The official website for the band Hefner and songwriter Darren Hayman
I love playing in the band. This is a beautiful seven inch on Where It’s At records. I only have a couple of copies of it at present.
A ten minute krautrock piece is split over both sides of this seven inch. I play synth and saxophone on it.
Download for £1.50 can be bought here…
Gathering together a rhythm section consisting of Michael Wood (Whoa Melodic/Singing Adams) on bass and Cat Loye (Fever Dream) on drums, The Hayman Kupa band create brash, bold and effortlessly melodic power pop. Sharing writing duties and sometimes singing each other’s words, lines are blurred and creativity explored in a wonderfully exuberant collection of songs. The album, recorded in three days at Big Jelly Studios in Ramsgate, is an exploration of relationships and, at its heart, it’s the sound of a friendship being made.
Darren explains more about the collaboration and how they got the band together:
It’s only happened a few times but just once or twice I have seen someone on stage and thought, “I want to be in a band with them.” But I thought it the first time I saw Emma playing with her magnificent and under-rated band Standard Fare.
I met her properly a little later in Sheffield when we played together. Before the gig I said I was suspicious of bands that wore hats. She wore a hat on stage.
They say imitation is a form of flattery and I was glad that I noticed when I wrote the song “Boy, Look at What you Can’t Have Now” that it sounded like the sort of thing Emma might write. I covered up my theft by asking her to sing on it.
When we were recording the song I suggested that we should write a whole album of duets. Musicians suggest things like this all the time because they are stupid or drunk. A few months later Emma told me she had started writing the album. This is what Emma does; she says something then does it. I race to play catch up.
The songs were written over three weekends at her house and mine. Co-writing is something I’m not used to. It’s very intimate and me and Emma became friends through the process. Emma’s lyrics are sharp and precise whereas mine are more metaphoric. It was lovely seeing how quickly we settled into something in between. We talked about relationships and that’s what the album is about. It’s about our fears and paranoias and the search for trust and love. We deliberately swapped lines and genders so the narrative is never truly that of traditional duets. I sing Emma’s lines often and she sings mine. It’s two voices singing the results of our conversations. We became close friends whilst writing these songs.
We wanted a band to make the album and chose Michael Wood and Cat Loye. We never considered anyone else. They brought a brash, bold sound to the songs and we rehearsed twice and then recorded the album in three days at the Big Jelly studios in Ramsgate. I was thinking about the Beatles and very early 1960s pop records. We recorded everything live including the vocals with only a handful of overdubs. We put a microphone high up in the ceiling to get bright, rackety sound and mixed it in mono. We recorded it two and a half years ago and it has remind locked like a time capsule whilst me and Emma released five other albums. I like this album a lot. It’s the sound of a friendship being made.
Buy the Hayman Kupa Band Album now
Or download from Bandcamp for £7
The first show on the friday has sold out so now we’ve decided to add another show.
Support comes from the brilliant and rarely seen July Skies.
English songwriter and former Hefner frontman Darren Hayman continues his journey around the United Kingdom’s 54 Thankful Villages. A Thankful Village is a village where every soldier returned alive from World War One.
An ongoing and hugely ambitious folk project, Thankful Villages is only partially concerned with the war itself, moreover it is a celebration of British rural life. Darren pulls together first person interviews, folk tales and songs, field recordings and his own personal experiences to create a vast patchwork depicting community, history and legend.
Thankful Villages Volume 2 is less an album but something akin to an arcane musical radio documentary. The success of the first volume of Thankful Villages has encouraged Hayman to go deeper into his subject. Themes of “the river” and “death” weave their way through these eighteen villages. A centuries old drowning is uncovered in “Arkholme” on bonfire night. Dennis, the river man, tells us of a tragedy on the Weir in “Cromwell”. Judy Dyble, the original singer of folk legends Fairport Convention, joins Darren in the village of “Upper Slaughter” and sings a lyric about the generations flowing like water through the village.
Darren uncovers two World War II air disasters in “Woodend” and “Wrigsley”, where he records in the abandoned control tower at the airfield, the so-called cemetery of lights. Perhaps the most shocking and miraculous of tales is found in “Flixborough” where in 1974 the local plastics factory exploded killing everyone inside but nobody in the lucky village. Derek and his son tell us the story of finding each other amongst shards of glass.
However, glimpses of light shine through the darkness; a sunny day of wild swimming in “Telisford”, a village fete with bell ringing in “East Norton” and a tale of a grateful Belgian Refugee in “Norton Le Clay”.
Thankful Villages Volume 1 garnered a great deal of media attention, with features in broadsheets including The Guardian, Financial Times, The Independent and The i Paper. Darren also appeared on The Verb with Ian Mcmillan, Loose Ends and interviewed for a feature on Radio 4’s PM programme.
Darren played special concerts around the release, doing a rendition of his Thankful Villages set with accompanying visuals and films, headlining with a full band as well as solo supporting British Sea Power. A collage of Britain’s hidden places, rich in history and community, Thankful Villages is a further chapter in Darren’s journey and a testament to his remarkable work ethic.
In 2016 Darren was awarded the title of ‘Hardest Working Artist’ at the AIM Awards for the Thankful Villages project and his prolific career.
Thankful Villages Volume 3, which will appear in 2018, has been given funding by the Arts Council.
Or download from Bandcamp for £7
Tracklisting:
The classic Hefner logo T-shirts are back. It might be longer than 10 years since I last had these printed. You used to see them all over Reading Festival didn’t you?
It’s a bit of an experiment, I’m not sure how many of you wear band tees so I’ve only printed 100, let’s see how we go.
Also after some solid market research (half an hour on twitter) I’m inclined to think that not many people wanted fitted women’s tees any more, apparently they’re a bit 90s, but if this goes well let me know what you’d like to see. Also let me know if there were any other designs from yesteryear you’d like to see come back.
They come in 3 colours (Grey, Light Blue and Navy) and five sizes.
Size Chest (to fit):
S – 34/36″ // M – 38/40″ // L – 42/44″ // XL – 46/48″ // XXL – 50/52″
Available in four sizes, and two colours.
Buy now, prices include P and P.
I’ve tried a couple of times to group together some train related songs. Recently I was asked to write a song about my favourite train which is the Class 108 Diesel Multiple Unit. I like it because you can see out of the front window.
Making this song inspired me to revisit some old train songs I had and prepare them for release.
The picture disk has sold out from me but I still have the CD version with 8 new songs.
Here’s a video for ‘Class 108 Diesel Multiple Unit’.
All prices include Postage and Packing.
Or buy download for £7
These are sold out now but you may still be able to get them from WIAIWYA records or Claypipe.
Download still available for £7
Darren Hayman will release his enthralling and ambitious new album Thankful Villages via Rivertones on 3 June.
A Thankful Village is a village in Britain where every soldier returned alive from World War I. The writer, journalist and educator Arthur Mee coined the term ‘Thankful Village’ in his series of guidebooks, The King’s England in the 1930s. Darren Hayman visited each of the 54 Thankful Villages and, focussing on village life, made a piece of music and a short film for every one. Some take the form of instrumentals inspired by the location, some are interviews with village residents set to music, others are new songs with lyrics or found local traditional songs.
This is the first (of three) volume of the project and contains the first 18 villages that Darren visited during 2014/15. The pieces do not necessarily refer to the Great War, rather they portray the village and it’s communities at many points in history. In “Stocklinch” Ros tells a story of a painting of the old church changing hands through the village, whilst in “Strethall” Darren sings a story of infidelity from the parish records from 1607 and in “St Michael, South Elmham” Dolly tells the story of her melodeon playing father and his adventures in Salonika.
One of the most catchy songs on the album is the final track, “Bradbourne”. Written at a low point for Darren, the song is nonetheless an uplifting collage of vocal harmonies about how, despite not being religious, the churches in the Thankful Villages acted as a refuge from life’s troubles.
Many pieces are instrumental, with Darren sitting on a blanket in a graveyard, teasing out melodies on old wooden instruments amongst bird song and the soft braying of cattle. Lyrics also appear with Darren writing on old church organs and weaving the local congregations into his songs.
Thankful Villages is a collage of Britain’s hidden places. Rich in history and community, Thankful Villages is a further chapter in Darren’s journey through the country underbelly. Recent records include laments for lost Lidos, re-imagined 19th Century political chants and a tale of terror set in during the English Civil Wars.
Please join Darren for a beautiful walk through Britain’s Thankful Villages.
TRACKLISTING
12″ VINYL ALBUM (RIVERTONESLP4)
Darren Hayman – Knowlton
Darren Hayman – Culpho
Darren Hayman – St Michael, South Elmham
Darren Hayman – Puttenham
Darren Hayman – Stoke Hammond
Darren Hayman – Little Sodbury
Darren Hayman – Rodney Stoke
Darren Hayman – Holywell Lake
Darren Hayman – Aisholt
Darren Hayman – Stocklinch
Darren Hayman – Strethall
Darren Hayman – Welbury
Darren Hayman – Scruton
Darren Hayman – Chelwood
Darren Hayman – Langton Herring
Darren Hayman – Herodsfoot
Darren Hayman – Butterton
Darren Hayman – Bradbourne
CD ALBUM (RIVERTONESLP4)
Darren Hayman – Knowlton
Darren Hayman – Culpho
Darren Hayman – St Michael, South Elmham
Darren Hayman – Puttenham
Darren Hayman – Stoke Hammond
Darren Hayman – Little Sodbury
Darren Hayman – Rodney Stoke
Darren Hayman – Holywell Lake
Darren Hayman – Aisholt
Darren Hayman – Stocklinch
Darren Hayman – Strethall
Darren Hayman – Welbury
Darren Hayman – Scuton
Darren Hayman – Chelwood
Darren Hayman – Langton Herring
Darren Hayman – Herodsfoot
Darren Hayman – Butterton
Darren Hayman – Bradbourne
Full supports announced….
Those of you who follow me on Twitter would have seen some of this project already.
It’s a massive undertaking for me. I am intending to soundtrack 55 British villages. I would love it so much if some of you could come to this first performance of Thankful Villages. A revealing of a work in progress. There will be films of the visits as well as the music and songs themselves being performed.
Tickets can be bought from here.