My producer (Greg Magers) and bass player (Graham Burris) moved to Nashville with their families along with the Attic Recording Studio. So now everything takes months to plan in advance. It’s worth it, though, because I can’t buy a decade and a half of musical chemistry. I recorded vocals for the seven new songs this spring in Nashville, which was my first time in that city. The upcoming album’s name is “The Attic” - sort of an ode to Abbey Road.

 I’m still teaching private music lessons six days a week during the school year to roughly 35 students. We had an awesome rock band recital this spring at the Beat Kitchen. I’m really proud of them and am trying to teach them to work together. We honestly can’t do this by ourselves and we all need help from each other.

It has been difficult to make it this far in music. I’ve had to play more solo acoustic shows due to lack of money and schedules. Many times I’ve had to pay my band for gigs out of my own pocket, which doesn’t help when I’m spending thousands on quality recordings to begin with. Sales are extremely low, and I’ve never broken even on an album. I don’t think all my sales combined from four albums have evened out the cost of one of them to produce. Streaming amounts to pennies. Spotify and other services keep placing my Music under another David Hayes, after countless emails. The cherry on top is playing shows where nobody attends, and that happens too often here in Chicago. All that being said, I can’t thank those enough who have been behind me. As tough as it has been to survive and fund my ideas I wouldn’t change any of it. I get to wake up and make music and art any day I chose.