Exclusive Interview: Jake Hays Talks “All I’ve Got to Say”, His Perspective on Life and the Industry, and More

Jake Hays is a multifaceted talent who writes, acts, produces, and directs. He’s shared the stage with well-known bands including Bad Suns, Cold War Kids, and LANY, and written with Matt Sorum (Guns N’Roses, Velvet Revolver), Grammy Award-winner Holly Knight (Aerosmith, Pat Benatar), and Cherie Currie (The Runaways). His work has accumulated millions of streams worldwide. This fall, he released his highly-anticipated new single, “All I’ve Got to Say”. Pop Culturalist was lucky enough to speak with Jake about the release, his journey as an artist and how life has helped him change his perspective on the industry, and more.

PC: Your family is heavily involved in the entertainment industry. Were the arts and music something that you were always passionate about? What led to that discovery?
Jake: It’s so funny because I grew up with my dad being an actor and my mom being a musician. I got to see both sides of the entertainment industry. When I was in first grade, I remember wanting to make movies, specifically Resident Evil. I wanted to make props. I wanted to do all that stuff.

When I reached middle school, I had this guitar that was sitting there collecting dust. My dad had gotten it for me from Costco three years prior. I started to play it and ended up playing guitar for my mom too. She brought me to all these shows. One of my first gigs ever was getting to play on the radio with Steve Jones from the Sex Pistols while doing a couple of songs with my mom.

Being exposed to it early on definitely made it where I was like, “I don’t want to do anything else.” It was either that or it would have deterred me from doing it. [laughs] Luckily or unluckily, I went in the direction of wanting to do music and it’s been a lot of fun.

PC: Outside of your own family, who or what has had the biggest influence on your career?
Jake: I would say getting to tour with my own band. They’re some of my best friends. I love them so much. The first real tour we went on was for this band called Bad Suns who are also friends of ours. They were amazing to bring us on tour with them that early on. It was 31 days of pure hell. [laughs] Our van broke down on the first day and all these crazy things happened. It felt like one of those war movies where the person leaves as a small boy and returns all hardened as a man.

It felt like that. I was like, “Wow, this was an amazing life experience.” I like to look back at those experiences and reflect on what I could have done better. But the experience inspired me to work hard so that I could get out there and play shows in different cities. It’s very exciting and addicting.

PC: You’ve had a lot of success in your career. When you look back, is there a moment that stands out?
Jake: I would say it involves a situation with my old project called Maudlin Strangers. It was a great experience. But at the time, I was twenty-two. I was focused on so many of the wrong things. There was a lot of self-sabotage. If I could go back in time, I would tell younger Jake, “Hey, cool it. Have fun. Enjoy what’s happening. This is amazing. You get to do all this,” instead of being stressed about the politics, dealing with A&R and the label, and all of the things that soured it. It was really souring because of my perspective on everything.

Perspective is key. It is what will make or break something. It can be the worst situation in the world and as long as your perspective is okay, you’ll have a much easier time making it through it. That’s been the most valuable thing. I’m able to look back at my past behaviors and know how I would handle things now. Nothing was bad, but it was like, “You’re focusing on the wrong things.” I get that now. It’s clicked. Now, I’m at peace with almost everything instead of letting the music industry stress me out all the time. Because it can be very stressful. But it’s like, “I get to have fun and make music. Some people like it, and I love that. People don’t like it? That’s all good too.” It’s been very, very eye-opening.

My house burnt down in 2018 when I was in Texas filming this little indie action film that is never going to see the light of day. My house burnt down four days before coming home. Normally when I tell people, they say, “Oh my God. I’m so sorry.” I’m always like, “I’m not because of everything that’s come out of it. My life is so much better now.” It’s those perspective shifts and appreciating things and seeing what really matters. That situation ultimately has also shaped me into being less stressed and more excited for what’s yet to happen and what’s happening at the moment. I can’t stress enough that perspective is everything.

PC: Tell us about “All I’ve Got to Say” and the inspiration behind it.
Jake: This was a chorus that I wrote seven years ago. It was an old Maudlin song. It had a totally different verse and bridge. I always liked the chorus, but I didn’t care for the rest of the song. Alexander Morgan is a great friend of mine. He played guitar for my band when we had live performances. He’s also a producer under the name Schmorgle. He came over for a writing session and I was like, “I have this one chorus. I want to turn it into something, but I want to scrap everything around it.” He was like, “Let’s sit with this for a second.”

He just started playing with the root notes of the chord and then busted out the opening line of the song: “It’s irrelevant. One thought got stuck in the room like an elephant.” I was like, “Whoa, stop. That is perfect. Let’s do whatever this is.” We ended up writing the rest of the song right there on the spot, recorded a new version of it, and finally brought this song to life the way that I was hoping. It was fun to be able to recycle an old idea that you’ve been holding onto for years and are like, “I want to do something with this at some point.” Finally, years later, it came to fruition. I’m very thrilled with it. The way that it came together was so smooth. All thanks to my buddy, Alex.

PC: If you had to pick one song that best encompasses who you are as an artist, which would it be and why?
Jake: That’s a great question. I would say it would be “Overdose.” I wrote that song at a very uncensored time in my life when I was writing every day, recording every day. It was a song where some of my friends were like, “Huh? I don’t know how to feel about that.” Some friends were like, “Yeah, that’s fine.” Other people were like, “No, no, I love this one.” But I was like, “There’s something about it that I really like.” That turned out to be one of the highest streaming songs for the Overdose EP. It was a weird song that was a bit alternative, and I loved it. I feel like the inception of that song and the way it came together holds a particularly sweet place in my heart.

PC: There are so many different facets to your talent and craft. How have you been able to balance all those different disciplines? How do they lend themselves to each other?
Jake: First of all, I appreciate you saying that. On one hand, I view myself as a control freak. [laughs] I’m joking, but I do love to do many different things. I love to do graphic design. I started that before music and acting. In preschool, I was always drawing Batman. As you ingest music, the art that it’s paired with is so important. It’s like if you’re watching a movie and you look at the movie poster, it’s going to set a certain tone for your watching experience. I feel like the art is similar in that sense in that it can paint a mood or a vibe before anyone even listens to anything. I love being able to make the art for it.

I also get to make videos for it as well, which started during the pandemic when we were all locked in our homes. It was like there wasn’t anything else to do except make some fun videos and things like that. I would say it’s another opportunity to fully realize the vision that I have for my music. Sometimes I feel like it would be easier to do it myself than explain it to someone else and have them try to interpret it. I will do that though if I find an artist where I’m like, “I love this person. They get what I want to do.”

But in the meantime, I’ve been doing it all by myself or with my close friends and team or anybody that I really believe in. My girlfriend is an amazing director, writer, and creator. She actually directed and edited one of the music videos that we put out. It was really fun. It’s called “Overcomplicated.” It’s a wild video, and it was really fun. Especially when your teammates understand you, it’s such a fun feeling—the camaraderie and being able to say, “Oh my God, we’re creating something together that didn’t exist a little bit ago and now we’re looking at it.”

PC: As we look ahead to the rest of 2022 into 2023, what can fans expect from you?
Jake: We’ve been playing a lot in LA. We’ve been playing pretty much once a month, which has been really fun. But now we can pretty much play our set in our sleep. We’re looking for the next opportunity when it comes to playing with some other bands and opening for different acts. We’re really trying to expand and get out there more by playing in some other states too so that online friends and fans can make those connections in person.

As the world opens up, it’s exciting to finally be able to get back out there and do all the things that we’ve been itching to do for two years. I debuted the project in July 2019, then we played our first show in February 2020. Then we played another one in March before the lockdown was announced. Now it’s reached the point where we don’t want to stop again. We had this momentum, all this emotional drive, and we were so excited, but it got shut down. Now we’re like, “Everything is relatively safe to be able to do this again.” We want to go full steam ahead and not stop.

To keep up with Jake, follow him on Twitter, Instagram, and Spotify. Stream “All I’ve Got to Say” today.