Artists

Out This Week - Ward Hayden and The Outliers' New Album and "Ramblin' Man" Music Video to Honor Hank Williams' 100th Birthday

Published

August 28, 2023Updated August 28, 2023

@ward-hayden-the-outliers

Ward Hayden Honors the 100th Birthday of Hank Williams

With New Album, Out This Friday

New Music Video for “Ramblin’ Man”

Features New Audio

Of Hayden’s Solo Acoustic Performance

Six Special Concert Performances

On Fall Tour Schedule to Coincide With Release Of

A Celebration of Hank Williams LIVE

Ward Hayden & The Outliers – “Ramblin’ Man” [Providence Sessions]

Ward Hayden & The Outliers
photo id (l to r) Josh Kiggans, Cody Nilsen,
Ward Hayden, and Handsome Greg Hall

(Scituate, Mass.) The music of Hank Williams has occupied a central place in the life, soul and muse of Americana hero Ward Hayden all but from the cradle. His special, annual shows with his group saluting Williams every New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day –the 1952/’53 dates when Hank was on his way to his next gig and died in the back of a Cadillac– “had quickly become a Boston-area tradition” (Quincy Patriot Ledger), since the first celebration in 2008.

Now, to mark the occasion of what would have been the Williams’ 100th birthday on this coming September 17, Ward Hayden & The Outliers will release A Celebration of Hank Williams LIVE on the band’s own Faster Horses Recordings on Friday, September 1.

Today, in advance the album’s release this week, Hayden premieres a new music video for “Ramblin’ Man.” Watch the video HERE. A full-band, live-version is the opening track of the album. But the video, filmed by Evan St. Martin (frontman for the duo Laden Valley), purposely features a new live, solo-acoustic performance by Hayden. He says, “we decided to have me play it alone with my guitar. It’s a lonely song, it’s haunting and raw. The video does a good job illustrating the isolation and loneliness of the lifestyle and life choices that the lyrics lay out in this song. What really appeals to me about this song is that Hank knows that his desire and need to keep ramblin’ isn’t easily understood and that this is hard for other people to deal with, but he lays it all right out there.”

For the album, a collection of 11 songs (with four additional stories), Hayden “really wanted to put together a group of Hank’s songs that are meaningful to me as a listener and fan of his music. It is personal to me in that these not only made me a fan of his music, but have kept me coming back to his music for enjoyment and inspiration.

“And my biggest inspiration for ever wanting to put a band together and write my own music was a vision of creating music that combined the styles of Hank Williams and Chuck Berry. Lyrics that tackled aspects of life that can be troubling and painful, but done with wit and honesty and sometimes with a bit of humor, and then to occasionally couple that with the rockin’ sound of Chuck’s style of rock ‘n’ roll guitar. Sounds that hit hard and also make you want to move and experience joy.

“When we started thinking about doing something to honor Hank’s 100th we pretty much immediately knew that capturing the live sound was how we wanted to do it. Live music is something truly special and unique, it’s a moment and in that moment there’s an energy that can’t be replicated in any other way than in a live setting. Live music’s a high wire act, it’s exciting and it’s spirited. We wanted this collection of songs, songs that hold a longstanding meaning to our personal and musical lives, to have that special quality.”

To continue the celebration, six special tribute shows –Northampton, MA’s The Parlor Room (9/15), City Winery Boston (9/17), Fall River, MA’s Narrows Center for the Arts (9/29), Rochester, NY’s Abilene (11/2), Buffalo, NY’s Sportsmen Tavern (11/3), and Syracuse, NY’s The 443 Social Club (11/4)– that will commemorate both the birthday and album release have also been added to the band’s tour schedule

A Celebration of Hank Williams LIVE was produced by Hayden and his band: Josh Kiggans on drums and percussion, Cody Nilsen on guitar and pedal steel, and Handsome Greg Hall on electric and upright bass.

“Hank Williams’ songs have always been a part of my life as I grew up in a household that played his music a lot,” Hayden says. “Some of my earliest musical memories from when I was a kid singing along at the top of my lungs to some of his classic numbers like ‘Kaw-Liga’ and ‘Why Don’t You Love Me.’”

It’s the second live recording from their Williams salutes. The first, released in 2018 when the group was known as Girls, Guns & Glory, was praised by the Boston Globe: “Hayden doesn’t cover these songs; he shakes with them, almost bleeds them. They roll through him like prayer through a Southern preacher.” The same and more can be said of how this new LP captures the eternal spirit of Hank’s classic country compositions, recordings, and performances and brands them with the Outliers’ own trademark country-rocking sound.

Hayden’s 10th album and most-recent release earlier this year, South Shore, taps into a major country music tradition of writing about the small town where one grew up and calls home. And, in part, channels Williams as an influence. “Our song ‘Blink of an Eye’ shows the most Hank influence. It has the Chet Atkins style electric guitar part and also the sock rhythm on the acoustic guitar, which are both classic features of Hank Williams recordings. And it has the country yodel, reminiscent of Hank’s yodel a la ‘Lovesick Blues’ or ‘Long Gone Lonesome Blues.’

“Hank’s yodel has been a major influence on me. I’d always wanted to include a yodeling song on one of our albums, and in our live show I do a lot of country yodeling. But it had never made its way onto one of our records before South Shore. And I must say that we had such a good time with that yodeling song that I wouldn’t be surprised to see more country yodeling on future albums as well.”

A Celebration of Hank Williams Live track listing:

1. Ramblin’ Man

2. Intro: No Courage without Fear

3. Settin’ the Woods on Fire

4. Weary Blues from Waitin’

5. Intro: Hank’s Last Song

6. I’ll Never Get Out of this World Alive

7. Long Gone Lonesome Blues

8. Cold, Cold Heart

9. Intro: Leon Payne

10. Lost Highway

11. Honky Tonkin’

12. Intro: The Song that Made Him Famous

13. Lovesick Blues

14. Half as Much

15. Why Don’t You Love Me

Ward Hayden’s personal reflections

on Hank William’s “Ramblin’ Man”

“On our new album, A Celebration of Hank Williams LIVE, we approached this song with the full band and I think it fits the song quite well to have the emotional swells of the instrumentation and the lonesome, crying sounds of the fiddle. This song tells a story, so the approach with the instrumental arrangement was to keep is sparse and give the story a clear place to be told. But, for the video we decided to have me play it alone with my guitar. It’s a lonely song, it’s haunting and raw. The video does a good job illustrating the isolation and loneliness of the lifestyle and life choices that the lyrics lay out in this song.

“And how can you not love a dark haunting song about a train? Hank had a very special relationship with trains and he often used the sounds and sights of trains in his songwriting. Years ago when we visited his boyhood home in Georgiana, AL something that immediately caught my attention was that train tracks were literally feet away from his backyard. The sights and sounds of the trains were something that he knew quite well and grew up with hearing, seeing, and having be a part of his everyday life. Once I saw that it seemed like it must’ve been quite natural for him to start incorporating trains, and what they represented to him, into his songwriting. These trains clearly sparked something in his actual life and in his imagination, and he had a gift for applying that when telling a story through song.

“‘Ramblin’ Man’ masterfully uses the sounds of a train, when he hears ‘an old freight rolling down the line,’ the sound of that makes him yearn for traveling on. The train represents freedom and it represents escape. He could try to settle down and maybe do alright, but when he hears those sounds he knows he’s gotta move on or else he’d start to fall apart.

“What really appeals to me about this song is that Hank knows that his desire and need to keep ramblin’ isn’t easily understood and that this is a hard for other people to deal with, but he lays it all right out there. This is the life that was meant for him. He’s just following his calling until finally someday God will call him home.”

Ward Hayden & The Outliers on Tour

September

3 – Charlestown, RI – Rhythm & Roots Festival

4 – Salem, NH – Tuscan Village Summer Concert Series

10 – Sellersville, PA – Sellersville Theatre (Members Party)

15 – Northampton, MA – The Parlor Room