Return of the country rebels
Ward Hayden and co reconvene with new-found maverick attitude
“WE have held on to the name Girls Guns & Glory for probably too long. Things have changed in the 12 years since naming the band and believe me, no one wants to change the name of a band they’ve spent 12 years building.”
These are the thoughts of Ward Hayden, now of Ward Hayden & The Outliers.
“When I first set out to make my own music I was deeply inspired by one of the greatest singing cowboys of them all: Gene Autry,” he added.
“In addition to the band name coming to me in a vision, I believe it was also inspired by all the Autry westerns I had been watching at that time. Girls, guns and glory were the theme of many of his movies and television shows.”
Towards the end of its tenure, Ward and the lads began to feel that the name Girls Guns & Glory had become offensive to some and an impediment to moving the band forward. They felt that today's highly charged political climate combined with the proliferation of gun violence had made the name a lightning rod for some and offensive to many.
“We never intended for that to be the case, but times change and we feel the time is right to brand a new name,” they said at the time.
“We have always considered ourselves outliers in the world of country music,” they said when announcing the thinking behind the new moniker.
“We continue to have the same mission we’ve always had – to make heartfelt country music and rock ‘n’ roll, to connect with fans through shared experiences in venues and through recordings, and to continue moving forward, living life in search of the moments worth singing about.”
Hayden’s foray into country music and early rock ‘n’ roll began with a fateful borrowing of a few of his mother’s cassettes.
When asked, Hayden remarks: “I was doing these long drives and there was nothing appealing to me on the radio. I was 20 years old at the time and had been through my first experiences with heartbreak and loss. When I put some of these cassettes on the player in my Oldsmobile Delta Eighty-Eight, all I could think was, “this is everything I’ve been searching for.”
It took a few years after that to get GG&G up and running, and with the same line-up as now – Josh Kiggans (drums),
Paul Dilley (upright and electric bass, vocals), and Cody Nilsen (lead guitar, pedal steel) – the band cut its teeth the old fashioned way: on the road and on the stage. Since their formation they’ve barnstormed far beyond their Boston hometown, playing honky-tonks, beer joints and more recently concert venues throughout the US and Europe and amassed a loyal legion of fans along the way.
The media have noticed too, with Rolling Stone suggesting they are a ‘modern-day Buddy Holly plus Dwight Yoakam divided by the Mavericks’.
The experiences the band has gone through on the road have led to a broader songwriting perspective and also conditioned them into a well-oiled machine.
Their love for early rock ‘n’ roll, true country, raw blues and pretty much any kind of authentic American music branded them quickly as anomalous… and electrifying. The song topics run the whole gamut of love, hope, work-a-day life, the grind and the results of those experiences on the body and mind.
Hailing from Boston in north-east America, they have always been outliers in the world of country music, often joking they were born out of time and out of place. But, they have stayed true to the sounds that inspired them and the genuine life experiences they’ve gone through.
The band’s debut release under its new name, is a seven track EP entitled Can’t Judge a Book, which is a collection of songs by other songwriters - including Chuck Berry, Nick Lowe, and The Fountains of Wayne – that have inspired their journey, plus one original written by the band.
The original Naturally Crazy is an ode to the state of mind needed to be a touring musician, complete with the ‘highest of highs, followed up with your soul in the dirt’.
With just six tracks to make an initial judgment on the quartet’s new format, my initial feelings are what they do well they do extremely well – check out Hackensack by Fountains of Wayne and Nick Lowe’s What’s So Funny (About Peace, Love and Understanding) – but there are also, in my opinion a couple of misguided inclusions, primarily Elvis Presley’s Viva Las Vegas.
Overall though, this is a new dawn for the GG&G boys and a promising start.
What is more than promising though is the fact that they are supporting Dan Baird & Homemade Sin at Sala El Loco in Valencia on November 8.
Two belting acts on the same bill… fill your (cowboy) boots.