Singer/songwriter Walker Hayes was tempted to give up his dream of making it in the music business. After a decade of ups and downs, he had hit another low point and couldn’t decide whether to persist or hang it all up. That’s when a pivotal moment happened that now has begun to reshape his destiny. The Mobile, Alabama native had inked a deal with Capitol Records Nashville which released the singles “Pants” and “Why Wait for Summer” in 2010 and 2011 respectively. Unfortunately, neither song moved past #40 on the Billboard charts, and Hayes soon lost his contract. Instead of hitting the road to perform, the father of six worked the graveyard shift in retail while continuing to write songs.

I had a chance to talk with Walker about his newest album, “BOOM,” that was released December 2017 and what’s to come for the rest of 2018. He shared many personal struggles that he feels that are an important part of his journey and hopes that it will help others as well.

One of the songs on the album “Boom” is called “Craig” and I asked Walker what was the story behind this emotional song. He said, “A lot of this album has to do with kind of my transition or recovery from basically two or three years ago; I was an alcoholic. Laney and I were just broke as can be. Laney’s my wife, and I was working at Costco. Assuming a lot of pressure that I definitely had.. I don’t have any ill feelings, but I was feeling pressure from our families and friends to kind of just continue this dream. To press on to bigger and better things for my family, in order to be a better dad. Just basically make more money. Cause we were struggling, and again, I was drinking a lot. But we were at our toughest time. We just had our sixth kid, which didn’t make sense to a lot of people. They were like, ‘Are you guys kidding me? You can barely pay for five. You have one car.’ So Laney met Craig’s wife Laura at one of our son’s basketball games. She just really liked Laura. Laney’s never met a stranger, she’s that type of person. And Laura invited her to this church called Redeeming Grace. I’m not a big organized religion type of person. It’s not like my top priority on the list is to make it to some type of thing like that, once a week. But, my wife kind of dragged me there on a Saturday night. We showed up at this church and the most incredible relationship was conceived. This guy named Craig, walked up at this church. There’s just kids everywhere, a lot of large families like ours. Craig just began to invest his friendship and love and kindness. First, it started with just them opening their home, having dinner with us, but then it became Craig and his wife on date night. They would come out wherever I was playing and would have dinner, and sit. While I was playing on stage, I always saw them talking to people and I realized what they were doing. They were talking to people saying, ‘Man, this guy’s really good. Can’t you all imagine him playing in stadiums and stuff.’ My wife and I always say that Craig and Laura have this incredible gift to recognize needs in people’s lives. They’re not people who ask, ‘Hey, can I help you? Can I pray for you?’ They just do stuff and you’re always like, ‘For real? Like, how did you think of it? How did you decide to do that anyway?’ They became just true friends and Craig was always so encouraging. At one point about two years into our relationship, Craig shows up at my son Beckett’s baseball game, and he has the keys and title to his own minivan. I think he was prepared for me to kind of fight back, because it wasn’t my proudest moment. At the same time, he’s helping me and I think he understood. He was telling me, ‘Hey, man. you need this. This has happened to me, so it’s okay, it’s alright.’ For once during that whole time, I was okay with the fact that we were just down. I was doing everything I could and then it was okay to get help from a friend. Because when you look at Craig, he was someone I respected. So when he said, ‘Man, me too. At one time in my life someone did this for me.’ It really made me feel better and I did. I drove it home. And it was one of those needs that weeks after he gave that to us, we realized more and more how much we needed it and it carried us through a really, really tough time. I feel like guys especially just struggle with communicating gratitude or love. So I decided I was gonna write him this song. And so I did, I worked on it for many many months. And finally got to where I felt like it explained what he meant to me. We sent it to him and Laura, and they listened to it in a theater parking lot on a date night. They cried, he sent me a text. He just said, ‘Speechless.’ Laura texted Laney and I and said, ‘Craig wanted to call you, but he literally can’t talk right now.’ It’s obviously a very impactful song. People hear it and they remember where they heard it and they tell me about it. And they tell me who it reminds them of.”

Since then, Walker has set up the “Craig Fund,” and Walker says, “There’s so many people who want to give back. That’s what I noticed with the song and so many people would come up and say, ‘Hey, we are donating a car to so and so family in honor of your song.’ It’s amazing. And I realized just how much there’s a need right now for positive stuff among the media and the press. Really, everybody knows the dark side sells a lot and people are attracted to that like moths to a flame. With Craig, this positivity is infectious too. People want to give back and they want to do something wholesome when they hear this song and when they talk about it. I wanted a place to gather all of that and give it back to something. And then there may be a use for this song as well.”

I asked Walker how did he come up with the title of his album “Boom” and he said, “That’s a very lighthearted thing. In the past 2 1/2-3 years, I was basically rescued by a guy named Shane McAnally. He’s a phenomenal songwriter, producer and great friend. He’s another Craig of mine. And basically since he signed me, his team, and my manager Robert Carlton, we would text each other as the journey went along. We released those eight tracks and it got a lot of great feedback and a lot of buzz in Nashville. If one of the songs got a million streams, we would text each other and say, ‘Hey, You Broke Up With Me got a million streams today. Boom!’ Or, ‘Dude, guess what? Bobby Bones played “Beer in the Fridge” and everybody freaked out, boom!’ It’s like we just ended it, it was like a happy period on the end or our written form of an exclamation point. When we were thinking of a title, the album, it’s heavy. It’s a lot of emotion packed into one. So we all agreed we just wanted one word because the album has so many lyrics. I can’t even remember who said, Boom, but it seemed right. We just felt so good about all the music we had just created. It was like, if you put this on somebody’s desk and they were like, ‘Hey, what’s your music like?’ You would just put it down and go, ‘Boom!'”

“You Broke Up With Me” went Platinum this year and I asked Walker if that moment kind of solidified all the hard work that he has been doing over the years. He said, “That moment for me personally and my wife, we can hold hands and say this together. I’m getting goosebumps trying to articulate to you what it means. But I think that moment put us right over that hump. That just says, ‘Hey, we did it.’ We’re not in the business of proving the naysayers wrong. But I just wanted to prove me right for a second. It was an emotional phone call that night. I found out that it went Platinum when I was in New York, and I remember walking off that stage before my show and calling Laney and just saying, ‘We just made it, it’s Platinum!’ That was just a moment for us to kind of high five virtually through the phone and we had drove in a U-Haul from our honeymoon to Nashville 14 years ago, and now, “We did it.” No one can say, ‘Why did you do that?’ It feels great and it’s fleeting, but I’m on to the next one!”

Walker Hayes has definitely made it! He continues to make an impact in the Country music industry and is preparing to launch his new headlining tour. For updates on Walker Hayes, go to his website or Facebook for his new tour dates starting December 5th in California. Also check out his newest single, “90’s Country” out now!