Getting to Know: Dylan LeBlanc

Photo by Amanda Chapman

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Hometown: Shreveport, La.
For Fans Of: Ray Lamontagne, M. Ward, Ryan Adams

Son of a country music songwriter, Dylan LeBlanc spent his childhood tagging along to a studio in Muscle Shoals, Ala., where he played his guitar and dreamed up his own songs while his father worked. This head start to his creative development and exposure to the music industry offers some explanation for his remarkably mature debut, Paupers Field, which the 20-year old released this summer. But it can’t all be attributed to legacy—the depth of insight that marks this record is rooted in LeBlanc’s propensity for introspection, perhaps cultivated during the frequent eight-hour drives through the hills of Alabama from his hometown in Shreveport, La. when he was old enough to drive himself.

His speech as quiet and woozy as the pedal steel and subtle folk harmonies that texture his debut, LeBlanc caught up with Paste from London, where he was touring with a four-piece band of long-time friends from Muscle Shoals.

Paste: How are you liking London, Dylan?
Dylan LeBlanc: I like it. I love it. I think it’s beautiful. I love the old architecture, and I can see how a lot of creativity comes from here. I love it because the sun doesn’t really shine. I like the dark clouds. There’s something about that that makes me feel good.

Paste: I imagine it’s pretty different from your hometown.
LeBlanc: Yeah, it’s pretty different.

Paste: Tell me about Shreveport.
LeBlanc: It’s just an old run-down city. Not really—it’s not really just an old run-down city. There’s good things about it and bad things about it, like every town. We’ve got a bunch of casinos, we got a bowling alley, we got schools, and we have really good barbecue there. My family lives there. That’s good. Relatives and such.

Paste: The credits in your album insert make it seem like you have great relationships with your extended family members. There are a lot of “thank yous” to aunts and cousins.
LeBlanc: I do. I try. They practically raised me. I kind of got tossed around to each family member, so I had many people to thank. I was mostly raised by a bunch of women there. They’re insane. But I love them anyway, and they would call me crazy as well, so it’s okay.

Paste: I understand your father has been very important for you as a musical influence. Is that right?
LeBlanc: Yeah, he’s a good guy. He has been important for me musically because I got to talk to him about music and stuff like that growing up and it was really interesting.

Paste: Did you play with him a lot growing up?
LeBlanc: No, not a lot.

Paste: I understand he was a session musician in Muscle Shoals?
LeBlanc: He’s a country music songwriter. That’s what people keep getting mistaken. He did do some session work, but his job is to write songs for country music artists and get them pitched and see if they like them or not.

Paste: Did growing up around that give you an understanding of the business end of music as well as the creative end, or was his influence mostly creative?
LeBlanc: Yeah, there’s a lot of business I learned about. I definitely learned that business is business. It doesn’t matter how much you feel like family to somebody; they will take you for all you’re worth. I definitely learned that.

Paste: Did you learn that by watching your father, or have you learned that in your own experience?
LeBlanc: I definitely learned that in my own experience. You can’t tell me anything. I’m gonna do whatever I want to do most of the time. I suffer sometimes for decisions that I make, but it’s okay. I’m like any human being, I reckon.

Paste: Has the musical community that you grew up in because of your father poured into the group of people you’re working with today? Is there any cross over?
LeBlanc: It’s a new crowd. New people. I mean, I’ve known these guys that I play with now for a long time. I have pretty personal relationships with all of them, and I like to keep it that way with the people who are close to me. They’re people I can trust, and I know that I can be out on the road with for a really long time and won’t end up hating. They’re people I’ve already suffered with for a good deal of time.

Paste: Did you grow up with those guys?
LeBlanc: All of the people in the band are from Muscle Shoals.

Paste: Where is Muscle Shoals in relation to Shreveport?
LeBlanc: It’s in the Northwest corner of Alabama. Where Shreveport is in Louisiana is exactly where Muscle Shoals is in Alabama. It’s about eight and a half hours. You just drive all the way across Louisiana to Mississippi. You cut up through Tuscaloosa and straight up 43. It takes about two hours from Tuscaloosa. That’s when I know I got two hours left on the trip. That’s my favorite part of the drive, because I remember being so excited when I would finally get there. It’s a nostalgic feeling, because I used to drive back and forth a lot when I was growing up. When I finally got my car, I would leave all the time. And it was so good to get to the destination I was headed, which was mainly from Shreveport to Muscle Shoals. That last two hours, you ride through the mountains—the hills of Alabama—and it’s kinda pretty, and you get to see all the trees and stuff. I really like that.

Paste: How did you end up getting connected in Muscle Shoals from eight hours away? It’s certainly not a natural, easy transition to make, especially at such a young age.
LeBlanc: Well, like I said, my father is a country music songwriter, and they have a publishing company there called FAME, which is the Florence Alabama Music Enterprises. It’s their little publishing company and it’s an old studio where Etta James and Wilson Pickett would record. So when my father was young, he was trying to get a publishing deal because he wanted to be a songwriter. He finally got one there at FAME in Muscle Shoals, and started making a lot of money. That’s what my father did for a living, so that’s how I got connected to it. I would go up there to see him. I didn’t have anything to do all day so I would just sit there nine-to-five and watch everybody. I would sit on the couch and play my guitar and go back and into the studio and write songs.

Paste: You got an early start to songwriting—around 11 or 12 years old?
LeBlanc: Yes.

Paste: What’s the earliest song you wrote that you still play live?
LeBlanc: I don’t know. The oldest one I can remember writing is a song called “Battle,” about a family feud. Just for kicks sometimes I’ll pull that out and play it. That was one of the first songs I ever wrote.

Paste: Having written for such a long time and therefore having a lot of material to choose from, was it hard to decide what would end up on Paupers Field, or was it very clear based on what was newest? How did you make those decisions?
LeBlanc: Exactly. It was the new stuff. I felt like that was the best stuff to put on there. I mean I had songs from the catalogue that date back to when I was really young. It’s kind of funny, really. Really embarrassing. If they ever got out, I’d probably shoot myself.

Paste: What’s the most embarrassing song you’ve ever written?
LeBlanc: It was a song that I had heard in a video game. I ripped off the chorus of it. I did it on purpose. I wanted to impress my dad, so I wrote this song, and I used the same chorus of the song that was in the video game. He is a frequent video game player, so when I played it for him, he was like, “Hey man, this is the song that’s in that video game.” I was so humiliated. That was pretty embarrassing. I learned my lesson.