Ward Hayden & The Outliers

About this event

BUY TICKETS WEBSITE | FACEBOOK | INSTAGRAM | SPOTIFY Join us as Ward Hayden & the Outliers bring their show to the Meadow for a special summer night. From heart wrenching ballads, to foot-stompin’ rock ‘n’ roll, whether live or on record, these guys deliver every time. ABOUT WARD HAYDEN & THE OUTLIERS The story of “Little by Little,” the new album by Ward Hayden & The Outliers, began like so many Bruce Springsteen songs do: in a car with the radio on, hurtling down a highway, headed for distant destinations. Except that instead of one of Hayden’s longtime favorites like Hank Williams taking him on a journey through the airwaves, it was a voice whose sour rhetoric rubbed him the wrong way and ultimately inspired action. “It was born from something negative,” concedes Hayden, a rueful tinge shading his words as he relates the story. It all started when he and his band were driving to a gig in the heartland of America a couple of years back. “The person being interviewed on the radio was someone who rose to fame in a Massachusetts hard rock band in the ‘90s who then did the classic thing of turning to country for the late stage of his career,” says the Outliers’ singer-songwriter. “And he was telling his audience, his fans, not to listen to Bruce Springsteen. And although I don’t feel I’m a very angry or hotheaded person, my initial reaction was disbelief that anyone would say that, or disavow one of the most meaningful collections of songwriting and work, and do such a disservice to their own audience just because they didn’t completely align with a few things Springsteen had said away from the stage. It felt like an exploitation of our differences, and he was using a meaningful and significant generational touchstone in Springsteen to further divide people and profiteer from negative sensationalism.” After all, with a legendary career in music that at this point spans more than half a century’s worth of creating quintessentially American tales of small-town…