Heystephen.com - Stephen Hay music and more

This is it! I’ve finally released my recording of ‘This Town’ - check out the video below:

I’m extremely happy about how it turned out, as well as extremely grateful for all the help I’ve had putting it together. Special thanks to Ben, Aimée, Graeme and Dan for playing, and Hermione for letting me use your mic and recording interface. And J for letting us use your room!

If you like the song I’ve also released it as a single on itunes and amazon, you can buy it from those links (the amazon link is the UK site but it should be available internationally). Also please consider sharing the video on facebook/twitter etc, I’m hoping it will do really well online for maximum exposure. I’m looking forward to doing more of these; it took waaay too long to edit the video and get the mix and mastering right, but at least next time I’ll know what to do.

My next gig is the 10th of January, and we’re back at The Horse in Waterloo. If you missed my last gig (December is crazy, admittedly) do come on down to check out my songs with the band, it’s hot!

7:30pm, Tuesday 10th January, £5 entry.
The Horse, 124 Westminster Bridge Road, Waterloo SE1 7XG.

Hope to see you there! Merry Christmas all, have a safe and festive holiday

Stephen

Hey, check it out, I recorded a John Mayer videosong cover. If the image above doesn’t work, find it on youtube here. Me and (brother) J bought a new camera recently and have been playing with the HD video functionality, it’s super nice! I’m rather excited about it; lovely sharp video quality, and that shallow DOF which makes it look pro. Mmm, mmm. So yeah, I’m dabbling in film…

My plan is to start working through my originals (and a few covers like the above) and record them with video for youtube, including drums, bass, piano, shakers, rubbish bins, seagulls and whatever else needed to make it sound phat. Then I’ll release each song (covers excluded) as a single on itunes/amazon etc.  I’ll let you know as soon as the next one is online. Or just subscribe to my youtube channel. Link link link.

Also I want to let all you lovely people know about my next gig:

Tuesday 4th October, 7:30pm
The Camden Head, 100 Camden high Street, London NW1 0LU
£5 or more donation

I’m still trying to raise the funds to pay my uni fees, so I’m hoping to keep running monthly live music nights indefinitely. It’s been fantastic being able to give people who are still new to the game a place to play their own songs to an attentive audience, and I’ve even been able to broadcast the gigs online on ustream. This was particularly useful when a bunch of young hooligans decided to go on a vandalising rampage and brought London to a standstill back in August. Very inconvenient. So use the handy calculator to work out what time/day 20:00 GMT+1 on 04/10/11 is in your timezone, and tune in here to watch!

The lineup:

Q&A - http://damascuslights.tumblr.com/ - brand spanking new acoustic collaboration
Aimée - http://www.facebook.com/OfficiallyAimee - acoustic/folk/pop with gospel and soul influences
Jessie Malcolm - Groovy acoustic pop with a powerful soulful vocal
Stephen Hay http://www.facebook.com/stephenhaymusic - not that great really

And to top it all off we’ll be jamming out some all-time favourites with a jazzy twist to finish the night with a bang. See you there - Whammy!

Greetings! I’ve finished (for now at least) the song I’ve been writing. It’s still unnamed, but it’s about dealing with uncertainty in life, learning to let go of the things I have no control over. It’s pretty much the story of my life over the last few months - leaving London, waiting for my visa to come through, (it came through!) and I guess now sorting out the minor details of my return to London i.e. where to live etc. Small stuff really. Anyway it feels a little different to my previous music in that it’s got this kinda slow rock chorus, with a groovy or funky verse. If you can’t see the video below, just go here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xthOHoo530 to see it on youtube.

I’m still experimenting with my sound and getting loads of inspiration with my new Spotify subscription - why didn’t I do this earlier? I’ve been listening to heaps of Neo-Soul, nu-Jazz and everything in between. Lovely. Discovered John Legend, Erykah Badu, James Taylor Quartet, all very inspiring. If you’re into soul or jazz I’d definitely recommend them.

Also I’ve been reading up a lot on music industry people’s advice for people like me, starting a career in music. One thing I think I need to work on is songwriting - I’m so darn fussy (and lazy) it takes me months to write a song - I need to start churning out a song a week, even if it’s rubbish, to give me heaps more practice. I can always bin them or re-use the good bits, but I think my perfectionist writing style is slowing me down. I give you full permission to hold me accountable to this!

Hope you enjoy the track, the lyrics are on the youtube link.

Until next time…

Stephen

PS Tickets are selling fast for my Kerikeri gig, make sure you grab yours soon before they sell out. Here’s the Facebook link: http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=140115529332793

It’s been a little while, but I’ve finally finished the next addition to my free acoustic album. It’s called “Awkward” and it’s pretty self explanatory. I played the old version of it at the Proud Galleries in Camden, but have since tidied up the verses to make them fit the vibe of the song better. I’ve been wanting to write about the subject for quite a while - it’s just so universal! Everyone is stuck in those painful situations from time to time - maybe someone unintentionally insults someone else present in a small group setting, or perhaps everyone is made uncomfortable by one person who goes a bit far with some off-coloured joke… you know what I mean. So hopefully this song captures that feeling anyway.

The mp3 is (of course) free for download, just right-click this link and save the file to your music folder: http://www.heystephen.com/music/Awkward%20-%20acoustic.mp3. Alternatively, you might want to download the whole album, just go to www.heystephen.com/music and enter your email address - you’ll get an email with a confirmation link to download it. Oh yeah, lyrics are here: http://www.heystephen.com/music/awkward/

Hope you enjoy it - let me know what you think!

Until next time

Stephen

Pretty positive title huh? I hate thinking of titles but this one seems to do the trick.

A couple of developments:

I’ve recorded a couple more tracks for Future Reflections: ”You Got Me” which I finished a few weeks ago, and also “Future Wife” which I just recorded today. You can preview the individual tracks or download the whole album from my music page. Yes it’s free, share it around if you like it! If you’d like to be involved as I continue to add to the album, just follow me on Twitter or Facebook and continue the conversation. I’ll be using these sites to get valuable feedback and input towards finishing the album.

In other news, I’ve met some people recently who are helping me move things forward with my music. I met Tobi, who is kind-of managing me now, at a friends  place about a month ago. Him, Josh and my friend Nat (who’s a producer) were practising for a gig, and since I had my guitar I couldn’t help but jam along. I had no idea who they were - after showing them some of my stuff I discovered that Josh is a professional live and session drummer, and Tobi is in artist management and has loads of industry contacts. They are super-excited about my music and making it huge, so suddenly everything has been in fast-forward - recording new demos, more writing, meeting marketing people; it’s been a great incentive to get things moving.

An interesting exercise was putting together a “mood board” - basically a collection of images which represent me and an art style which suits. Above is a tag cloud generated from some descriptive keywords we came up with - is that about right? I can’t wait to get some art concepts together.

Gig-wise it’s been pretty quiet except for the occasional acoustic charity gig - I’m planning something big in May but I’ll let you know once that’s all confirmed. As I’ve probably mentioned, I’ll be playing with a live band more and more now, which is awesome as that’s how I’ve always imagined it.

S

So… I set myself a target to record my song “Busy Life”  by the end of this week. I started and finished it on Monday. Great! But just before I uploaded it, I thought: “I should make these into an album”.

It’s funny, just by calling it an “album”, it instantly increases the official-ness and coolness factor. It’s no longer: “Oh, yeah I’ve got some tracks online”; it’s: “I’m recording a free acoustic album from home, it’s not finished yet but you can download what I’ve got so far”. Told you it sounds cooler. And it has a name too, Future Reflections. I quite like the idea - I write a song, play it live, then record it and start a new one - people can watch the process unfold over the months and really be a part of it. I can even sell half-finished albums (at cost) at any gigs I play… kinda quirky. You can download the part-album for yourself from my music page.  I’ve remixed the older tracks at a higher bitrate too, so they sound a little nicer if you’re using headphones.

So speaking of writing an album, I’ve foolishly decided to write a brand new song before my next gig at Proud (which, I might add, will be amazing). So far I have one chord, a likely tempo, and some ideas but that’s about it. Still haven’t committed to a lyrical theme yet, I’m tossing up between “I’m pretty big in Japan”, “Those awkward moments that make us cringe but are actually enjoyed by some weird people like myself”, and “No-one understands me when I speak”. All working titles, of course. I better get writing - I love setting myself deadlines like this, it really works!

So hopefully see you at Proud Galleries in Camden on the 17th of February, and don’t forget to download my “album”!

Peace

Stephen