Have you met DYLAN LEBLANC? 23 Jun 2010

Rough Trade records is excited to introduce you to Dylan LeBlanc. Practically raised in the famed Muscle Shoals studio in Alabama, 20-year-old Dylan LeBlanc is a rare breed. Despite his age, Dylan's worn yearning voice already has the mark of aged experience. Neither the feel nor sound of the album, nor the haunted ghost summoning songs he has written, can be faked. Geoff Travis and Jeannette Lee signed Dylan and wrote his account of how he came to his attention, which is a great read and below.

Rough Trade will release Dylan’s debut album, Pauper’s Field on August 24th, and you can hear an mp3 and watch a video for “If Time Was For Wasting” now. The song has also been released as a single and is available digitally and via 7” b/w “Jack”.
mp3: http://www.beggarsgroupusa.com/mp3/DylanLeBlanc_IfTimeWasForWasting.mp3
video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lM6woecH5EA

“If Time Was For Wasting” seems to be wrenched from the heart of ever-present currents in Deep South life - where the pull of the past is unavoidable. "Admittedly I was drinking a good bit myself, and when I wrote the song I was thinking about an arrogant ignorant man and the woman he was with.  It has a lot to do with the culture around here. I pictured a man walking into a room where he lives with an angry wife.”

Dylan is a native of Shreveport, LA and now splits his time between there and Nashville. He started playing guitar at age 7, and writing songs just a few years later. The songs on this debut are beautifully nurtured, gently astonishing, stop you in your tracks reveries - gilded with strings, smokey organ lines, and keening pedal steel.

Dylan will be making his very first trip to New York in July for a very special performance with his band at Joe’s Pub on Wednesday, July 21st.
ticket link: http://www.joespub.com/component/option,com_shows/task,view/Itemid,40/id,5264

Please visit the newly launched www.dylanleblanc.com

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ABOUT SIGNING DYLAN LEBLANC – by Geoff Travis

Dylan LeBlanc came into my life quite by chance. A friend called Jon Tiven was visiting from Nashville. He was trying to interest me in a Souhern Rock Opera that he had written and recorded with a view to getting me to release it. It has some illustrious soul singers from yesteryear singing lead on some of the tracks. However I am pathologically averse to going back into the past, having flirted disastrously with this idea previously. The Sandie Shaw project instigated by Morrissey springs to mind, being in a hotel room with the lovely Roger McGuinn and having to tell him that the new songs he had just played me on his twelve string guitar were not actually my cup of tea, trying to convince Arthur Lee that David Roback should be producing his new record, when all he wanted to talk about was the fact that he had himself played every note on the early Love records, are just a few examples.

I was chatting to Jon and his partner Sally when they casually mentioned that they had recently seen a young man that had completely mesmerized them. They said he had a voice that fell somewhere between Ray La Montagne and Neil Young and that he was one of the best they had ever seen.

They were not his managers or his agents or his lawyers or his accountants. They just liked him as an artist. Now these two people are not just ordinary music folk. They count Steve Cropper amongst their best friends and they seem able to get Teenie Hodges, the sublime guitar player who adorns so many great Al Green records, on the phone. Something in me snapped to attention and I asked who this young man was that they were describing.  They said he was called Dylan LeBlanc and he lives in or near Shreveport in Louisiana and they had seen him play in a small club in Nashville.

Dylan is now signed to Rough Trade and his story is just beginning. But like all stories of this kind, he has been preparing for it all his life. He was signed to Fame Music which is the publishing arm that grew out of the great Muscle Shoals recording complex. Rick Hall is it's head and you can find his name on the credits of some of the greatest records to ever come out of the American South. Wilson Pickett and Aretha Franklin amongst them. Rick signed Dylan to Fame Music. He was signed as soon as he was legally of age to do so. Part of the deal was that Dylan got access to the studio, where he recorded his debut album.
 
Pauper’s Field, which was mixed by Trina Shoemaker in Nashville in March of this year will be his first release. Dylan turned 20 years of age recently and he has been performing since he was 15 years old. Playing around the Louisiana

area, often travelling by himself to play in a tiny bar hundreds of miles from home, learning his craft and trying out new songs - always writing and trying out new ideas and soaking up the rich culture of his southern homeland.

He sounds like he has lived several lives already and has the melancholy soul of a great Southern soul singer many times his age. In reality he is just a young man making his first steps into the world of music. A world he has had no choice but to participate in. It is in his blood and it is in his soul. I feel lucky to be able to help bring these songs to your attent

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