Expect the Eclectic

You never know what to expect when you see a show at the Millwood Junction in Mancos, Colorado.The rustic wood interior might make you think that you’re in for a night of two-steppin’, but then the macramé wall-hangings lead you to wonder if smooth ‘70s mood music might be more appropriate.Really, anything can happen.Over several years of seeing live performances there, two shows really proved that point for me.One was catching a solo Bruce Hayes performance not too long after I moved to the area in 1994. The other was watching Michael Hedges’ late night appearance for a packed house some months before he died in a car crash.I was never a Michael Hedges fan and I’d never even heard of Bruce Hayes, but both of those shows impressed me for similar reasons.There could be no denying that Hedges and Hayes were each accomplished musicians in their own realm - Michael Hedges was twice nominated for a Grammy and was called one of the “25 Guitarists Who Shook the World” by Guitar Player magazine, and Bruce Hayes was known in the Colorado live music circuit as the “Jimi Hendrix of the mandolin” - but what really made those shows stick in my mind were the performances themselves.I’ll never forget Hedges’ yogic performance art maneuver done to the recitation of Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky” while wearing a metal helmet on his head.It sounds weird, and it was, but it was also an inspired moment that was incredibly entertaining to watch.Bruce Hayes didn’t wear a helmet or drop into a lotus position, but he put on a similarly animated show.It seemed as though anything could happen at any time and it all depended on where he and the audience decided to take it.

“I think live performance is everything for me,” Hayes says.“That’s when my heart gets beating and I come to life.”

“Coming to life” for Hayes means a lot more than having a cup of coffee in the morning.His solo act is a one-man mandolin-guitar-lap steel-harmonica playing frenzy with a stomp-board and some cheek-slapping thrown in for the rhythm section.It’s an energetic burst of creativity that pulls the audience into the act - literally.

“I’d say I try to create spontaneously in the context of performing, Hayes says,“and a lot of times I try to make that the entertainment.“Hey, look!This guy’s just making this shit up as he goes along!”And I’ll make up lyrics and people will know it because I’ll be talking about them.”

Making lyrics up on the spot and playing whatever inspires you at the moment sounds like it can go either way – bad dream scenario or completely rousing event.There’s no doubt you need to be confident in your abilities on stage to pull off this unpredictable approach to live performance.As Hayes has been making a living at music since high school, he feels pretty comfortable “making shit up,” and his diverse musical past gives him plenty of material to draw on when he’s on stage.

The Partridge Family and The Monkees have to be given a lot of credit for where Hayes is today.David Partridge and Michael Nesmith were really cool, playing guitar and gigging with their bands, and seven-year-old Hayes knew that’s what he wanted to do.By the time he was in high school, Hayes was winning talent shows and playing weekend gigs around his Connecticut hometown with his classic rock cover band, Aspen (named after the Colorado town – even then Hayes had an affinity for the state).

After high school, Hayes headed out on the road to see where music would take him.He studied classical guitar for a year at Keene State College in New Hampshire, went to his first bluegrass festival and promptly traded in his guitar for a mandolin, and headed to Colorado where he enrolled in Colorado Mountain College and fell in with instructor and jazz pianist, Clay Bolin (son of music composer Clay Bolin).

After college, “I remember yearning for a more professional atmosphere for music,” Hayes recalls.“So I moved out to the Bay Area and played around there in showcase bands for a long time and starved to death.Sold off my record collection to buy soup.”

Eventually Hayes ended up in Los Angeles where he played with a bunch of different bands and toured with all kinds of shows.“I was in the Supremes Forever Show,” he says.“We wore tuxedos and backed up these women who looked like the Supremes.”Hayes also played in several rock bands that were doing original music too, but LA was a hard city to make a living in and he eventually left the area for more hospitable music scenes.

Since he moved back to Colorado in 1991, Hayes has built up his reputation as one of Colorado’s consummate performers.He plays an eclectic mix of high-energy music with an improvisational, jam band base that the state has become known for.He’s on the road constantly, playing the ski town circuit as a solo act in the winter and showing up at festivals and other events with the Bruce Hayes Band in the summer.He’s been involved with a lot of the state’s best known acts: he was in the original line-up of String Cheese Incident and was a primary player in Acoustic Junction.He’s accompanied Leftover Salmon and Three Twins.His band from 1994 to 2000, Ragged Mountain Ramblers, was a staple in Colorado clubs and festivals, and the Bruce Hayes Band has picked up where Ragged Mountain left off.

The Bruce Hayes Band is a quartet made up of Hayes on all his assorted instruments and vocals, Jim Belcher on bass and backup vocals, Miro LaGoia on drums, and Laura Withers on hand percussion.They play “Rhythm-Celtgrass and Latin-Surf-Blues,” which basically means just about anything goes.

“It kind of drives my band members crazy that I don’t like to work from a set list,” Hayes says.“If we take the time to write up a set list – which is horrifying for me to even try to do – I usually deviate from it after a couple of songs because I tend to just go with the flow.Certain things just flow for me and it’s better if I just don’t try to analyze them or think about them beforehand.”

The Bruce Hayes Band plays a mix of original material and covers.Hayes is the songwriter for the band and he has years worth of material to draw from as he’s been writing music as long as he’s been playing guitar.Moving to Colorado, though, really put the songwriting aspect of his music in the forefront.

“In Colorado at the time, and still today, everyone is way more accepting of original music and actually wanting to hear what you have to offer,” Hayes explains.“Whereas back in Connecticut everybody was playing in clone bands – the Creedence clone, the Stevie Ray clone, the Hendrix clone, the Pink Floyd clone…I was just raised in that mentality of playing somebody else’s tunes all the time and its been a gradual transition until the point now where we’ll do shows where it’s completely original.”

Most shows, though, have a good portion of covers, and Hayes has a reputation making those covers his own.“I like to take good songs and bend them a little bit,” he says.Playing Talking Heads on the mandolin is a good example of how Hayes makes songs his own.Covering songs that were made famous by women is another way he “bends” familiar tunes.Imagine a bunch of scruffy looking guys with long hair and sunglasses belting out an Aretha Franklin or Jewel tune and you get the picture.

The live show is where Hayes puts most of his energy and it’s where he really shines as a musician, but that doesn’t mean studio recordings are completely out of the picture.He’s run his own sound studio and produced two of his own projects, Everything On Your Plate in 1990 and Lunch in 1997 on his label, Ragged Mountain. And this is a direction he’d like to devote more time to in the future.

“When I was a kid and albums were still the thing,” he says, “and I was screwing off in the back of class, I would create albums.Cut out little round circles and draw the grooves and decide what the tracks were and I had ideas for songs in my head.I couldn’t play music yet, but I had these titles and I’d write down the titles and put them in order and make a little sleeve with some staples and draw the artwork and the credits, make up names and what they played.I actually envisioned the whole production in my head as a ten-year-old.Now in this day and age when it’s so popular to have your own record label, I’d like to make that happen.”

Hayes envisions a small label with a few acts that he really likes and a nice recording studio and production facility.To this end, he’s already investing in the equipment needed to make it happen and he’s started the process of recording live band material with the plan of putting out a live album in the near future.

Hayes has learned over the years that the only way to really make a living as a musician is to never slow down.He’s usually on the road gigging, and when he’s at home he’s dealing with the business side of the job, writing tunes, rehearsing with the band, and thinking up new ways to get his music out to audiences.Like his live shows, Hayes’ career is unpredictable, but it’s also very creative, and by all accounts this is the atmosphere in which he thrives.Not unlike Michael Hedges, Hayes has been working on this unpredictable creativity his entire life and audiences are lucky enough to be entertained by this work in progress at his live shows.Really, anything can happen at a Bruce Hayes show, and usually it does.