Smithwick's Kilkenny
Roots Festival

The Delines were formed after Richmond Fontaine singer/songwriter, Willy Vlautin, heard singer, Amy Boone (The Damnations), sing just one single ballad. He was so moved by her voice that he secretly wrote her songs for over a year before approaching her to start a band. Lucky for all she liked what she heard and The Delines were formed. Fontaine’s Sean Oldham on drums, Freddie Trujillo on bass, Vlautin on guitar, and multi-instrumentalist Cory Gray on keyboards and horns. Vlautin is no stranger to critical acclaim in the US, UK, and Europe, enjoying cult success and rave reviews from the likes of the New York Times, Washington Post, Uncut, MOJO, Hot Press, Rolling Stone and the Wall Street Journal, both as a novelist with seven books under his belt, and as the former front man/songwriter of the Americana outfit Richmond Fontaine who produced eleven acclaimed studio albums. Three of his novels have been turned into feature films: The Motel Life, Lean on Pete, and The Night Always Comes. Ursula K. Le Guin said this of Vlautin’s writing, “Willy Vlautin is one of the bravest novelists writing… An unsentimental Steinbeck, a heartbroken Haruf, Willy Vlautin tells us who really lives now in our America, our city in ruins.”