We caught up with Walker Hayes ahead of his performance at Introducing Nashville at Cadogan Hall – alongside Danielle Bradberry, Rachel Wammack and Travis Denning – to talk all about his new music coming in December, the process behind writing ‘Don’t Let Her’ and his love for 90s country. The full interview will be available on the podcast on Spotify or iTunes.
How’s ‘Introducing Nashville‘ been for you so far – seems like we keep drawing you back into the UK?
Everything’s great, everything’s great. We’re having a great trip, my career is at a cool place, kind of on cruise control right now. We have some new projects coming out in December. We actually go to Australia in 4 weeks with my whole family, so taking the kids and the wife, so there’s no calm happening during that so it’s going to be nuts.
Your new single is out right now – one of my favourite tracks from this year – ‘Don’t Let Her.’ It’s absolutely stunning, and it’s definitely not something that people really talk about that much… You wrote it in Glasgow?
Yeah honestly I was just missing them, it was such a weird thing, the song morphed as I was writing it. At first I was just listing specifics about Laney.
I saw the Instagram post you put up the other day, and it was really interesting to see where the song started and where it ended up.
I realised as I was writing it – it’s weird I thought I was talking to her as I was writing it but when I read all those things – I realised I was talking to somebody else. Then I accidentally said ‘and you know if she misses me…’ I was talking about being over here, not being gone, and then a lightbulb just went on and I thought ‘man, people lose the loves of their life’ and once I said that ‘if she misses me, don’t let her.’ I thought ‘I know everyone has thought this and had this conversation with someone they love but I’ve never heard it in a song.’
What was her reaction to the song? I can imagine it must have been really emotional for her to hear…
She got sad in a good way, she responded in a text that she was teary-eyed just reading it, so when I got home I finished it with Shane Macanally and Andrew DeRoberts. Honestly I didn’t think ‘hey we wrote a single.’
Well I can imagine you often don’t… Speaking about the evolution of a song, do you find that often happens how much a song evolves?
Oh yeah totally, that’s the great thing about co-writing and even writing alone. A lot of times I just blurt out my emotion and then as I look back at it later, I’m able to take out things that aren’t really necessary to really hone in on what I’m trying to say. Then also as you’re walking in a room with great writers like Shane and Andrew, they’ll be like ‘hey are you going here’ and I’ll be like no and that’s awesome.
You guys have such a good songwriting chemistry as well and have written so many tracks together. Was that an instant thing or did that evolve over time?
Songwriting buddies or co-writers are like a marriage, I mean sometimes you just don’t fit with someone. They can be great and you’re great but when you get in a room it’s just not magic but Shane and I, I feel like we have a similar appreciation for ideas that hurt a little bit. There’s a little bit of pain and ‘hey everybody else is thinking this but they’re not saying it because it’s a little bit weird and so we kind of ventured toward those.’
You need people who can match you in terms of emotional vulnerability. You’re now doing a new YouTube series with your wife that definitely exhibits a newly vulnerable side to you, was that scary? You’re so used to revealing an emotional side to the crowd through your music, but this is a very different approach.
I don’t mind speaking, Laney for sure that was new for her, she even told me when we were recording, ‘it’s one thing for you to be vulnerable, but I’m nervous as this is about me and I hope people like me.’ I was like ‘welcome to my world, that’s what it is every day.’ Honestly, we’ve been through a lot in the past two years, my career took a huge turn when we lost our seventh kid – her name was Oakley – when we woke up from that it made me really reassess my priorities, why I was doing what I was doing, why I sacrifice time with my family and kids to come out here. What it came down to was, I just really want to share our life and our tragedies and that’s why I write about the stuff that I write about, in hopes that it might wrap it’s arms around someone and say ‘hey, you’re not alone.’ Laney has courageously joined me, she doesn’t sit on the sidelines, she does those things. While those are funny – The Hayes of Our Lives – we really hope that they will bless people and that they will watch and go ‘hey you don’t have to have it all figured out.’ What I love about those is that they are so off the cuff and unedited, just like the video for ‘Don’t Let Her’ just raw.
The single last year was ’90s Country.’ You and Shane clearly have such a love for that era of country music and we all do look back at that period as such a heyday of the genre. What do you think we could wish we could bring back from that time?
Ooh, I don’t think we could ever bring it back, but I think it had a lot to do with timing, where you got music. I mean CDs came out then, we all went from tapes to CDs and CDs were exciting and cool. Stars were more magnificent then, I don’t know why. I mean nowadays even the biggest stars pale in comparison to me. I mean it might have been the age.
Well we do talk about live events on TV only having four channels, so audiences were more restricted and bigger on those channels…
I mean just growing up, I remember athletes, I remember country stars were just massive, and now it’s a little more watered down. I think everybody is just on the similar playing field and there’s not as many mega stars. I don’t know whether that will come back, who knows. I will say that if there’s any music that’s going to remain on recurrent the longest, I think it’s 90s country. You’re going to hear ‘Chattahoochee’ fifty years from now, but will you hear ‘You Broke Up With Me’ I don’t think so, I hope so but…
People writing in 30 years from now a song about 10s Country, what would you want people to remember about you and your music?
I want ‘You Broke Up With Me’ to stick around, I love that breakout song for me. I want ‘Don’t Let Her’ to succeed and do well. I hope I have a lane where I can just expand country a little bit, I’m not trying to change it. I tried to mimic people and it just didn’t work, so I hope there’s a lane for me.
I’m pretty sure there is. This year you did your first headline tour in the States. How did that feel going from the support slot to the headliner slot, it must be a lot of pressure?
Yeah it is, every night you go ‘man I hope this place is full’, you’re more tired, you’re playing later. Also, you basically have two shows a day, because you have a VIP experience. Now I will say that those VIP experiences are life-changing – there’s a 100 people and I sing a couple of songs but really I just talk and answer questions and stuff and I get to know them. And then yeah, 75 minute full band set, when you’re done with that each day you’re just exhausted. When there were four or five in a row, we were a little worn out, it is a lot of pressure. I took it for granted being an opening act, thinking ‘hey I just show up.’ I also enjoyed having openers, that was fun. There were two or maybe three nights on the headline tour, where I literally on stage thought ‘hey this is what we always dreamed of doing.’ There was one night in Boston and we had about 2,000 people and I just thought this is getting out of hand. I hope that continues, but honestly I’m just grateful that right now this is my job and I’m going to keep working and doing it the best that I can.
In terms of new music, you mentioned that some will be coming out in December, will that be along the same vein as ‘Don’t Let Her’?
No, this is wild… We have a song called ‘Black Sheep’ that if I had 100 dollars I would bet it all that this song is either going to kill my career or my life is going to be a lot different next year. We’re shooting for the stars. This song, I am obsessed with it, my kids they think it’s —
…Well you’ve won your kids over, that’s half the battle.
I know. Most of the time I come over and they’re like ‘uh, that’s cool,’ they’re used to it and they love ‘Don’t Let Her’ but this song my thirteen year old, who’s so cool, she lost her mind, so it’s going to be the title track to a group of eight songs that we’re going to put out. The title track of the album is called ‘Black Sheep.’ There’s a song about my dad, there’s a song called ‘Wish I Could Drink’ which is about my battle with alcoholism – I’ve been sober for four years, sometimes it’s easy, sometimes it’s not – there’s a song about my song Chapel, there’s a song about my hometown Mobile.
You’ve got to make your way through songs for all the kids now – you’ve got one for Chapel now and one for Beckett.
(laughs) Yeah, we’re going to have to do all the kids! Honestly, I’m just so grateful to be on a team. When you hear ‘Black Sheep’ you’ll smile about this interview, because you’ll be like ‘he told me it was ambitious, and it is.’ So yeah, sonically I’ve never heard anything like it and I don’t know where it will live – it might just be a streaming thing.
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Final Few
Would you rather give up songwriting or performing?
Performing.
Record you couldn’t live without if you were stuck on a desert island?
Probably, Harry Chapin’s Live Album, which is an obscure one that probably only I know and then John Mayer’s Continuum, it goes on and on…
Which record are you listening to on repeat at the moment?
Mmm… Lizzo, it’s a jam.
Do you have a pre-show ritual?
Nah, I just try to calm down because I get so excited and if I don’t pace myself, I’m out of breath and I don’t have what it takes.
Complete the sentence…
Music is… life-saving.
Country music is… medicine for the heart.
Walker Hayes is… glad to be hear (laughs)
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