I felt the pressure to let go of music. I was like, 'It's just a hobby. It's just a dream I'm hanging on to, and my kids don't deserve having me have trouble taking care of them.'
— Walker Hayes
All my life, I had loved music and been in choir, and I have a degree in music, but I never planned on doing it as a job. I had a realistic perspective on that. I thought maybe work at a church or be a teacher if you wanted to work in music.
I overuse words. My kids catch me saying stuff. They're like, 'Hey, you say that all the time.' 'Boom' is one of those things.
I play a little bit of everything. I beat on the walls. I whistle. I scream. I go outside and scream because it sounds cool when it's recorded. I play drums on a chair. I snap, clap... just anything to build the track and make it feel like I want it to.
I think we all love the music we listened to as kids the most.
I love to people watch.
I've always felt very insecure being around in-laws, even my siblings - like the guy who made a bad decision, or the guy who would never just fess up that I'm not good enough to make it, or I don't have what it takes.
When I was at Capitol - and this was not Capitol's fault - I was aiming, you know. I would listen to country radio and go, 'What version of me does radio want?'
I think every couple should find an artist that they dig together.
My dad was listening to me noodle around on the guitar in the house and sing, and he was like, 'Man, you're funny, and you sound good when you do that. You should do that at a bar.' I had stage fright, so I was like, 'No, Dad. Leave me alone.'
I'm not a churchgoer.
I love lyrics that are not too clever.
I will go down on my deathbed telling my kids to find songs like 'Don't Take the Girl.'
I love to watch my kids when they don't know I'm watching.
I love clever lyrics.
When my voice isn't doing what I want it to do, it's crushing in the most heavy way possible.
You find yourself writing the truth, because it's like, 'Well, I ain't writing for anyone but myself anyway.'
I've never been afraid to work for money; it's just - it got tough there to work and to write songs at the same time.
I have some lofty goals. I want 'You Broke Up With Me' to go Number One.
I'm one of the lucky artists in Nashville that gets to - I know it sounds cliche - but just write from the heart.
I'm not mad at anybody for that, but when I lost my deal at Capitol, things got rough.
'Check Yes Or No' is a song that I reference in ''90s Country.' George Strait had a very crafty lyric: it tells a story then comes back around. Never gets old.
I may not be doing it right, but I love to get on an elliptical and put the kids on FaceTime in front of me and just get after it. They don't even have to talk to me. They just put the phone on and put it in the living room and one will walk by and be like, 'Hey!'
Somebody told me a long time ago that if everybody loves you, somebody's lying. It is the truest statement you could ever say to somebody.
The last thing I want to do is just be another voice on country music radio.
My wife and I started dating in 11th grade.
My wife is so sweet... she probably gets tired of me calling her with nothing to say, but she's always there for me.
I had a lot of wrong preconceived notions about church-y folks, and I'm bad at judging the messenger, not the message.
I love an imperfect rhyme.
For 12 years, I was playing writer's rounds.
It's cliche, but everybody says, 'We're all one song away,' and it's so true. The difference between me and the guy down the street busking with his guitar case open is just one song.
That's one of the reasons I got into country music: because of the craft of that lyric and how much you could put into three minutes.
Every time I've gone in to create music and felt free and felt like I was actually creating something, it's turned out something I'm really proud of, so I try to keep that as a tradition.
I didn't want a pickup with mud tires. I wanted an old blazer with as many speakers in the back as I could afford. I would even steal them out of my brother's car and pack them in there. I remember sitting in a parking lot and turning my radio up and walking down the street to see how far you could feel it.
One of the most humbling gigs I've ever had was I was paid by a neighbor to go get a dead bird out of her house. She was kind of a high up in the music business, and she knew that I needed cash, and I used to do some yard work for her.
I like artists with a life, where it's not this universal thing anybody could sing. I want them speaking to me in only a way that they can. To me, that's what makes it good.
You create something, and when it doesn't work, it's kind of like people make fun of your kid or something.
'You Broke Up With Me' was fun yet definitely addressed an inner emotion of mine.
I feel like, when we are young, especially, while we are experiencing so many 'firsts,' when songs move us, we recall exactly where we were when we heard them.
I'm in the gym constantly.
Things that you might be embarrassed to tell a group about yourself - honestly, that's probably what the majority of the group is experiencing are those things that you keep quiet in your heart.
Kenny Chesney's music cuts. He gets into those massive ballads like 'There Goes My Life' and 'The Good Stuff' and things like that that just crush you, and delivers them so well. Some of that you can't really put your finger on; it's just magic.
I was a big athlete, but I think a lot of the things I did were because they were my false identity, if you will. They got me acceptance, and they got me that attention that I craved.
Talking about my addiction to alcohol is therapeutic. Most definitely telling everyone about it is as well.
I'm so honored to have so many supporters - from my peers to the industry to country radio - on this crazy journey with me. You all have absolutely changed my life.
People might get mad at my style or my delivery and say it's not country. But the country music that brought me to Nashville? Man, I will always have that on a pedestal.
For years, I wrote songs to try to get cuts or try to have hits or try to appease a label or to be famous. I was learning a lot of valuable tools about structure and how to articulate. I was getting really good at that.
What keeps you in this business is the thought that maybe tomorrow will be different.
I actually had publishers that would encourage me at times to keep it simpler, not pack in so much information, but I'm a fan of songs and movies and books that the second time you read them, you find more stuff that you missed, so I like to pay attention to that detail.
When I'm in the studio, I'm very cautious about it because if there's one thing that can destroy music being made, it's any sort of agenda, expectation and/or schedule, or any of that.
