Over the phone, Dylan LeBlanc hums that familiar bassline to Tom Petty’s slinky 1976 hit “Breakdown.”
Next, LeBlanc hums the song’s curlicue guitar intro.
Then, he sings the opening lyric, "It's alright if you love me."
LeBlanc is explaining how he wanted "everything to be a hook" on LeBlanc's new studio album "Renegade," which finds the Muscle Shoals singer/songwriter applying his haunting vocals to electric rock instead of the acoustic Americana he's known for. "That was a big theme throughout the record, was trying not to lose that melodic element," LeBlanc says. "Melody is what sticks out to people and one of the things I think rock has been lacking is a sense of melody."
There's no shortage of melody on "Renegade," out June 7. The album's music is already connecting. The excellent title track with its neon-blur guitars and danger-tinged lyrics, has cracked the top 40 of the Adult Alternative Songs chart. U.K. music magazine Mojo recently gave the "Renegade" album a four-star review.
LeBlanc recorded the LP at Nashville's RCA Studio A with white-hot producer Dave Cobb, known for helming Jason Isbell's string of acclaimed albums, as well as discs by Sturgill Simpson and Brandi Carlile.
As talented and successful as Cobb is, he wasn’t the only key new studio ingredient for LeBlanc. Shoals band The Pollies, who’ve backed LeBlanc at live shows for years now, brought their grunge-smudged power-pop sound to the project. (The Pollies are comprised of singer/guitarist Jay Burgess, bassist Spencer Duncan, drummer Jon Davis and keyboardist Clint Chandler.) Combined with LeBlanc’s unique vocals, keen melodic sense and own intuitive guitar playing, it makes for a compelling mix of chime and grit.
Recently, LeBlanc checked in for a phone interview from the Shoals home of his father, singer/songwriter James LeBlanc.
Edited excerpts are below.
Dylan, in the past you've mostly made folk-tinged music, what inspired you to make a rock album?
Honestly, just playing with The Pollies. They're such a good rock & roll band and cohesive unit it's easy to steer it in that direction. And so that's what we did. We just decided to let it naturally take its course to a more edgy rock & roll sound and that felt good. We all had a lot of fun doing it.
How did the title track to "Renegade" come together? The crisscrossing guitars on there are cool.
It was one of the first songs I wrote for the new record and I just came to (The Pollies) with the words and then the riffs, Jay (Burgess) came up with that cool guitar riff and it just felt good. We just started taking it apart and then we demoed it in our little studio in Green Hill. I wanted it to have kind of a more pop element to it in a way. But I wanted it to still be me, so it was trying to find a line between those two things.
And what the song is about, this gangster dude who like falls in love with this girl, or she falls in love with him rather, and he ends up getting killed by the cops, and then she's heartbroken. There's so many stories like that in my hometown where I was born in Louisiana and so many people that I knew fell for the wrong people, or just that's their way of life. I wanted (the song) to sound tough but realistic too.
So, that song was immediately one of my favorite songs after we started playing it, and The Pollies really made it come to life. It probably wouldn't sound like that if they weren't backing me up.
For people who like a certain kind of handmade music, they've seen Dave Cobb's name listed as producer a lot of their favorite records from the last five years or so. From someone who's made a record with him now, what would you say is his magic he brings to a project?
Man, the main thing I noticed about him right away is he just makes you feel comfortable. Everything that you could possibly need is available to you and he makes you feel at home. He's not overly pushy. But he's firm in things he believes in when he really believes in it, but he's not one of those people that's like impossible, like it's his way or the highway. He works with the artist to achieve what they want to do and paint the picture they want to paint. He's such a warm nurturing individual when it comes to music and art, so that's his strong suit.
His disposition is calm but he works quick. It’s a strange thing. He definitely decides which take is the one and that was kind of surprising because we would do one or two takes and he would go, "That take one is the one, let's move on," and we were like OK. And most of it's as live as possible. That's his thing, capture it as live as you possibly can, and we're accustomed to that.
Not to mention everything in that studio is incredible. [Laughs] I mean his studio just has the most amazing gear in the world. Our mouths were just kind of hanging open the whole time we were there recording because he had like an actual Fairchild preamp from the '60s, you can't even get one of those for less than $60,000, so we were singing through that preamp. We did everything through that damn preamp. He had EMI outboard gear from The Beatles recordings and Pink Floyd and Abbey Road and all that. It was just like insane.
The "Renegade" track "I See It In Your Eyes" to me sounds like a car song, meaning I can see that song sounding good on a car stereo. Does that ever occur to you, where people might listen to this stuff?
I don't listen to music hardly ever unless I'm in my car. I mostly listen to podcasts these days, I don't even listen to that much music. But yeah it occurs to me. That's why when we do mixes we always go out to the car and that's how we judge what sounds. We do it in our own car stereo. It's weird too. Because "Renegade" sounds good in one stereo and it sound different in another stereo. The car test is how we know whether we have a mix or not.
On the song "Lone Rider" from the new album there's a line wanted to ask you about: "I'd rather give you my heart than a piece of my mind." Where did that lyric come from?
Nobody thinks that way, right? Everybody wants to give everybody their two cents. It's just about a person who's tired of that. This sort of like, "I'd rather just be with you and get through our problems," and that's why most likely I'm alone because I just don't have the energy that it takes to indulge in arguments and debate. I just want to be with you, you know?
What's a way you can see some of these "Renegade" songs evolving on the road?
I could see us jamming them out a little more for the live show. Like, "Beyond the Veil" from (2016 album) "Cautionary Tale" evolved into like a nine-minute long jam, and so I could see especially "Born Again" evolving into a jam. We always try to make our shows a little more interesting than what the record is but keep it very close to the record so that doesn't get lost on people, because that's what people want to hear, is the record. If they like it. Hopefully people do, or they don't give a s--- one way or another. [Laughs] You have to remember the audience most of the time hasn't ever seen it before, so they want to see what the record sounds like. But I think some people appreciate it and some people don’t. It's a really weird thing. Like, people in Europe I noticed they really like you to stick close to the record and people over here are very open to extending it, jamming it and all that.
You’ve worked with The Pollies for live shows a while, known and played guitar with their frontman, Jay, for years. But what’s something new you learned about The Pollies from making this record with them?
Their creative input, actually. When we’d worked together before, I’d written all of the songs on my own and just brought them all these songs - we’ve got to learn all this this is my back catalog and go out and play and kind of keep it close to the record. But with this record they really got to be creative. For instance, on “Lone Rider,” Clint (Chandler) and Jay came up with all the little hooks on that song. The piano, that cool guitar riff that comes after it.
I actually think Cobb made them more creative because he was trying to pull it out of us as a unit. He could tell we'd been playing together for three years. He really allowed everyone to offer a bit of themselves and put it into the album and I thought that was cool. Which is totally different than what I'd heard about him and so I went in there nervous, but The Pollies got along with him so well. Everybody did a good job.
Do you have a favorite Pollies song from their records?
Yeah, my favorite Pollies song right now is "Summertime Suicide," it's such a rock & roll song. I love that song. I've played it with them before and it's such an anthem and Jay's vocal really delivers on that song.
On the "Renegade" song "Magenta," there's kind of a classic, Laurel Canyon rock vibe but also a splash of new wave-y synth stuff in there. Tell me about putting those two sounds together. And why have you always connected with classic Laurel Canyon sounds?
Man, I just love it. I love AM-radio sounding stuff. I love those cool seventh chords and Todd Rundgren sounding stuff, that's my bread and butter and if I could just write stuff like that all the time I would. I just love the sonic quality and the mood that sets. That is my favorite type of music to listen to, and obviously I'm a huge Neil Young fan, a huge CSNY fan. That's my jam. I love that quality of playing and quality of sound, and it's hard to recreate and so it's always a challenge and I like that.
And "Magenta," the thing about Cobb is he didn't want to use an organ or regular piano on the record. So, it made us think outside the box and we used like an old '80s Juno (synthesizer) on everything. "Magenta" is such a haunting song we wanted to bring sort of a bright lovely sound to sort of interact with that.
What are some of the earliest rock songs by other artists you can remember learning on the guitar?
Well one of them was definitely "Cinnamon Girl" by Neil (Young). That was the one I used to play in my room. And I used to turn up my headphones and turn up my guitar really loud and play along to Tom Petty. I had a greatest hits album before I dug into his back catalog. I would put that in and just play along to all his hits. "Breakdown" was one of them. "Refugee." I love that song. I love all those songs - "Here Comes My Girl," that's such a great song. I was a big Doors fan in high school, I kind of grew out of that. "L.A. Woman," I loved that record and I had "The Soft Parade." I used to listen to that all the time, play along to Robby Krieger's guitar parts. I was a big (Red Hot) Chili Peppers fan and still to this day love John Frusciante's playing. Fantastic. What a great guitar player. So that kind of stuff.
Where did you write a lot of this album?
I was living in Lafayette spending a lot of time in New Orleans, so I did a lot of it in south Louisiana, which is weird because it's not the place I would normally go to write like a rock record. It's such a perfect place to write beautiful introspective songs. Songs like "Domino" (from "Renegade") they were more introspective - the demo on that sounds just like "Cautionary Tale" and I would like to release it one day because it's actually really beautiful.
I spent a lot of time with my friend Jen Gray on her farm. She's got a bed and breakfast down there called Bonne Terre which means "good earth" and so I spent a lot of time writing these songs there. She has a little cabin in the back and I did a lot of writing in there. It's such a beautiful place, kind of in the middle of this swamp, bayou-type area, like 11 acres. Actually, it's my favorite place in the entire world to be.
Dylan LeBlanc with support acts The Pollies and Outlaw Apostles will play an album release show 7 p.m. June 8 at Florence’s Singin’ River Brewing Company, address 526 E. College St. Tickets are $10 via singinriverlive.com.
