Consistency, Growth, and Taking Risks

Photographs By Rick Perez

Alternative pop band The Hayds share the re-release of their single, “Doublethinking”. The group opens up about taking stylistic risks, polishing DIY energy, and the value of staying consistent.

Southern California, USA

What's the story behind The Hayds?

Since we have five total band members, The Hayds’ origin story is very layered. The beginnings of the band took place at Cal State San Bernardino, where Josh and Dyllan met! At the time, Josh was a Junior and Dyllan was a Freshman. Without ever having met, they both took the same “Intro to Theatre” course, as Josh was a Theatre Minor and Dyllan was fulfilling undergraduate general education requirements. They had a random conversation and soon discovered their mutual interest in music and attending concerts. At the time, Josh was already producing solo music for about two-and-a-half years and Dyllan had began learning guitar, so there was a lot to discuss. Nothing sprouted after that class finished, actually.

Fast forward to the middle of the pandemic, Josh and Dyllan began texting musical ideas back and forth to each other for fun. Finally, in September of 2020 they decided to meet up at Dyllan’s house (on his birthday, meaning that The Hayds and Dyllan share the same birthday) and began working on the foundations for the first Hayds ideas. From that point until the end of October, they had multiple writing sessions under their belt and drafted the first versions of our songs “Bull Run” and “Doublethinking.”

Since you can’t play shows as a two-piece, they realized they needed a pivotal band piece: a drummer. At this point, Josh told Dyllan that his cousin, Bobby, had just gotten a drum set over the summer, but was completely unexperienced with them. Nonetheless, they decided to go through with him, so Josh sent Bobby a text asking if he was down to join the band (to which he agreed of course). At this point, we hit the ground running. We conducted practices that consisted of teaching Bobby the beats we wrote for both “Bull Run” and “Doublethinking,” as well as our newest song “Wild By Ourselves.” This was a cool moment because Bobby was picking up the instrument very quickly, proving our decision to add him to be a success. We continued as a three-piece (Josh on lead guitar/vocals, Dyllan on bass, Bobby on drums) for about two more months before another major change occurred. When Dyllan was preparing to leave for a Holiday trip to Mexico in December, Josh asked him if he would rather play rhythm guitar for the band instead while we looked for a full-time bassist (to which we know Dyllan happily agreed to).

Dyllan mentioned a friend of his from high school (our current bassist, Isaac) that had previously expressed interest in trying out as bassist for The Hayds, which they then agreed to invite him to one of our rehearsal sessions. Funny story, on the day of our planned meeting, Isaac was experiencing some car trouble that forced him into canceling! Josh, being the drama king he is, was pretty upset and immediately shut down the idea of Isaac joining the band. However, Josh agreed to giving him another shot after he cooled off.

The first meeting with Isaac actually took place at Red Robin in Redlands on a random weekday at the end of January in 2021. He instantly hit if off with us and we all talked about music and football at the restaurant. Later that day at the rehearsal, Josh taught Isaac the bass lines for a couple of our songs and Isaac picked them up with ease! At this point, Josh pulled Dyllan to the side and approved of Isaac’s membership with the band!

The beginning and the middle of 2021 for The Hayds consisted of LONG practice sessions. We had planned for our fist show to be in Dyllan’s backyard at the end of July, so we had a lot of ground to cover. The only two guys with performance experience were Josh and Isaac. Josh had performed less than five small solo sets and Isaac was actually a school band kid! Other than that, we had absolutely no “rock band” experience and the pressure was on for us to nail our thirty minute set of a few originals and covers. Needless to say, we played alright at our first show. It’s equally cringe as it is fond of a memory to look back upon.

Throughout the rest of 2021 we played a good amount off shows, which vastly improved our musicianship and stage presence! Come 2022, we doubled down on this newly found skill and continued to play many shows as a four-piece. That year, however, was the first year we experimented with playing gigs as a five-piece band! With the help of a couple of close friends, we played about three shows in this fashion, and that definitely was a game changer for us. Josh felt a lot more free to express himself without a guitar in hand and we could tell that the crowd much preferred this new version of The Hayds.

Fast forward to April of 2023, and the opportunity for us to play at NextFest LA at the LA County Fair was presented to us. Being such a cool gig, we knew that we had to play this gig as a five-piece. We ended up asking another close friends of ours (our full-time lead guitarist, Darius) to play with us and he eagerly agreed! Talk about a match made in heaven. Soon after that gig, many big show opportunities were yet again presented to us and allowed us the opportunity to truly mesh with Darius as a five-piece! After almost half a year of gigs with him we finally inducted him as an official Hayd onstage at Bandit Bash 2023!

That’s some HaydStory for you!

Describe your music in 3 words.

Moody, Dynamic, Alternative

What do you think makes The Hayds special? How do you stand out from other bands in Southern California?

The Hayds are special because we continue to take stylistic risks when choose to fit in is the better option. Since we began releasing music and playing shows in 2021, we have practiced this core behavior in smart ways.

Here in the heart of the Inland Empire, the punk and garage scenes have been the longstanding scenes and have attracted the largest audiences for as long as we can remember. Being a baby band in this area meant that we had to play at shows alongside these talented garage and punk-oriented bands, and therefore in front of garage and punk crowds. While we would play original music that was adjacent to garage rock, we also went out on a limb and played out-of-place slow surf grooves in an effort to stand out and change the vibe of both our half-hour sets and the gig as a whole.

Ever since, we have only compounded on this practice by writing and releasing across the spectrum of style and genre. Most notably, our Alternative Pop, Disco-Esque single “TOO LATE” (2022) has arguably been our biggest departure from the expectations of a band from the Inland Empire. Ever since this release, we have continually released tracks within the sphere of Alternative Pop, and have also expanded in genres ranging from Dream Pop and even to Alternative R&B.

This reason is the primary reason that makes The Hayds special, especially here in SoCal. Good luck keeping us in a box.

What have been some highs and lows during your journey as a band?

The highs in our journey occurred mostly in the last two years. Some of the biggest standout moments for us are the awesome supporting gigs we’ve had for big names in the scene including Thee Sacred Souls, The Buttertones, and Inner Wave. These shows were an absolute honors to be a vital part of. Having to prove ourselves to audiences unfamiliar with our band, we were all joyed to give them our best.

Our supporting gigs for The Buttertones was actually TWO back-to-back opening slots to sellout crowds at The Observatory Santa Ana. Playing twice in front of a thousand people in a venue once played by some of our favorite acts like The Neighbourhood and The Growlers, was a true blessing. These crazy gigs combined with our viral TikTok moment over the summer and consistent support for our newest singles like “Call Back” and “Of My Heart” all add up to some of the best moments not only in our band journey, but in our entire lives.

Lows in our band’s journey included classic band-killers such as roster instability, periods of miscommunication, and writer’s block. Arguably the most painful of these is previous roster instability and internal conflicts we’ve experienced. We’ve always attributed our success as a band to our strong group bond and brotherhood, so to have that integral part to our identity to be very frail was a pretty taxing experience to each of us. However, life is nothing but a long series of peaks and valleys, and with patience and faith, those days have now become valuable lessons.

What have you learned while on this journey?

We’ve definitely learned a lot about the value of consistency. Most of the highs in our journey were a product of consistency. Inversely, our lows were a production of distraction. Having clear goals, being on the same page as a team, and retaining an optimist/realist mindset are skills we continue to exercise as we scale the scope of our influence.

You are sharing your latest single, "Doublethinking". What is this song about?

This song is about the pains of having a contradictory mindset. The narrator is discussing having trouble getting over a girl who just broke up with him. However, he deals with this heavy feeling with the numbing effects of alcohol. In turn, he ends up feeling worse about the break-up as he creates a big distance between himself and true healing. It’s a song about paradox; we often really want something that requires lots of pain to attain, but do what we can to avoid that painful process, thus making our desires drift away from reach.

"Doublethinking" was originally your first release as a band in 2021 and now decided to re-release it. What was the reason behind this decision?

The primary reason for the re-release is to combine our old musical influences and sensibilities with our present abilities and tastes. The previous iteration of the track was our attempt to quickly push our baby band into a long-established scene with a presence on streaming services. Although it was genuine move that became widely accepted by our growing fanbase, the track’s DIY sound and production started to catch up to our rapid progression. As we began to work with professional mixing and mastering engineers on every release thereafter, “Doublethinking” became sonically out-of-place in the context of our streaming catalog.

Sometime at the end of 2022, the idea to completely redo the track popped into Josh’s head. It sounded natural because we had already been playing “Doublethinking” at live shows for over a year, and therefore our ability to perform it had drastically improved. This alongside an added bridge section and new written guitar solo (courtesy of newly added lead guitarist Darius) gave us motivation to pursue the idea. Remaining as a loose plan into most of 2023, we finally got around tracking it during the last two quarters of the year amidst the writing and recording of our mainline singles and live session.

How do you think the re-release shows your growth as a band?

It showcases our band’s growth by showcasing how refined our production has progressed to. Taking the raw, rock-and-roll energy the DIY version contained and being able to polish it up alongside our pop tracks is surely something we are proud of.