Ward Hayden & The Outliers

Saturday, February 5, 2022

with special Guest Olds Sleeper

Saturday, February 5, 2022
Doors 7:00 PM / Showtime 8:00 PM
All Ages

Artist website: Ward Hayden & The Outliers

Pre-sales for all shows end at noon on the day of the show. Tickets are will call only, nonrefundable, but transferable to another person (for the same show). All tickets are general admission.

Be sure to check the COVID Info page of our website prior to the shows for up-to-date safety guidelines. By purchasing tickets, you acknowledge that everyone in your party will follow any regulations in place on the date of the show, and will not be entitled to a refund for noncompliance.

Ward Hayden & The Outliers (formerly Girls Guns & Glory) formed as a way to break from the music so commonly found on popular radio airwaves. Hayden’s foray into country music and early rock ‘n’ roll began with a fateful borrowing of a few of his mother’s cassettes. When asked, Hayden remarks, “I was doing these long drives and there was nothing appealing to me on the radio. I was twenty years old at the time and had been through my first experiences with heartbreak and loss. When I put some of these cassettes on the player in my Oldsmobile Delta Eighty-Eight, all I could think was, “this is everything I’ve been searching for.”

It took a few years after that to get the band up and running, and now with a line-up featuring Greg Hal on Upright/Electric Bass, Josh Kiggans on Drums, and Cody Nilsen on Lead Guitar/Pedal Steel, the band has cut its teeth the old fashioned way: on the road and on the stage. Since their formation they’ve barnstormed far beyond their Boston hometown, playing honky-tonks, beer joints, and more recently concert venues throughout the US They’ve amassed a loyal legion of fans along the way. The media have noticed too, including Rolling Stone, which heralds them as a “modern-day Buddy Holly plus Dwight Yoakam divided by the Mavericks.”

Spending much of their young-adult lives relentlessly touring the US and Europe has not been without hardships, but also not without its rewards. The experiences the band has gone through on the road have led to a broader songwriting perspective, but also conditioned the band into a well-oiled machine. And when it comes to versatility and musicianship, these guys are second to none. I’m not sure there’s an instrument under the sun that someone in this band can’t find a way to play.

Their love for early rock ’n’ roll, true country, raw blues and pretty much any kind of authentic American music branded them quickly as anomalous — and electrifying. The song topics run the gambit of love, hope, work-a-day life, the grind, and the results of those experiences on the body and mind.

The band, hailing from the Northeast, have always been outliers in the world of country music, often joking they were born out of time and out of place. But, they have stayed true to the sounds that inspired them and the genuine life experiences they’ve gone through no matter where they hail from.

Ward Hayden and The Outliers are a musical force to be reckoned with. From heart-wrenching ballads, to foot-stompin’ rock ‘n’ roll, whether live or on record, Ward Hayden and the Outliers deliver every time.

Olds Sleeper

Olds Sleeper is the stage name of Heath Hardin, a  blues and Americana songwriter from York, PA. Heavily inspired by the rural region in which he resides, his music is a mix of originals that draws from Delta blues, old country, folk, and Americana. Olds switches between guitar, banjo, resonator guitar, and ukulele and performs songs that reflect the gritty realities and characters who inhabit southern Pennsylvania.

Olds Sleeper has been featured in No Depression and on WITF as an artist of the month. He has also been nominated as an artist of the year by Saving Country Music, and was nominated as 2021 Best Folk Artist by Pennsylvania Music Hall of Fame.