Country singer Hayes Carll has an approach to songwriting that has fans and fellow musicians gravitating in his direction and with that comes a dedicated fan base.
Folks will be able to see what he’s all about when he performs on Wednesday at the Space Ballroom in Hamden. The show starts at 8 p.m. with Austin-based country-rock artist Jonathan Terrell kicking things off.
Carll and I had a chance to talk ahead of his performance about his latest full-length record, other musicians and bands covering his songs, and how connection is possible no matter the location.
RD: Back in August, you released a new album titled “We’re Only Human”. As one could probably tell from the title, the theme centers on how nobody is perfect with the lyrics focusing on the strengths, vulnerabilities, fears, emotions, doubts, struggles, confusion and desires that we all live with. What was the spark that created the inspiration for this type of record? Was it just observing how humanity is treating each other these days, or is it something else?
HC: I think it started with myself. I just kept running into the same walls in life, over and over again. I got tired of it and I didn’t want to keep on having the same discussions and the same battles with myself 10 years from now or five years from now or even a year from now that I’ve been having for so long. That was the genesis of it, sitting down and trying to take stock in what was working and what wasn’t.
RD: Makes total sense. When it came to the recording process, did you go into a studio and work with a producer? What was the experience like laying the tracks down?
HC: I recorded it in Austin at a studio called The Finishing School, and I co-produced it with a friend of mine named Gordy Quist, who is in a band called Band of Heathens. I actually have a side project with them called Hayes & The Heathens, and we had done a record at the studio nine months prior. I had a high comfort level with Gordy in the studio and it felt like the right place and to do it with. We set it up there and we brought in a lot of friends, guys from my own band, guys that I’ve played with in the past and members of the Heathens. It was a collection of folks that I had a high comfort level with and we were super musically competent and capable.
RD: Along with the release of the full-length, you also put out some live performance videos of you performing a few songs off of it along with telling a short story behind each one. Where were those performances filmed and who has the idea to present them in this sort of way?
HC: I wish I had some clever and insightful response to that, but basically, my management just asked me to figure out a way to promote this stuff, so these are things that I’m doing all the time. I like to talk about the music regularly, so we just started filming it and putting it out. Some songs don’t need an explanation or I don’t think there’s anything to be gained by explaining it, but with this being a more personal record, I felt like sharing where I was coming from and what my intention was and goals were with the music. It might help with the experience of people listening to it, and there’s also something about playing live that’s very different from the studio. For most of my career, that’s been the heart of what I do, taking these songs out and playing them in front of people.
That connection and that energy is very different from when you’re in the studio or sitting at home writing, so I always enjoy sharing that with people. Capturing that and putting it out there in different ways, either live, recorded or in process, is interesting to me.
RD: I thought the videos were really cool. You’ve had your songs covered by a wide range of artists including Kenny Chesney, Lee Ann Womack and Brothers Osborne among others. What are your thoughts when you have a fellow musician do a rendition of a tune you wrote? Do you view it as a high compliment or do you view it in a different light?
HC: To me, it’s the ultimate compliment and validation, it’s very humbling. I started out probably around the time I was 12 when I thought that I wanted to be a songwriter or write in some capacity. Having a career as a recording artist or a touring musician, those are things that I didn’t expect to happen, but it’s been somewhat of a very pleasant surprise over the last 25 years to be able to do that. The thing that I always thought would be the basis or the center for everything I did was writing songs. When other people look at it as just the song itself and think that it’s worthy of recording or putting on their record, it’s such a great feeling for me.
At its most basic sense, when I think of myself and my dreams as an artist, it started with songwriting, so it’s just very validating when people think a song of mine is worthy of recording. Especially when they’re incredibly talented or successful artists, it’s special to me.
RD: It also gets your material out to a different audience who may not be familiar with your work. Being from Houston, what are your thoughts on coming up north to perform at the Space Ballroom? When it comes to performing in the Northeast, do you ever have different experiences with audiences around here than you do either in the South or out on the West Coast?
HC: At different times during different parts of my career, there’s certainly been somewhat of a difference playing a dance hall in Texas versus a club or listening room in other parts of the country. I’ve been doing this for quite a while and I’ve been coming up North for over two decades. At the end of the day, it’s just trying to find a connection with people through music, and whether that’s a listening room or a dance hall or a honky tonk or a rock club either in Spain or Oklahoma or Connecticut, it’s all the same to me. There’s different nuances, vibes and energies to certain crowds, and sometimes that’s based on geography, but at the end of the day, I feel like music is music, connecting through that is the goal, and you can do that wherever you are in the world.