The Singer Becomes The Song: The Transformation Of Hayes Carll

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Lovers & Leavers could be described as Hayes Carll’s first bonafide “singer-songwriter” record. For the time being, the once-rowdy singer has left behind the honky-tonk sarcasm of “She Left Me For Jesus” and the rockabilly swagger of “Stomp & Holler” for a much more direct, plainspoken musical approach.

The minimalist arrangements and sparse production of Lovers & Leavers provide a perfect fit for Carll’s intimate material. There’s some piano here and there, light hand-percussion throughout, but for the most part these songs are defined simply by the sound of a man singing with his acoustic guitar.

“It’s riveting when somebody really steps out on a tightrope and stands naked, musically speaking,” says Joe Henry. “It’s pretty irresistible when somebody as gifted a writer as Hayes allows the songs to be that candid, not just as a piece of writing but candid as a recording, as a performance. It’s hard to take your ear off when somebody is really laying their cards on the table.”

Just like “Love Don’t Let Me Down” became a deeply personal song years after it was written, Carll has ended up identifying with the narrator of his song “Drive” far more than he ever thought he would. Carll and Jim Lauderdale wrote “Drive,” with its Mississippi John Hurt-inspired guitar part, about the Beat Generation folk hero Neal Cassady. It’s a rhythmic, methodical deliberation on Cassady’s endless journey so famously depicted in Jack Kerouac’s On The Road.

“When I listen to it now, it feels like it relates to my life,” Carll says of “Drive.” “That’s what I do, and have done for 15 years now, is drive. I don’t think about it as being about Cassady anymore when I listen to it, it feels like a much more personal song.”

“Drive” is also one of Henry’s favorite tracks on the record. “It’s like one of those cocktails that tastes like lemonade,” Henry, who has worked with everyone from Solomon Burke to Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, says of the tune. “You ingest and you can kill yourself with it because you don’t know how powerful it is, it goes down so easy.”

For Carll, the process of making Lovers & Leavers has forced him to contemplate his future as an artist and entertainer. “The idea of having to play the same ten or twenty songs every night for the rest of my career, in the same types of venues, just does not sound fun at all,” he says.

Now, more than ever, Carll hopes to create the same type of close connections with his audience that his heroes, singers like Fred Eaglesmith, John Prine, Ray Wylie Hubbard and Todd Snider, have fostered over the course of decades. Carll should have no problem engaging audiences with Lovers & Leavers, a batch of songs as radically intimate as anything you’ll hear in 2016.  

“When I first started playing, I was ecstatic to play any type of venue to any type of audience. After 3,000 shows, that sheen wears off,” says the singer. “You start thinking, ‘What do I need every night to keep myself engaged?’ It’s not booze, that’s not sustainable, and it’s not just people cheering.”    

Having just turned 40, Carll is trying to find a model of touring that will sustain him for decades to come.

“I need a sense of connection,” he says. “That’s where I feel most comfortable, with an audience that I can engage with. I’ve always been drawn to artists who can communicate with me. My favorite singers are great songwriters, but the way they entertain me is so rewarding as an audience member. It keeps me engaged, it makes me laugh, and it helps me run this gamut of emotions. That’s always how I wanted my shows to be.”

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