Talking To Hayley McKay
Nic Rigby catches up with North East based singer songwriter
The year 2020 was to have a busy one for country singer Hayley McKay with appearances at the huge C2C: Country to Country Festival at the O2 Arena in London, The British Country Festival and world famous Glastonbury Festival.
Then Covid-19 came along.
But Hayley hasn't let it get her down. It has given her the chance to collaborate with other musicians around the world and write lots of songs.
"This year I've tried to just keep myself busy. It's been a time for me to just write lots of material, get songs lined up and then I'll put them out next year," says Hayley.
Since lockdown she's written about 30 songs, many co-written the great Nashville tradition.
"I love it. Another person always brings something different to the table and it's nice to connect with people," she says.
Hayley says her singing career "started out in musical theatre and the first proper performance I had was on the West End at Her Majesty's Theatre where I played a young Marilyn Monroe, I was only about nine years old".
But music was a constant presence when she was a child.
"My whole family love music. I grew up listening to lots of music," she says.
"I have been surrounded by music all my life, apparently I used to sing in my cot.
"My grandma ran a pub and I'd always singing on the bar in front of everyone."
Growing up in Darlington and the north-east it is no surprise that the folk band Lindisfarne was one of her early influences, while her "gran would play a lot of folksingers like Jez Lowe on long car journeys".
She studied music in Brighton and London and it was while she was in the capital that she fell in love with country music.
"We had some friends who had been out to Nashville and they had this shed in the garden full of music and they were telling me about Nashville and I thought I have got to go to this place," she said.
"I was up until about 5am listening to all their country music which inspired me to go down the country path."
She had started learning guitar aged 13, but says from a young age she was "always writing stories and then I'd turn them into songs".
By 16 she was gaining confidence to sing her own songs at the Carling Academy in Newcastle.
"I was wedged between two really loud indie rock bands. It was just me and my guitar," she says.
At that time she started listening to and getting inspiration from the great songwriters Amy Macdonald and Alison Krauss.
"I got the buzz to perform my own music," she says.
Since then she's really had the song writing bug. I picked out a few songs.
Ghosted which she wrote with Ian St James in 2017 Hayley says was about being in a relationship and then suddenly, you don't hear from them. You think everything's great and then suddenly they completely 'ghost you'".
Her song One from 2016, co-written with Christopher Shaw and Robert Irish,
"I love singing that song. It's a love ballad with Kate Bush influences," says Hayley.
"I love the floating melodies and the music video was so much fun. We found a piano which had been on a bonfire and we just had to use it."
She has a wide range of musical influences which include Dolly Parton ("a real story teller"), Kate Bush ("I used to be in a pop electro duo"), Bruce Springsteen, Annie Lennox and Abba (she can be found on YouTube doing a wonderful cover of Dancing Queen).
I asked her what were guilty musical pleasures.
"I know one favourite. If I were to have a tattoo it would be Disco 2000 by Pulp," she says.
Her new single Breathe was co-written with Newcastle-based Hattie Murdoch during lockdown.
"I wrote it when the pace of life had suddenly slowed down and it was a time for a bit of self-reflection," she says.
"I remember at the time it was beautiful weather. I was going on these lovely walks on my own doorstep, which I had taken for granted.
"The message is try and take in the simple things in life. It's a happy uplifting number which is good to bring out now when everyone is a bit down."
For more information on Hayley McKay, please visit her website at: http://www.hayleymckay.co.uk/
(Nic Rigby is a member of the band Nic Norton and Alice Morell. See nicnortonmusic.com)
Breathe
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