For about 14 years, Heath Haynes spent many nights singing and strumming in Lower Broadway honky-tonks, where he and his backing band The Hi-Dollars smuggled the occasional Cheap Trick or Ramones tune into sets between the Hank Williams and Merle Haggard songs that filled the tip jar with tourist dollars. Haynes had moved to Nashville from Richmond, Va., to write and record his own music, but soon found himself on the bar circuit. He also backed up rockabilly queen Wanda Jackson for a time. On his nights off, Haynes could be found behind the turntables at now-defunct East Nashville haunts like No. 308 (in a space soon to be occupied by Jane’s Hideaway) and Edgefield (which was replaced by Lakeside Lounge), laying the needle down on platinum hits and obscure B-sides. He was one of the most recognizable faces in a neighborhood full of musicians.
But Haynes lost his work when the coronavirus closed the doors of bars and venues across Music City. And when tourists were allowed to return to Broadway, he wisely decided to stay away until he could play without the fear of catching and spreading COVID-19. So like many musicians here in town, he found himself looking for work.
By late summer 2020, Haynes had settled into a new life, guiding boaters down the Harpeth River, being a handyman and livestreaming occasional solo sets of covers for tips via Venmo. He was grateful for the new opportunities, toiling under the burning sun rather than the sizzling neon lights. All the while, the longing for the world to be both open and safe hummed just below the surface of his consciousness. Towing a trailer loaded with canoes through Bellevue, Haynes spotted a few children running around Red Caboose Park. It was almost time for school to start again. His mind turned to thoughts of students and parents wanting to get back to normal, in spite of the dangers of the pandemic. Then, like a cliché from a song about songwriting, a Marc Bolan-esque bubble-glam chorus hit him out of the blue: “Everybody wanna go back to school / Everybody wanna get sick and die.” It was catchy and repetitive, inspiring Haynes to start adding in other activities people missed during lockdown: going to church, pubs and football games.
“I came home and I got the guitar out,” Haynes recalls from across a table near the sandwich counter at another East Side watering hole, Duke’s. Not long after he worked out some basic chords, he explains, he downloaded Bandlab, an app for making demo recordings on his phone. “And I made this demo with drums. And recorded electric guitar.”
Haynes knew there was no time to waste, and before long he found himself at a friend’s home studio making a high-fidelity version of “Get Sick and Die.” He released two edits of the song in August 2020 on Bandcamp and various streaming services. Together, they make up his first release under just his own name.
Haynes might have stopped there. During his college years in Virginia, Haynes played snotty riffs in the ’90s garage-punk underground with various short-lived bands and wrote songs for his Uncle Tupelo-influenced project Haymaker. But throughout most of his time in Nashville, he had been focused on playing music by other people. That had all changed, thanks to COVID. This new situation reminded him of the glory days of recording in his dorm with a TASCAM four-track. His focus shifted to making new music. His music.
“I started goofing around with it,” he says of the app. “And then the next day I came up with another song. That hadn’t happened in almost 20 years! And then within a week I had, like, four songs. … I saw the value in that moment of inspiration as connection to whatever it was that made me write songs in the first fucking place. And I know it’s precious. And I know it’s rare.”
Haynes got busy turning his little project into an album. Nearly two years later, “Get Sick and Die” is a highlight of Demomania, a 10-track set of unadulterated power pop, recorded entirely in Bandlab, that really lets listeners inside his head. In the process of writing the songs that would become the album, Haynes decided to recommit to his love of rock ’n’ roll. No more honky-tonk covers.
“Rock ’n’ roll, and power pop, and garage rock,” Haynes says. “This is what I want to do.”
The album is a showcase for all the influences that he wears on his rolled-up sleeves. The record opens with “Let It Go Now,” a plodding, buzzy number recalling ’90s indie heroes like Guided by Voices. “Whole Wide World” feels like what the late Cars frontman Ric Ocasek might have done had he gotten ahold of Springsteen’s “Two Hearts.” “Messin’ Around” opens with a big, choppy riff that would feel right at home in a T-Rex hit. All the songs were written in Haynes’ pandemic seclusion, save for “Kelli Ka-POW!,” a Ramones-style rocker written long ago for Saved by the Bell’s Kelly Kapowski.
Demomania landed on Bandcamp at the beginning of May, and will be on all streaming services by July 1. The album’s title is a nod to the demo-tape nature of the recording. The word also has a definition that has nothing to do with music — directly at least. As Haynes says: “It means ‘The mental condition of the desire to be in a crowd.’ ” Just what Haynes, and so many of us music fans, had been missing.
Currently, however, Haynes has no real plan to play the songs live. He has no band; a physical pressing of the LP is still a ways off, though it’s on the horizon. For the present, it seems like it’s enough to have restored his connection to making music again.
