Walker Hayes
west stage
saturday 5:55 & 8:00
WalkerHayes.com
boom. Walker Hayes uses the word often. “It just felt
right,” the breakout country singer says of the title for his
highly-anticipated new album. It’s a celebratory sort of
thing, he’ll tell you. A new radio station adds his buzzing
single, “You Broke Up With Me.” boom. He links up for
a national tour with Thomas Rhett. boom. That rowdy
performance at CMA Fest –the one that had the crowd
singing every word of his music back to him? boom. It
wasn’t always this way. Not by a long shot.
A confessional, no-nonsense singer-songwriter, and one
whose voice and perspective brims with relatability, Hayes
is a tried-and-true Nashville standout. Conversational,
honest and real in song, Hayes’ forthcoming debut album
is the voice of a grinder laying it bare.
And if the Mobile, Alabama native has learned anything
over more than a decade spent in Nashville, it’s that he
can only be himself. His music is entirely his own, even if
it’s not always pretty. “As an artist that was so freeing,” he
says of the flexibility from his label, the recently revamped
Monument Records.
“When I didn’t settle for anything but the one-hundred
percent truth in a song,” Hayes continues, “listeners were
intrigued the most.” This father of six moved to Nashville
on a hunch 12 years ago and struggled to make it work.
He’d been dropped from multiple record labels and admits
there was a time he wondered how he’d feed his growing
family. Not until he began peeling back the layers to his
own life and subsequently documenting it in song did
everything fall into place.
18
The son of a real estate broker, Hayes loved music —
piano recitals, noodling on his guitar — but figured he’d
stick around home and log a normal 9-5. However, after
constant needling from his father, Hayes finally agreed
to perform at a local bar, if only to get dad off his back. It
was a tiny stage, he remembers with a laugh — “a small
crowd, but there was applause after my songs” — and it felt
incredible. “For some reason, when I left that show that
night I knew right then that’s what I wanted to do,” Hayes
recalls. He called his wife, asked her if she wanted to move
to Nashville, and she said yes without hesitation.
In due-time he linked up with ace songwriter and
GRAMMY award-winning producer Shane McAnally who
signed Hayes to his SMACKSongs publishing company
and soon released two volumes of Hayes’ music for free
online. As if without warning, the music quickly attracted a
massive swell of popularity.
Hayes isn’t one to predict what comes next. All he’ll tell
you is that he’ll be heeding his own advice because, hey,
if nothing else, it’s gotten him to this point. “I started just
trusting what felt right and what moved me and a lot of
special songs came out,” he says of boom. For Hayes, then,
going forward the process remains the same.
Hit Songs
• “You Broke Up With Me”
• “Beautiful”
• “Beer in the Fridge”
Winstock Country Music Festival | June 8 & 9, 2018