In fact, Vlautin had four novels tucked away when he met a British literary agent during a Richmond Fontaine tour a couple of years ago. When the agent said she'd be willing to read one, he went home to Portland and pulled out The Motel Life, the tale of two brothers trying to deal with a fatal hit-and-run accident without hitting the "rock bottom" that always seems perilously close.

The Motel Life is a fast-paced story that takes Jerry Lee and Frank Flannigan from Vlautin's hometown of Reno across the back highways of Nevada, Idaho and Montana and into small towns like Winnemucca and Elko. Throughout their travels, the Flannigans meet gambling addicts, homeless teens, prostitutes and drunks who will be familiar to fans of Richmond Fontaine's music on albums like 2005's "The Fitzgerald" and the new "Thirteen Cities."

"I guess the working-class kind of characters are what I feel most comfortable with and understand, and frankly I'm most interested in working-class stories," Vlautin said in an interview this week. "Those are my favorite stories to read, because it's the stuff that gives me the most comfort.

"That's what I like about guys like Steinbeck. They always wrote the same kinds of people. They wrote tons of different stories in different areas, but the heart of his people was always the same, and that's something I aspire to."

There are many stories within The Motel Life; Frank Flannigan entertains his brother throughout their road trip with tales that veer from grim to fantastic, and they all feed Vlautin's larger narrative as the brothers hurtle toward their fate in an Elko casino. It seems a natural for the big screen, and in fact, "Babel" and "21 Grams" writer Guillermo Arriaga has bought the movie rights and hired Vlautin to do the screenplay's first draft.

Even so, Vlautin has little interest in screenwriting, preferring the concise writing of rock and country songs. And the novels that were a secret to his friends and fans before The Motel Life was published will probably keep coming.

"I just kind of write [novels] for my own thing, not for any other reason," Vlautin said. "The band can beat you up, being on the road and all, and I wanted to do something that I didn't care if it sold, if people liked it or didn't like it. Just something I could do for myself."

For those of us enraptured with Vlautin's music, The Motel Life is one we're thankful he's willing to share.

Excerpt from The Motel Life

It's hard to explain this or, I guess, even to admit what happened. But just so you know, I never got sick of being with her. I would have married her. I know I'm young but I would have. I would have had kids with her too, even though a person like me probably shouldn't have a kid. But I would have if she'd wanted. At night, if Jerry Lee wasn't around we'd lay naked under the covers. I'd lay on top of her and she'd talk to me, tell me how much she liked me, how much she loved me. She'd do all this while we did it. I never got tired of it. You hear guys like Tommy or this guy I used to work with, Mitch Harrison, and they'd always say being with the same girl was boring. But it was never like that with me. It wasn't like that at all.

When it was summer we'd go down to the Truckee River, and in the evening just after dusk we'd find a deep pool and go swimming together. We could see the city around us, all the people and traffic, the casino lights and noise, but it was like we were all right, that everything was okay, that we were the only two people that mattered, that could see how beautiful the lights of the city were.

Nothing changed between us for a long time, I mean nothing went bad. Almost a whole year we were together. It was the best I'd felt since my mother died, maybe the best I'd ever felt.

Willy Vlautin, above, and second from right at top (with other members of the band Richmond Fontaine), is testing his literary prowess with his first novel, The Motel Life, which arrives in stores Tuesday.