Stories

Hayden

In late 2004 I had the pleasure of playing two shows with Canadian troubadour Hayden.

Elsewhere on this site, in some other long meandering story I have told, there is a description of how myself, a girl named Alice and on occasions some of our friends used to go record shopping once a week in the Sydney CBD. (I think it’s in the Pernice story in this section?). This one time in either 1996 or 1997 we were in HMV in the Pitt Street Mall, and we saw some bargain tables out with some pretty handy cd’s on display. I picked up an album called ‘Everything I Long For’, which had a faded photograph of suburbia on the front and song titles such as ’My Parent’s House’ and ’Driveway’. I think I paid $2 for it brand new. I really enjoyed that album for a long time. It was by a guy named Hayden.

Flash forward to 2004 and I am hanging out at my friend Aaron’s place, discussing the merits of Stuart Raper as the Sharks coach. Talk turns to rock and he tells me his label is releasing the new Hayden album. I kinda scratched my head and said “That’s not the same Hayden that released that killer album like eight years ago?”. Aaron replies “Yeah, he has actually done at least two since then plus the live album”. So that was great I thought, that Hayden was obviously still around and productive. Shows you how hard it can be to keep up in this world eh? So Aaron gave me two songs from the forthcoming album and they were phenomenal. I finally got a copy of ‘Elk Lake Serenade’ and it is all-time in my opinion. ‘Kill Bear’ is just one of the greatest tracks written in the history of music.

So, as I stated at the top of this, Hayden came to play in Australia for the first time and he played the best shows. I was his driver for the first Sydney show and straightaway it was clear to see this guy was a legend. Straight-up, normal, friendly and sweet. I also got to play his second show and in Melbourne too with him. It was a blast.

He said Australians make fun of his accent and the way he says ‘aboot’ instead of ‘about’ even though he maintains he hardly ever says it like that. He also said we were making fun of the way Canadians say ‘Eh’ a lot, even though he doesn’t. He then picked up on the fact that I say it more than he does. The shows were mainly based around his first and last records which made most people, including myself, very happy. This is how nice Hayden is.

The last Australian show was the second Sydney one at the Sandringham Hotel. It was on Tuesday December 27th 2004 and came a day after the Tsunami tragedy. It was such an early stage of reporting that the number of deaths wasn’t even a quarter of what it would unfortunately become. That afternoon at soundcheck he said the benefits from the show would go to a charity for the victims. This was days and days before all the high profile acts and industry people would dedicate their time and money and I am not saying this makes him better than them because he did it first…I am saying that it was a little known fact that an indie touring trouby with a big heart raised $2000. Bless him.

Hayden rules.
www.hardwoodrecords.com

Sam 2005