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Dylan LeBlanc is a singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who often finds himself flirting with the edge — or “dancing on a razor,” as he calls it — as it is all he has ever known. A verdict vagabond since he was a little boy tossed between Texas, Louisiana and Alabama, LeBlanc thrives on the precipice, never staying in one place for too long. It is that nomadic spirit that drew him not only to a life as a touring musician, but also to the beast that titles his newest record: ‘Coyote.’
LeBlanc says he has always related to the insatiable, scavenging nature of the wily coyote. Much like the animal, LeBlanc is a wanderer who knows when to trust his instincts, musically and otherwise. It is a spiritual kinship that runs deep, but he credits one particularly hair-raising face-to-face instance with solidifying his bond with the animal.
LeBlanc was in Austin, Texas, climbing the face of a 100-foot cliff, gambling with Mother Nature’s good graces as he pulled himself up by tree branches. Once he reached the top, all that laid ahead of him was a lush treeline. There was a breath of stillness, then the sound of a thunderous rustling that drew closer and closer to him. In a blink, LeBlanc watched as a frenzied raccoon came speeding out of the treeline, trailed by an animal that stopped and stared at him with striking intensity: a coyote.
“We’re looking at each other dead in the eyes…and I’m saying — out loud — ‘If it’s you or me, I am going to kick you off the side of this cliff. I’m not going down.’ It was intense, this human-animal moment,” LeBlanc recalls. “I’ve never forgotten that… he was just trying to survive and so was I.”
‘Coyote’ is LeBlanc’s first self-produced release, boasting a cherry-picked lineup of what he calls “killer session players,” such as drummer Fred Eltringham (Ringo Starr, Sheryl Crow), pianist Jim “Moose” Brown (Bob Seger), and bass player Seth Kaufman (Lana Del Rey). Though ‘Coyote’ covers familiar ground for LeBlanc of living on the edge of danger and its many consequences, the record is both autobiographical and a concept album built around the character of Coyote, a man on the run.
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David Ramirez took a little time to get back to himself, and now he’s dead set on making music for himself—for the sake of the music… and nothing else. “I love all the records I’ve made in the past. But in making them, there was always the thought in the back of my mind of where and what it could get me. I made both creative and business decisions with a goal in mind… a goal that often never came. This time it was all about just the joy of making it, about having fun with it.”
The Austin, TX-based singer-songwriter—whose decades-long career has seen six fulllength studio albums, three EPs, countless collaborations, and an illustrious supergroup project in Glorietta—spent a season of rest away from his focus on writing songs. In the wake of the end of a long relationship, he wanted to prioritize processing his grief as a human, not as an artist bleeding on the page.
“The last thing I wanted was to write a heartbreak record. So I stopped writing altogether, and I just waited until I saw my heart start coming back to life. I wanted the next thing to be hopeful and sweet and beautiful—a testament to music and my love for it.”
David’s new record All the Not So Gentle Reminders, which comes out March 21, 2025 via Blue Corn Music is exactly what he was waiting for. The 12-song album is an expansive succession of dreamlike songs that tell his stories, yes—but more than anything lean into the possibilities of the trip that music can take us on.
