Girls Guns and Glory was recently nominated for a
New England Music Award in the "Folk/Roots Act of the Year" category!
Additionally, they were named at the #3 "Band in Boston Right Now"
and as one of the top 50 Bands working today by The Alternate Root Magazine.
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Girls, Guns, and Glory is on a heavy retro rock n roll to launch themselves into super stardom in 2013! Their tremendous stage presence, coupled with phenomenal vocals, and a slammin' live set has garnered this Massachusetts band four Boston Music Awards (BMA), and a nomination for a fifth award in the "Live Artist of the Year" category in 2012. Additionally, the band was recently nominated for a New England Music Award in the "Folk/Roots Act of the Year" category, and for three awards in the Alternate Root Reader's Choice Awards - Roots/Americana Group, Male Vocalist (Ward Hayden), and Album (Sweet Nothings). "I've been going wild, like the river runs. And I'm afraid that this rambling has only just begun." So sings Ward Hayden, of Girls Guns and Glory, on the band's new album Sweet Nothings. These words, found in the lyrics of GGG's song "Snakeskin Belt," are an apt introduction to the band itself. Girls Guns and Glory is a celebration of hard, funky, sweet and tasty, honky tonkin' music that is simultaneously casual and complex. The band combines elements of early rock 'n' roll, country, and rhythm & blues to deliver their own brand of American Roots music that kicks you right in the ass. Girls Guns and Glory is the brainchild of singer/songwriter and Lonesome Day recording artist, Ward Hayden. Hayden grew up in the small seaside town of Scituate, Massachusetts, where out of sheer time spent alone commuting to and from school, he developed his love of country music. It's something that started with a fateful lending of one of his mom's classic country cassette tapes. After that it was a full blown immersion into the history of country music, a study if you will of the songs, their history, and the history of the singers and songwriters themselves. From this, Hayden began writing his own personally penned compositions, which are lyrically complex, thought-provoking and clever, built on the classic country mantra of "Three chords and the truth." Many songs conjure the palpable ache of a crushed heart; they touch on themes of love lost and hope found, and their words alone could be published in anthologies of poetry. But despite that feeling of aching lonesomeness that Hayden is so deft at creating, a close look at each song reveals that he is careful to maintain elements of enlightenment and a general sense that there is a light at the end of even the darkest tunnel. And often paired with musical accompaniment that is sure to keep your boots scootin'. Hayden says that once he got on the stage, he found he had never felt more comfortable doing anything else. Performing his self-penned songs quickly became an addiction, and it is due in large part to Hayden's tireless efforts behind the scenes that GGG is now an internationally touring band, having toured extensively through the US and Europe. His other main interest is in collecting vintage clothes and decor. As a boy, he spent a lot of time with his grandmother, who was a flea market vendor. To this day, looking at the objects he has amassed in his personal collection fills him with a sense of nostalgia. It's really no wonder that Hayden says he feels most at home surrounded by things from another era, as you get the sense listening to some of his songs that he was transported to his current residence in Cambridge, Massachusetts from another time and place where long-fringed leather jackets and white-tailed deer foot lamps were the norm. |
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Hayden leads the band on Vocals and Acoustic Guitar. Helping him to create their sound is Chris Hersch on Electric Guitar, Josh Kiggans on Drums, and Paul Zaz Dilley on Upright & Electric Bass. They are a well-trained and musically studied group: Chris Hersch graduated from the prestigious New England Conservatory of Music and Paul Dilley studied at the renowned Berklee College of Music. With the demands of a heavy-touring lifestyle, this is a group that cut its teeth on the road, and their resulting chemistry on stage is electric. Hayden is quick to mention that, not only do these guys play their focal instruments with mastery, appreciation and respect for overall composition of group sound, each one of them is a multi-instrumentalist, which lends it hand to the full band collaboration of song arrangement.
According to Hayden, the band has just begun to scratch the surface of what they can do with their fourth full-length studio release: Sweet Nothings. On this tightly-packed beauty of album, in addition to their instruments, Hersch played baritone guitar and fender six, and Dilley tapped the well of his Beatles influence when he rocked the mellotron. Hayden speaks about the release of Sweet Nothings (Lonesome Day Records, 2011) as a rebirth of sorts. For him, having fully reconstituted the line up of the group in the last 18 months, working through a myriad of musicians to find the current lineup of musicians who can tackle any style of music with taste, attack and finesse that he's been able to throw at them. And it is a reconnection to the roots of rock 'n' roll for which he exhumed influences of the past including Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Mississippi John Hurt, Howlin' Wolf, Buddy Holly, and Little Richard. The album, which has songs both fast and catchy about the simple pleasures in life and slow and sentimental about-what else?-getting your heart ripped out, chewed up, spit out and pieced back together again. "Sweet Nothings" is a masterful follow-up to the band's earlier endeavors, Inverted Valentine (2008), Pretty Little Wrecking Ball (2007), and Fireworks and Alcohol (2006). For a band that spends so much time out on the road, the up-shot is that they love what they're doing. This is a band that has John Prine |
Festival Appearances
sing-a-longs in their van en route to shows. A band that can pull out old time traditional and bluegrass classics at a pickin' party, just as cleanly as they can pull off a Hank Williams or Jimmie Rodgers cover from a listening room stage. Hayden states that, "One of the greatest joys of the road has been meeting so many people from so many different walks of life," and he credits the hospitality of GGG's fans with helping them to get anywhere from square one, to across the Atlantic Ocean. Hayden says, "Music has been our ticket to see the country and evermore, other parts of the world. It's largely due to the kindness of people we've met who've housed and fed us and taken us in for the night that's enabled us to continue our pursuit of creating music and being touring musicians." Give Girls Guns & Glory a listen and come see these boys when they're out on the road. Cause this party has started and this is your open invitation. |
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