This Thursday, Walker Hayes will make an appearance as part of Destination Country’s Happy (Half) Hour. Here, we interview Walker about his recent release – Country Stuff – about how the pandemic has affected his songwriting, collaborating with Lori McKenna and Jake Owen and the success of Fancy Like.
Hi Walker! It’s nice, to be honest, to hear about life going back to normal, how have the live shows been?
The first couple were a little weird. We just hadn’t done it in forever. I said in the mic a few times, ‘I don’t remember how to do this. I said you’ve got to help me out.’ By the fifth or sixth show, it began to feel normal in a good way, not a boring way, I was able to appreciate it and not try so hard. I felt like we were rehearsing for those first three or four shows, but by the fifth or sixth one, it began to feel pretty magic.
You’ve definitely made the most out of the pandemic. With this EP, you continue to always create your own fresh and unique sound. Obviously you’ve also been able to spend time with your family, so do you think that energy has been brought into this project?
Oh, without a doubt, the biggest hit on the EP right now is about my family, it’s about us, that’s how we do fancy you know? I never would have written that song, if I was on the road, going from big stage to big stage on a tour bus. I mean, I think for me personally, I am most effective when I’m near my family, I can’t explain it, I just feel the most creative, free and most rested. I’m a family-trovert – whatever that means – I just perform better when I’m able to be with my family and my team.
if you’ve been on the road, you wouldn’t been able to have that TikTok with your daughter.
Honestly, if I’d been on the road, I don’t even know if I would have done TikTok. I mean that was completely my daughter. We’ve been doing those during COVID.
I guess it helps to have her teaching you?
She knows, especially with the dancing part, she helps me choreograph those things, she’ll be like ‘nah, dad don’t do that dance.’ My daughter Lela and I, we bonded so much on that one – she’s 15 and she’s learning to drive, so we do that a lot together. On TikTok, we just do dances every now and then and to share this success with her and not do this alone. I mean that’s so much more fun to share with my family.
It must be nice to share your journey with your family and have them be a part of the journey.
 It’s been a blast. I mean, it’s just been a crazy past two weeks, it has been wild. I try not to watch the charts and stuff, but from what the team tells me, it’s this explosion like no other.
I mean, we’re loving it over here and can’t wait to see it live. Obviously, the title track is such a huge one and it’s very much a full circle moment for you. When did Jake come to be a part of that track?
So Jake and I became buddies back when I was working at Costco stocking produce. I had a song that he cut and he was going to put on his album, but it just didn’t make the album. Now, most artists would have just left that – they don’t owe anybody a phone call, it just happens as part of the business. Jake called me and said he was sorry and he explained it. He was like, ‘Man, this song is great, it just doesn’t fit on the album’. I was so thankful that he made that call and we became friends. Ever since then, I just thought that he’d be a good guy to collab with, if he still wants to collaborate and Shane agreed. We presented the song to Jake and he said, ‘Do you want me to cut this or do you want me to collaborate because either way, I’m in?’ I was like, ‘Man, I’m gonna put it on my EP, let’s have some fun in the studio. You can sing a line or two.’ It just naturally happened and I love Jake’s music. I feel like he has a really traditional swag.
Both of you have such different sounds that both draw on the history of country music, but also completely reinvent it in your own unique ways, which I think is why it’s so cool hearing your voices together on that track.
It’s neat for me to hear us together, but he was so gracious. I will say that Jake has always been so encouraging to me, like no matter what walls or barriers my songs and music have come up against in Nashville, he’s always been very vocal through email and text, saying ‘I’m so proud of you, I love this, keep doing what you’re doing!’ That’s unique. I’m so happy because I don’t think it’ll be the last time Jake and I collab, that’s for sure.
Another person that you worked with on the project was Lori McKenna, who is probably one of my favourite songwriters in Nashville. That song, ‘Briefcase’ it just got to me, it’s such a special song about your father. Can you talk about that song – it must have a double meaning being a father yourself?
Yeah, one of my favourite things that I love about my family in general – I’ll probably get emotional talking about it. We lost my dad in March this year and my family’s not perfect – we got a lot of crazy – but there’s no BS. My family, we can say things to each other that you just need to say and there’s not a lot of pandering. With my dad, I could send him a song and he’d be like, ‘it’s not my favourite type of music.’ I always appreciated him and valued his opinion because of that.
I knew he was proud of me and I knew he loved me even if he wasn’t gonna put it on repeat, you know. When Lori and I wrote that day, I was like, ‘I just want to be honest, and say how I feel about my dad’. We wrote that in November or December, so I didn’t know my dad was about to die – it was just really divine timing. A lot of times I can get so specific, where maybe somebody is like, ‘ah, I don’t really get that, but it makes me cry’. I think a lot of people can really relate to the sentiment, and when you’re a kid, you’re like, ‘Ah, man, parents’. Then, when you grow up, you’re like, ‘Oh, I get it now.’
There’s no way that song comes out like it does without Lori McKenna. She has this way of getting things out – it’s almost like a psychiatrist. I talk a ton and I can tell, she would be like, ‘Oh, he’s getting warmer’. She would be like, ‘keep saying, keep talking about that’. She knows how to pull it out and then if you get stuck for a second, she knows how to keep that room moving. She was so gracious and so funny, she’s saying, ‘I’m not that good at harmonies.’ I don’t know she sent it back and said ‘you can tell me if it’s not good, just don’t use it’. I was like, ‘all we’re doing is turning it up Lori.’ It was amazing, every time we got the mix of the song back, we were all like ‘Can we hear Lori more?’ It would be a dream come true, if there was an award show where I could sing that live with her and just a guitar. I would give anything to do that.
I think we spoke about this back in London, but on ‘Don’t Let Her’ you have this unique ability to constantly reinvent the way you talk about your wife, like on ‘Make You Cry.’ Having been married for so many years, how difficult is it to keep finding ways to talk about her in a different way every time?
‘Cry’ is like an inside joke between me and her. I’m super emotional and whatever’s on my heart, you just see it on my face and my whole body expresses it. She is very even and steady, just very stoic. It’s always a challenge, but I love the challenge of getting her emotional – ‘Don’t Let Her’ got her good.
It’s funny you’re shedding light on it with your question because I don’t just want to write a love song where she’s like, ‘Oh, that’s pretty’. She expects something unique because she’ll be like ‘you’re saying what you think I want to hear.’ I’m not going to lie I think everybody feels this way in their relationships, but I just feel like we’ve got something different, it’s unique to us – it’s the same but it’s different, it’s just so natural and I wish I had met her sooner. That’s how I feel about my wife and I love that challenge, if there’s a love song, how can I thread this to where I really hit those feelings.
Obviously, with this project is’ exploding and doing all the right things. Do you know what the next kind of thing is going to be? Are you going to be focusing on the live side of things for the rest of the year?
Yeah, ‘Fancy Like’ is going to radio now. I am so excited for the momentum, it’s a giant song over here right now and I hope it will be my first number one on radio. Honestly, I would love ‘Country Stuff’ to go to number one, it’s fun, I love singing it. I mean we’re just really enjoying how ‘Fancy Like’ is drawing masses to the whole thing. I think people are like ‘wow, I love ‘Briefcase,’ I love ‘Craig’ and ‘Don’t Let Her.” A lot of people are finding me through that song and they’re like what they’re finding.
I’m sure we’ll have a tour, probably in the fall, but I’m just making more music – there’s more where that came. That’s what I’m doing this morning, working on what we wrote yesterday, getting the creative juices flowing. My team is very emotional. I mean, they have poured their lives into me and my family. I think at times, when you believe in something that’s not quite popping how you thought it would, it gets emotional for everybody. Shane, for example, that guy has believed in me 100% since I was stocking shelves at Costco, so for him to watch the world react to something like he always thought they should, Â it’s emotional.
It shows you’re surrounded by the right people, the people who are invested. That’s when you know that you’ve got the right people in your corner.
I honestly think that Shane would have gone broke trying to get the world to listen to my stuff. He has this weird obligation to my family and me, to a point where sometimes I’m like, ‘dude, you’re injuring yourself for believing in me so much.’ I’m so grateful that I ran into him five years ago and I’m so glad, I hope he becomes more of a billionaire because of this.
Here’s hoping! We’d love to  see that happen. Thank you so much Walker for taking the time to chat with all of us today.
Thank you! I’ll see y’all next week.
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