INTERVIEW: Huck Hayden Embraces the Beautiful Catastrophe of Existence

Nashville musician Huck Hayden has a dry sense of humor. For one thing, he keeps his own personal information brief, describing his music as “vision quest” music and bemoaning the fact that Happy Meals did nothing to alleviate the pain of parental divorce. No matter. On his new single “Fire Ball,” Hayden digs into ’90s grunge and outlaw country grooves in an effort to understand his own shifting sense of self.

Who are some of your musical influences?
I was a teenager in the 1990s and I can’t ever seem to escape my teenage self. There was Nirvana and Dinosaur Jr, a whole lot of Garth Brooks and 90s country, but also older stuff like Van Morrison, Neil Young, and Abbey Road—cassettes that my dad would play in the car as he drove my brother and me up to Ohio to live with him in the summers. Those cassettes, together with the smell of my dad’s Marlboro lights when he cracked the window, and driving through Appalachian rock cuts on the interstate, and stopping to get McDonald’s at some forlorn exit in Tennessee, probably influenced my music and aesthetic as much as anything.


Explain the title of your new single “Fire Ball.”
Fire Ball came to me as I was looking back on my life, seeing how my relationships and narratives have changed over time, and watching my young daughter grow. It seems to me like I’m not so much a fixed person with a single identity, but more like a process happening over time. Like a meteor streaking across the sky for a moment, in a state of combustion. Everybody’s together in this process—this whole beautiful catastrophe of an existence—so this song is about compassion for all beings. Compassion makes me think of fire. I would have titled this tune with a one-word “Fireball” but that made me think of the brand of cinnamon whiskey I don’t particularly care for. Plus there’s the Pitbull song.


Do you have any songwriting tips you can share?
With lyrics, try to balance the abstract and the concrete. If you’re writing in an abstract open-ended way, throw in some concrete details, and if a song is heavy on concrete details, introduce some abstraction. Too much of one or the other isn’t so good. This is a lesson I’m still learning.


What’s the first concert you ever attended? What do you remember about it?
Green Day at the Florida State Fairgrounds in Tampa, September 1994. Dookie had just come out. I was 13 and begged my mom to let me go. She agonized over it, feeling like I was going down the wrong path. My family was really religious—we went to a Southern Baptist church three times a week. But my mom felt like I should have the freedom to explore who I was. When she dropped me off, we drove past all the kids waiting in line smoking with their rainbow colored hair and spikes and combat boots, and she started to weep and pray out loud. I came home after midnight smelling god-awful, with blood on my T-shirt. I remember her standing in the doorway with red bleary eyes, and my 11-year-old little brother peeking out around her leg saying “So did they play the masturbation song??” Anyway, Green Day was massive, they were like immortals on stage… After that concert, I got a cheap Squire electric guitar/amp combo for Christmas and I would blast out “Basket Case” and “Smells Like Teen Spirit” for hours in our kitchen. God bless my mom.


Recent release you cannot stop listening to?
“Spit of You” by Sam Fender, from the album Seventeen Going Down. While my mind can’t begin to penetrate this tune’s Britishness, it’s not really necessary. The heart understands completely.

Huck Hayden — Bandcamp, Instagram