Scituate's Ward Hayden pays tribute to legacy of Hank Williams

About the time Ward Hayden got his driver’s license, his musical obsessions were taking an increasingly important role in his life. His pals at Scituate High took notice and didn’t want to catch a ride with him as readily as they might with some other classmates.

“My musical interests always made me an outlier in my group of friends,” Hayden said with a laugh from his Scituate digs last weekend. “From the beginning ... my immediate inspirations were Chuck Berry and Hank Williams. Those were the two artists I wanted to craft my sound around, the music that most resonated with me. I wanted whatever music I made to be rooted in what they had done, and it took over my life. I was obsessed.”

“It got so nobody in high school wanted to ride with me anymore,” Hayden added. “They’d be telling me I was listening to my grandparents’ music. In those days, my classmates were listening to Eminem or groups like Third Eye Blind. Nobody wanted to hear the music I was playing in my car.”

All these years later, Hayden won’t say he’s had the last laugh, but he has had a commendable career as the leader and singer/songwriter for Ward Hayden and The Outliers (previously known as Girls, Guns and Glory), and has a handful of superb albums that took country-rock into the 21^st century, and also brought him and his quartet literally around the world before adoring audiences.

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On December 30 Hayden and the band will continue what has become an annual tradition, performing "A Celebration of the Life, Legacy, and Music of Hank Williams” at the Narrows Center in Fall River. The event is meant to commemorate the date of Williams’ death, when he famously died in the back seat of a car driving him to a New Year’s Day gig in 1953. Fiddler Jason Anick joins the quartet as a guest.

“These shows had their start in 2009, when Billy Beard sent me an invite to a Session Americana show,” Hayden said. “He knew my interest in Hank and suggested why not try some Hank at the show. It was a little intimidating, to be honest, because I feel like his music is the top of the mountain. But I felt such pure joy playing his music that night, that it became something we began doing every year. We work on the sets every year and I don’t think you can ever get to everything he wrote. But this year we are doing some songs we’ve never done before and this show is being recorded.”

Hayden & the Outliers (then still known as GG&G) released “A Tribute to Hank Williams, Live!” in 2015 on Sony’s RED label, so the challenge this time is do tunes that were not on that record. In all, between The Outliers and GG&G, Hayden and company have released nine albums, the most recent being 2021’s “Free Country.” The quartet expects to release a new album of all original music, titled “South Shore,” early in 2023, with the live Williams album slated for fall release.

We mentioned that in the long-ago past when we were an aspiring guitarist, a Hank Williams songbook was a revelation. Here was a collection of songs everybody knew andh required only a few basic chords ‒ the genuine embodiment of rock’s “three chords and the truth” mantra.

“That’s true, but his music can also be very confusing,” Hayden said. “A lot of the songs are that same type of three chords, but the way he did them made it complicated, just the way he might hang on a chord a bit longer, little subtle things like that. He added these little variations on a theme, so that it is often harder than it appears. I still get a little twisted around working on these songs of his, and still question if I can really pull it off, performing his music the way he did. But I also have found that when you do find the right chords and way to play them, the lyrics really fit so well.”

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The genius of the Hank Williams (Senior) songs is how deceptively simple they are, yet how they are able to resonate with so many different people and situations. That can be true of all pop music, but with Williams it is especially remarkable, as he was a simple man of limited means, without much education, and still maturing ‒ he was 29 when he died.

“I saw an American Masters show about Hank on TV, where Merle Kilgore ‒ who co-wrote 'Ring of Fire' ‒ told about how he asked Hank how he did it, how he wrote songs with such impact,” Hayden said. “Hank said his inspiration came mainly from his own life and things he’d seen or done. But he also said he read a lot of comic books and would also draw from the plots and events in them. If you look at some of those old 1950s comics, like ‘Archie,’ their stories do have these sharply detailed situations where you can kind of see where Hank could’ve used them.”

Once Hayden himself got out and playing music and forming bands, he found that the Boston music scene might have seemed like a tough place for music like his to prosper, but in fact it was supportive.

"At first, we might’ve been told we were too country for the rock clubs in the city, but within about two years of performing anywhere we could, those same places were very accepting. They were essential to us being able to build an audience.”

Williams suffered from congenital back problems and despite a constant effort to find relief, usually battled severe pain by dulling his senses with alcohol or drugs. That led to his early demise of course and no doubt contributed to his music’s impact ‒ it was based on his real pain and his underdog status, no matter how famous and successful he got.

“His story is so tragic but also one of the most incredible tales of triumph and tragedy in American music history,” Hayden said “It can’t be easy to have your music be so haunted and raw, but that’s also why it has stood the test of time.  He also paved the way in other aspects; no artist had ever gotten that big, that fast. It had to be hard to handle how quickly he rose, fell and was battling his way back up. Not many people in Hank’s life were looking out for the person and most treated him as a commodity.”

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“Hank had spina bifida, it turned out, and it was never treated properly,” Hayden said. “Going into a surgery for it, he told them to either fix his back or let him die. He used a lot of different things to numb his physical and emotional pain. We can only speculate if he could’ve been helped today. We’ve seen artists like Sturgill Simpson and Jason Isbell embrace sobriety and become much more successful than they ever were before. It can also be easy to claim that Hank dying in the back seat of that car helped make him bigger than ever and it became a music business cliché that claimed many more. But hopefully it still serves as a warning too, and today we see lots of traveling musicians who are very health-conscious and take care of themselves.”

And for folks who just hate country music, we’ll add that speculation that Hank Sr. would’ve gravitated towards rock if he had survived is valid. His music permeates so much of today’s music, from rockabilly to punk rock, and he was a master of confessional songwriting.

“Oh, I agree with that,” Hayden said. “Move It On Over’ and ‘Moanin’ the Blues’ are tunes you can see as early rock, and he was immersed in the blues too. His music was all about the formative stages of rockabilly, and it was too bad he was gone before rock ‘n’ roll came on the scene. Hank was definitely doing stuff you couldn’t find anywhere else and bringing the music into new territory.”

Hayden & the Outliers have been busy in the studio polishing up that new album. In March and April, they’re touring Scandinavia. They’ll be back Stateside for the album release, and then have a long European tour slated for the fall. It makes you wonder if some of those old Scituate High friends now wish they’d hooked a ride with Hayden back in the day?

“Every year I run into someone around town or get a message from someone from those days 20 years ago, who finally took the time to listen to this music and found it did resonate for them,” Hayden said. “It’s kind of funny, but it doesn’t bother me. Everybody’s looking for the truth.”

Upcoming gigs: Dalton & The Sheriffs, Aldous Collins Band

THURSDAY: Speaking of country-rockers bred on the South Shore, the fine gents in Dalton & The Sheriffs headline The Sinclair. Trampled By Turtles' Americana stew at The House of Blues. The Adam Ezra Group plays a style made of almost everything, but you'll be dancing at The Narrows Center. Piebald and Cave-In rock Royale. Madeline Peyroux' "Careless Love Forever" tour hits City Winery. 

FRIDAY: Get down with George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic at the House of Blues. Booty Vortex reprises disco at Soundcheck Studios. Caspian rocks The Sinclair. Note: Another Tequila Sunrise's fine Eagles tribute has sold out at The Spire Center.

NEW YEAR'S EVE: Wear comfy shoes to the House of Blues where the Aldous Collins Band kicks off a reggae dancefest, followed by Mighty Mystic, Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad, and The Elovators. The Harbormen come ashore at The C-Note. Lake Street Dive gets Roadrunner hopping. Soundcheck Studios offers a three-fer of local songsmiths, with Valerie Barretto, Birch Swart, and Rob Bellamy. Folk-rockers Barefoot Truth are reunited after a three-year hiatus, and raising heck at City Winery. The Glitter Boys shine at The Sinclair. Gimme Gimme Disco gets all loose-limbed at Brighton Music Hall.

Ward Hayden & The Outliers

When: 8 p.m. Dec. 30

Where: The Narrows Center, 16 Anawan St., Fall River

Tickets: $28 in advance or $30 at the door

Info: 508-324-1926 or narrowscenter.org

This article originally appeared on The Patriot Ledger: Scituate's Ward Hayden pays tribute to legacy of Hank Williams