest novel is "Don't Skip Out On Me," published in the USA a couple of weeks ago. The story tells the tale of Horace Hooper, half-Indian and half-Irish. Abandoned by his parents, he grows up in Nevada adopted by a family of farmers. In search of redemption, he leaves his home to become a boxing champion. He will end up in Las Vegas, where he will clash with the harsh reality and realize that not even boxing will help him overcome his past life and change his destiny.

"Don't Skip Out On Me" is an American story or more simply a story about man in his finitude, who cannot go against what he considers to be his limits because he is the first to recognize them as such, and these then keep him attached to harsh reality no matter what effort he makes. It is a story of people alone with themselves, seeking their identity in a world that oppresses and ignores them. It is the story of the United States of America as Sam Peckinpah and Bob Dylan wanted to tell us in "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid": you spend all your time running away from yourself and searching for who you are, then comes the moment of reckoning, and the great dream ends. What remains after are probably the United States of America or more simply life.

The album is released next February 16. It is practically the soundtrack of the novel: "Don't Skip Out On Me" is an entirely instrumental work, containing 16 country western ballads played with acoustic guitars, bass, drums, steel guitars, and harmonica. The songs are sometimes more lively, almost elusive, sometimes true electric boleros, sometimes more melancholic and loaded with strong emotional content; they chill your blood in your veins, and when you think this album is already beyond what can be considered the end of the story, somehow you know that from now on you will feel a little more alone.