Once Quick-Tempered and Rash songwriter Dylan LeBlanc has finally stopped fighting

Growing up, Dylan LeBlanc bounced between households – his mother in Shreveport, Louisiana and his father in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. For LeBlanc, music wasn't just an escape hatch, it was a gateway to transcending a youthful, dysfunctional existence. In many ways, LeBlanc is still running from that existence and chronicles his journey on his latest album, the magnificent Coyote.

“When you make a great record, everything disappears,” says the 34-year-old singer-songwriter. Rolling rock. “I can remember when I heard Neil Young for the first time. Everything faded and I was just transported to this place. I felt I could survive.”

Like Young's lyrics, LeBlanc's lyrics Coyote it's blue-collar poetry flying on the wings of rock, country and folk music. It's a space where melodies take form from personal experience and introspective reflection, channeled through guitar licks, soaring vocals and powerful amps that drown out the noise of everyday life.

“Music was the first thing besides drugs and alcohol that changed the way I felt,” says LeBlanc. “I was always looking for some way to change the way I felt, and music had a tremendous impact.”

It's also a sacred realm where songs become much more than just choices to move your body and shake your hips. LeBlanc's creations are ethereal in nature, subtly altering your mind and its perceptions. Even so, LeBlanc is hard to read, both in person and in his music. He's mysterious, taciturn, and always seemingly one step away from a conflict — and he knows it.

“You have to be a little bit crazy, a little bit dumb and a little bit tough to do this thing, because it beats you,” says LeBlanc. “Especially the way I've been doing it for the last 14 years, one fan at a time.”

Around 10, LeBlanc moved to Muscle Shoals to live with his father, a staff composer at Fame Studios. Back then, legendary record producer Fame Rick Hall was still alive and working in the studio. LeBlanc vividly remembers being in Fame with Hall.

“I saw how intense people were about the music in that space—everything was intense,” LeBlanc says. “And I realized how important it is to put all your time and energy into it.”

What LeBlanc also took away from being a fly on the wall at Fame was watching top writers, players and producers create and capture a song in real time. “It was learning about song structures,” he says. “People say, 'I don't want to hear half a song, I want to hear the whole thing. Finish it and play it for me when it's done.”

From there, he lived in New Orleans and Lafayette, Louisiana, where LeBlanc was never too far from his French and Cajun roots. “Louisiana is a huge influence on me,” says LeBlanc. “There's a dark, sinister energy that lurks there, and I've never felt it anywhere else.”

LeBlanc notes that his ancestors came from Nova Scotia. In 1785, the British expelled them from Canada. Like many French families at the time who faced the same fate, they moved to New Orleans and spread out into greater Louisiana

“From what I hear, [my family] they were kind of outlawed when the British tried to take over New Orleans,” says LeBlanc. “As long as we were sinking those British ships, we could do whatever we wanted.”

This displacement combined with an eternal feeling of not fitting in anywhere is something not only in LeBlanc's blood and family tree, but it translates into his music – melodic visions of drift and contemplation, loneliness and longing and the search for stability in an unjust, chaotic world. .

“I saw a lot of dark things growing up. I grew up pretty tough down there,” LeBlanc says of Louisiana. “It was violent … I can't relate to that kind of thing.”

When asked about where his early anger came from, LeBlanc points to deep feelings of embarrassment when he attended school, a place where his peers teased and harassed him mercilessly about his appearance and behavior.

“We didn't have a lot of money, and we went to school with people who did,” LeBlanc says. “My mom cleaned houses for a living, rich people's houses. So I had a chip on my shoulder. I just felt useless.”

LeBlanc says he liked to fight (“he liked to get hit in the head”). But then the guitar entered his life.

“When I picked up the guitar for the first time, I felt a power I'd never felt before,” says LeBlanc. “I felt like I could survive with this thing. There was this emotional movement going on inside me. It lit a fire in me to try to prove myself to people, that I was somebody.”

When he was 15, LeBlanc dropped out of high school and started playing in bands. He was just a guitar player, but he soon learned to sing harmony. That growing skill set could eventually be presented to LeBlanc leading his own team.

In his current band, LeBlanc has his father on bass, who was also brought in as a session player Coyote. The musical bond between father and son led the elder LeBlanc to mix the record. “It was the first time we worked so closely together,” says LeBlanc. “These last 12 years, we have reached another level of narrowness. It was a full-circle issue.”

Three years ago, LeBlanc himself became a father, to a baby girl. LeBlanc's daughter and fiancée are now the catalysts for his passion and drive to move forward.

“When I looked into my daughter's eyes for the first time,” LeBlanc says, pausing for a moment, “it was very clear to me that the person I was, the anger I felt, that part of me that needed to be there to feed her creativity, the selfish part — I didn't need that anymore.”

LeBlanc says plans are in the works to return to the studio this summer. He's sitting on a wealth of material and wants to put it on film. Until then, he'll embark on an extensive Southeast tour through mid-May, kicking off April 20 at Tuck Fest in Charlotte, North Carolina.

“As I've gotten older, I realize you're not responsible for what you're born with,” LeBlanc says. “Whether it's a silver spoon or dirt, you're not responsible for it. Whatever you were born into, it's your responsibility as an adult to sort of get your shit together.”