{"id":12021,"date":"2012-09-19T17:19:28","date_gmt":"2012-09-19T07:19:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/maytherockbewithyou.com\/mtrbwy\/?p=12021"},"modified":"2012-11-14T09:40:08","modified_gmt":"2012-11-13T22:40:08","slug":"claude-hay-i-love-hate-you-album-and-national-tour-dates-announced","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maytherockbewithyou.com\/mtrbwy\/2012\/09\/claude-hay-i-love-hate-you-album-and-national-tour-dates-announced\/","title":{"rendered":"Claude Hay – ‘I Love Hate You’ album and national tour dates announced"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>\u201cI Love Hate You\u201d is the third studio album from one man \u2018swampy rock stompin blues\u2019 explosion Claude Hay. The follow-up to his acclaimed 2010 long player, \u201cDeep Fried Satisfied\u201d, from which the title track won an award for Best Song of 2011 at the Australian Blues Music (chain) Awards, \u201cI Love Hate You\u201d is a harder edged and more variable outing than any of Hay\u2019s previous efforts.<\/p>\n

Work on the long-player began at the legendary Sun Studios in Memphis (origin of the likes of Elvis and Johnny Cash) before Hay returned home to complete it in his \u2018self-built\u2019 Blue Mountains home studio \u201cVader Studios\u201d. Says Hay:\u00a0\u201cI had a horrible experience traveling from LA to Kansas via a greyhound bus (36 hours) so as you do, you write about these experiences and whilst passing through Memphis I thought I would throw it down. Absolutely loved that studio, it was like a time machine, it still has all the old recording gear from when Elvis and Johnny Cash laid stuff down there. Pure awesomness.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Indeed, as is the way with such things, a lot of the material on \u201cI Love Hate You\u201d stems from\u00a0\u201cexperiences on the road and in life. I do over one hundred thousand km per year for about 11 months of the year, a lot of it in a tour van I\u2019ve personally customized to be my home away from home, so you get to see a lot of things. The last 12 months has seen me cover France, US, and so much of Oz, I never found I had not much to write about. There was always something somewhere that I loved or hated\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n

Out September 21st through Only Blues Music, \u201cI Love Hate You\u201d the album was mixed and recorded at \u201cVader Studios\u201d (Hay has a huge back-lit Darth Vader on the wall overseeing his production). The album sees Hay move slightly askew of his traditional blues roots and towards his passion for rock & funk, and yet still incorporates the signature slide, four-on-the-floor rhythms and gut-bucket sensibilities that he\u2019s known and loved for. Featuring plenty of major guitar riffage (\u201cWhen you write about things that give you the shits you tend to plug the guitar in and crank the gain<\/em>\u201d muses Hay), overall, the album also bears a more refined approach to songwriting and production than Hay\u2019s previous outings. Breaking new ground for the renowned one man band, Hay looked to take his cues from acts like The Black Keys and The White Stripes and even invited a few other musicians to feature on a couple of tracks (most notably the rhythm section of Sydney band, Chase The Sun who appear on both Turn It Up and Good Times).<\/p>\n

Lyrically, the concept album highlights the juxtaposition of Love & Hate, things Hay loves, hates and loves to hate. In his own words: \u201cI Love Hate You the album title track is literally about my love\/hate relationship with my motorhome. It\u2019s broken down so many times in the last 2 years, the damn thing has almost sent me bankrupt. But I\u2019m kind of stuck with it cause I\u2019ve fitted it out inside to be this awesome, pimped out, funky arse home away from home. Stone Face is about my hatred of today\u2019s world of going into a retail shop and getting no service whatsoever. People don\u2019t know anything about their products anymore and seem to just hate their job. Hence the title Stone Face. It drives me nuts. Where Have You Gone is about life in general and how I constantly seem to run out of time.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em>But as the album title reflects, there\u2019s equal parts love, again in Hay\u2019s own words:\u00a0Good Times and Blues Train are literally about 2 awesome venues I love to play in Australia. The Blues Train (Queenscliff, VIC) is something special. It\u2019s four carriages decked to four stages that always has music loving crowds that go off. Good Times is about a wicked little pub in Maitland NSW, fondly known as the Junkyard to locals. Great pub and great people. Both places have been supporting live original music for a long time<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

A big believer and practitioner of the D.I.Y. (do-it-yourself) lifestyle, Hay built himself a new guitar for the new album. In his usual style, it\u2019s not a straight forward piece of work. As he explains: \u201cshe\u2019s a resonator type guitar I guess made from a $7 baking tray, scrap bits of metal off broken washing machines, left over timber from my deck and bits of guitars I have in my \u2018guitar graveyard\u2019 the place where bad experiments go. She\u2019s got a unique sound, somewhere in the sound of a resonator crossed with a banjo of course with a bass string with separate outs, sounds weird but I love her\u201d. A \u2018Cigar Box\u2019 style guitar, Hay has outfitted \u2018Stella\u2019 (as he fondly refers to her), with a bass string and three pick up\u2019s; Peterman bug, Bill Lawrence single coil and an EMG bass pick up.<\/p>\n

For those of you absorbing this electronically, check the video below to see how Hay goes about creating and looping.<\/p>\n

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