Hayden has come a long way from his introduction to the U.S. as the heir to the folky mope-rock throne over a decade ago. His new album, In Field & Town, is instrumentally his most fully realized to date. He sat down earlier this month with Aquarium Drunkard prior to his show at Local 506 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and discussed the new album, evolution in his songwriting, the differences between Canadian and U.S. touring and audience anomalies in Philadelphia.
Aquarium Drunkard: You've got a new record out called In Field & Town and I wanted to ask you a bit about some of the responses to the record. Some people, long time fans, feel thrown for a loop off of the first track. They felt a stylistic or recording change - can you talk about the recording process for the album and if there were any conscientious style changes in what you've been doing over the years?
Hayden Desser: Well, it's funny you mention that, 'cause being on tour now I've noticed especially seeing previews of my show coming up and people saying 'folky Hayden' or 'if you're in the mood for a nice, mellow, poetic show then come to this' sort of thing. And it's funny 'cause what we're doing right now is mostly up tempo with a lot of instrumentation. Why this album and that change? I just had a lot of fun adding instruments to the songs and I wanted to not have too many songs with a mid-tempo - I feel that some of my albums have too many of those and it's something I kind of naturally go to and I wanted to get away from that a little bit. So the three main differences would be the tempo thing, putting a ton of instruments on a bunch of songs and the fact that a lot of them were written on piano and that kind of added a different kind of texture. I just play a different sort of rhythm when I'm writing on piano.
AD: At this point you've been recording and releasing albums for a little over a decade. How do you feel your songwriting process has evolved over the decade you've been releasing music?
HD: Well, I like to think that my recording techniques are better now than they were and I don't know. I write less and I scrutinize my songs more than I did 12 years ago. But I don' t know. It's hard to look at it as a big picture kind of scenario and dissect what it is that's different or what the exact progression is. I'm not sure. You need to tell me that. [laughs]
Video for Hayden's Trees Lounge from Steve Buscemi's 1996 film.
Directed by Christie Greyerbiehl
Video for Hayden's Where and When from In Field and Town (Hardwood Records)
Video for Hayden's "The Hazards of Sitting Beneath Palm Trees" from 1998's The Closer I Get (Outpost Records). Hayden will be live in-studio at Little Radio tomorrow, be sure to tune-in.
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