I cannot remember who introduced me to Willy’s work around 2015, probably someone mentioned it on a social media page, but soon afterwards I went to my local bookstore in North Dakota and looked for any book of his. I found The Motel Life. The title stuck out to me because of how I grew up, living in motels every summer, sometimes longer. I was hooked and became an instant fan. I read the novel in a day or two and went straight on my laptop and ordered every single book Willy had available at the time. There’s a loneliness, a dark humor, a shattered hope, a desperate optimism, that lives inside of the characters that I relate to.
Willy’s work speaks to the everyday man and woman who punches a time clock, puts in reduced overtime, goes to the bar afterwards and tries to forget about reduced benefits and pay, then goes home and remembers a time when they had the world by the balls, eventually passing out on the couch, and wake ups to do the same thing all over again, but somewhere in between those moments of the day-to-day life there’s hope, love, creativity, dignity waiting for them if they can keep clear of regret before it swallows them whole. Sure, I might not be able to relate to the situations the characters are going through. I never lived in an abandon mine like Al Ward in Willy’s latest novel, The Horse, nor have I lived Al’s stories of regret that’re in the forefront. And the stories that happen in the front of the bar are important, but Willy’s real talent is revealed when you step through the backdoor of the bar and bullshit over cigarettes with complete strangers. That’s where the heart of the story starts and ends. The human grit and bone that’s in between the lies we have beaten into our heads day in and day out.
What can I say about The Horse that hasn’t already been said? I’m not a professional reviewer of books nor am I a professional interviewer. I do this to give back to authors and their books that mean a lot to me. It felt like for the longest time, in a time where America is getting rid of it’s heart and replacing it with chain restaurants, where everything looks the same, speaks the same (depending on what side you are on,) that I was having trouble finding authors who wrote about the everyday person. It felt to me like I’d read them all. Long gone were the Larry Brown’s, Bukowski’s, the Denis Johnson’s. I thought I’d come to the end of the line, then I discovered Willy’s work, from there I found plenty of living authors out there bleeding and towing the line. Only their books are not out front like the plethora of web slingers and elfish hammer gods. Is that a thing? Probably.
The Horse is the story of Al Ward, a failed musician, but a naturalist like Jim Harrison, the work, the process, the discovery, mean much more than the bells and whistles that go along with the career. There’s satisfaction in the process alone and I think a lot of creators lose that. There’s happiness in having tasted a bit of success doing what you love to do, but what matters most is when Al writes his songs. What matters most for an author, which I think a lot of them forget, is sitting at the keys and purging, shaping, and putting together words to communicate with other people. I don’t think Al Ward could’ve been the Al we read about if he lived with the financial success of Waylon Jennings. Sure, artists should be paid for their work, I’m not debating it. Art of any kind is just as important as any other job, but sometimes, once they start getting paid more often, it just becomes a factory of work, and long gone are the days of sitting and playing music, writing, painting, taking photos, for the pure joy of it. Soon there are deadlines, meetings, fans, and the pleasure of the process is gone. I think Al Ward, musicians out there now, writers, should sing and write about those things. How we sacrifice the things keeping us alive in favor of a CBS movie of the week.
– Frank Reardon
RF: Al Ward, an old singer living in an abandoned mine. He’s out there with a routine walking, writing, having a friend help him out, then later on he thinks about the past like when he was in a band with Mona. Who is Al Ward to you? Do you come across many Al Ward’s on the road when touring? Sometimes he’s just the unluckiest guy, or maybe he decided to self-destruct to avoid luck.
WV: I guess more than anything Al is a man who’s been saved and cursed by music. Saved in that he understood music’s ability to allow him to escape himself. It’s a drug that way. The idea of escaping the world through music. He gets the writing bug early on and leans on it most of his life. I do think he’s a broken man, a man who was born on his heels, born always a bit out of breath. So, in that regard music has really been a great gift but it doesn’t cure him of who he is. In a way it might leave him in a sort of purgatory and that purgatory is a hard way to live.
RF: I find your books to be important books. They especially speak to working-class people trying to make ends meet. They speak to people on the fringes and the lost, the addicted, downtrodden. Characters full of regrets. They are often people who were close enough to taste a major change but couldn’t quite get there. Is it purely observational? Or you have experienced things your characters have experienced?
WV: I’ve always been drawn to people who were a little banged up, a little wobbly on their feet. I think, most likely, because I’ve always felt that way. I’ve always been balancing on the edge of trying and giving up. Keeping my shit together or destructing. That feel has been with me since my earliest recollections. But I do have a pretty strong governor that has pulled me back, a work ethic and deep desire to not fuck up. So far that has saved me. I’ve always been drawn to working class stories I think because I was brought up with John Steinbeck. I was taught all his major books in school and at the same time I was raised by a single mother who grinded out a job for 35 years. She was sexually harassed by men, paid less than men, fucked with because she was a woman, and she couldn’t quit. She had two sons, a mortgage, and not a lot of confidence. So, I understood, at least in my own way, the idea of power and abuse. And I thought it was heroic that she could go to work every day and muscle it out. I’ve always struggled with that. I worked in warehouses for a lot of years and for me that was bleak work, and I used to really get dark about it and I quit one job and then have to go somewhere else and get the same job at a different warehouse. I quit because I didn’t have two kids, and I didn’t care what happened to me. That’s a hell of a lot easier than being scared shitless every day that you might lose your job and your house and your family’s stability. Even my earliest songs, say around 11 or 12, went to these places. They were crude and tuneless but the heart of them is in what I’m doing today.
RF: Early on Al’s annoyed by this animal standing there. When writing the novel, why the horse? Do horses represent something you as a writer?
WV: Ah shit, man, I saw that horse. A buddy and I were driving around central Nevada. We were camping out in the boonies. I was working on a book called Don’t Skip Out On Me and I was taking tons of notes and photos, and we came to a desert playa, a playa that went on for miles and miles. There was no water, no trees, barely sage brush, and we saw what looked like the statue of a black horse. We drove close to it and got out of the truck to find it was a real horse. A wild mustang that stood motionless in ninety-degree weather. It was old, a bit sway backed and had dozens of scars. The scars of an old man, of a guy who’d been through a lot. And as we got closer, we saw it was completely blind, and it just stopped me in my tracks. The brutality of it, the hopelessness of it. A horse’s biggest two fears are being alone and not being able to see what it’s afraid of. I couldn’t shake the image. It wrecked me and in my own I related to that horse. And I still do. When I got home, I started thinking about it and knew I wanted to be around that old guy in my own way. In my own way I wanted to save him.
RF: I adore the U.K. book cover, someday I’ll get one to accompany my U.S. cover. How was the touring overseas for the book? Was it wild to be in Belfast and Dublin reading your work?
WV: It’s really lucky to have different covers. And touring over there is a blast. I play a lot of songs, and my dark little folk tunes go over there alright. I remember when my old band, Richmond Fontaine, first played Dublin and they liked my ballads, and I thought I’d gone to heaven. Guinness is my favorite beer, I love Irish music and literature, and for some strange miracle they liked my tunes. Just luck, man.
RF: In the bones I view Al as a man dedicated to the natural process. A man not completely convinced with bells and whistles. What matters most is getting the lyrics down, the craft, the songs. It’s not to say he didn’t want to hit it big, but the work means more to him. Being a musician yourself, is there a connection? If so, elaborate a bit.
WV: I didn’t know how much I was like Al until a close friend of mine said, goddamn man you are Al. And I am in a lot of ways. I’ve always leaned on writing tunes to get by. I might not be great at it or even that good, but I’ve always leaned on it and most every good thing that’s ever happened in my life is because of it. I love being in a band and I’ve only known the success or lack thereof that I’ve had. So, judge me within the context of that. I just keep digging my little ditch and try not to beat myself up too much or think about anything else in regard to success and failure.
RF: I’ve read a few interviews about books you like, such as Jim Thompson and Larry Brown. I’m a huge fan of both Thompson and Brown myself. Who are some of your favorite authors to read, alive or dead, or both? Give me five authors you think everyone should check out.
WV: I do like Jim Thompson a ton. He was a huge writer for me because he was so fucking nuts. He was a psychologically damaged guy writing about psychologically damaged people. The first time I’d read stuff like that was Thompson and it killed me. And he’s so funny, I loved his humor, and sometimes he was just batshit out there and he owned that. All of which I dig. Larry Brown was a serious hero of mine. He wrote in a way that I understood about people that I understood. Lucia Berlin is a writer I love and re-read; Claire Keegan is another I always read; Barry Gifford is a real hero of mine. No one writes like Barry. He’s the coolest mofo around. Roddy Doyle is also a writer I’ve loved for most of my life. He’s been like an old pal and saint and inspiration to me. I think about Roddy Doyle’s books all the time.
RF: I first discovered you years back when I was living in the Dakotas. Motel Life was the first book of yours I read. Then I read them all. I want to ask about one of my personal favorites, The Free, which I don’t think gets enough love. Freddie and LeRoy, two people trying to do right in a world of wrongs. There’s too much heartache, but there’s also beauty in that heartache too, hope. If you remember, can you talk a little about The Free?
WV: The Free was my state of the union address. I was devastated by our involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq. To think so many young soldiers were sent over there with a vague mission to free the Middle East from themselves. I remember being at a rodeo in a pretty economically depressed town in Oregon and the rodeo MC did a three minute sermon, while a woman rode by on horseback with an American flag and another woman rode with a POW flag, about how we need to free the women of the Middle East and that young people should join the military. There was an Army recruitment booth at the same rodeo. It seemed like such a cruel move, a move that MC was probably paid to give. And the reasons were so unclear for going over there and then our soldiers come back with serious traumatic brain injuries. It was the war of brain injuries. So, I wrote about all of that through the eyes of nursing. It’s always been this way, rich people, people in power, send working-class kids to war and then most turn their back when they come home rattled, maimed, and dead. The Free was my way of protesting. I’ve always thought senators’ kids should be the first to go into war. We’d be a lot more careful if that was the case. But always, The Free, was built as a tribute to nurses. I’ve always loved nurses and have always wanted to write a tribute to them. This was my book for that.
RF: I’m a fan of your tunes, especially the song A Night in The City from the Richmond Fontaine album, You Can’t Go Back If There’s Nothing to Go Back To. The title strikes me because it feels like Al’s story, especially early on. Is there a connection to your music and the novels? Or are they two separate things?
WV: Ah thanks for mentioning that song. I always liked that one. Some nights the band would take that fucker way out there, our version of Black Sabbath, and then bring it back to the world of the song. The two things, songs and novels, have always been connected because writing a novel takes so long that I end up writing songs during the time I’m working on the novel. And the novel I’m thinking about at the time has a set of ideas that I’m stewing on for years and years and so those ideas leak into the songs. All my books, minus The Night Always Comes, started as songs. So, it goes back and forth. Sometimes the books take and sometimes they give.
RF: What’ s next for you? Are you working on a new book? Working with the music? Or just cleaning out the brain and going for the ride?
WV: My band The Delines have a new record called Mr. and Mrs. Doom that comes out on Valentine’s Day and I’m working on a book about a house painter.
RF: We talked a bit in email before I sent the questions. We talked about being around the country in different areas, and I’m wondering how much does seeing the country influences you? Sure, it has evolved, but it’s getting worse in the last fifteen years, a giant Olive Garden City that most of us cannot afford. It feels like it’s losing its pulse, and it’s too safe. How do these changes affect your writing, the characters, and even the music?
WV: I’ve always been in love with the American West. Some of that is due to a boyfriend of my mom’s who was obsessed with it and used to drive us around Northern Nevada all the time. I’ve always loved books set in the West and movies about it. I never get tired of the landscapes and I used to love disappearing into a town and hanging out in the bars and spending as long as I could in motels in small weird towns. The problem is that in the last 15 years or so everyone wants to talk politics. You can’t go to a small town and say you’re from Portland or you’ll get shit for being a liberal. That didn’t used to happen. People used to, more or less, keep their religion and politics to themselves. There was more casual respect given. They wouldn’t go there. Now you can’t go into a place in a small town without Fox news on. That kind of news shifts the whole dynamic of a town. I remember getting drunk with these two young cowboys in a small town in Oregon. They were in their early twenties, and they kept getting upset about the liberals in the cities. And we were way out in the sticks. They were really upset. It made no sense except that all they watch is Fox news. Finally, I just said, shouldn’t you guys just being thinking about women and bands and making a living and camping and seeing cool shit? They were smart dudes, funny, but they had this manufactured low-level rage in them that.
