With a subscriber count of nearly 16,000 HTHaze is an up-and-coming artist that should be on your radar. Hamilton Troy Hayes, otherwise known as HTHaze online, is a 22 year old alternative artist from Dunaway, Georgia. With a sound that is all around unique, and voice that has a way of calming you, I was ecstatic to sit down and discuss his previous two EP’s and his new album with him.
- Who are your biggest influences?
- John Mayer, Jon Bellion, The 1975, Ed Sheeran, Blackbear, Japanese House. And then we got people like All Time Low, The Cab, Panic! At The Disco, The Maine, all the old school pop punk bands.
- What about them influences you?
- The way they write songs, the lyrics, because I really struggled with writing lyrics, so doing that and seeing how they wrote and how meaningful they were, it really helped.
- When was the moment you decided, okay, this music thing is something that I want to pursue?
- I don’t know if I’ve reached that moment... no I definitely have. There was a moment in my life where I was about to pack up everything and leave college and move to LA and my dad slapped the shit out of me, metaphorically, and I was like "yeah no I can’t do that." The main thing for me right now is school, it kinda has to be ya know, as for music, like I didn’t start singing until like two or three years ago, but once I started singing I was like "yo I can do this I can sing, and not just make beats." I wasn’t good at singing at first, but ya know practice makes perfect.
- Do you play multiple instruments? What is your favorite instrument to play?
- Yeah, I play a lot man, like anything other than woodwinds I can probably get down on; guitar, bass, ukulele, piano, pretty much just name stuff. I think my favorite to play would be guitar, specifically acoustic guitar, the most fun to play though is bass, it’s the one I fell in love with first.
- So I have a lot of friends who have talked about your music in the past or have mentioned how good your EP Fake Friends was, but I myself had never had the chance to sit down and listen to it, that is until I was scrolling through twitter one night and saw someone commenting on it and was like "okay, I need to check and see what all the hype is about." And let me just be honest, I am so mad it took me so long to listen. Fake Friends is truly a unique EP, it's so simple yet so intricate and when I was listening I could tell that you put a lot of passion and work into this EP, where did your inspiration come from in making EP?
- All my inspiration comes from the old shit, ya know Blink-182, All Time Low, but also a lot of the new shit I’ve been listening too. Lately, I’ve been listening to a lot of Blackbear and Eden, and a lot of 'lowfi hip-hop.' Inspiration comes from everywhere, whether it’s family, friends, other musical artists, experiences, it’s really everything.
- Did you play the instruments and produce every detail of this EP yourself?
- Yes, absolutely, I did every single bit in both of the last two EP’s.
- How was that? Was it hard producing and putting together every detail on your own?
- It was definitely interesting, just because me as a person loves to be in control of things, especially when it comes to something I’m passionate about. It has to be perfect, so no it wasn’t really hard, it was tedious when it comes to the nitty gritty, and I'm like "oh that doesn't sound right" but I don’t know how to fix it because I don't want to work with anyone. But I’ve learned from my mistakes, the new album (Nimbus) is very collaborative.
- Fake Friends is an interesting title for an EP to me, what was the inspiration in choosing that title?
- Yeah it is, uh well it is titled after the song ‘Fake Friends’ on the EP, but I guess what inspired the title was it was just the song I was most hyped about, and it kinda sums up what I was going through at the time. 'Fake Friends' is the title track but it was actually the one that was written last for the EP. And ya know it was really cool...
- My personal favorite from Fake Friends is 'Drive Me Home', funny enough, I was actually driving home late one night when I heard it the first time. I'm not sure what it was but as the song started to play everything felt surreal, it was a moment, you know?
- Yes, that was the point of me writing drive me home, that’s fucking cool.
- What is your personal favorite off of Fake Friends?
- My favorite part? Aw, gees man, uh, there’s an actual phone conversation that I had with Caulin, I was recording the vocals for Fake Friends, and he wasn’t in town. And I was on FaceTime with him, showing him the vocals, and I happened to have my mic on and so while he was talking I recorded what he was telling me and how he was doing in LA, and all of the stuff happening in his life. And so I recorded it and had that conversation feeding into the next song. I’ve always wanted to do that in my music because all the pop punk bands did that, ya know songs fading into other songs. So me actually doing that was really cool.
- Another one that I love is 'Away,' there's a lot of love in that song and it shows, was there a specific inspiration behind that track?
- I love 'Away.' It's solely about my girlfriend of six years, Angela, I love her, shout out, I love you baby! That’s pretty much all there is, though it's about her. The lyric "her eyes are like the color of the sky," yeah, if you ever see Angela her eyes are beautiful.
- Now as I said earlier, you have also released an Acoustic EP titled Friends, does it's title and the title of Fake Friends have specific meaning to them?
- Yeah, I wanted to drop the fake in front of fake friends because I’ve grown out of that chapter in my life, I’ve graduated from having fake ass friends to real ass friends. Funnily enough after I released Fake Friends I had a lot of people hit me up apologizing for being shitty, and I was like "it’s cool." And since then I’ve made more connections and more genuine friends, and so I decided to shed the fake and shine a little brighter light to it.
- What made you decide to release an acoustic version of all of the tracks from Fake Friends?
- I’ve always wanted to do that like how all the classic pop punk bands did, like Blink-182 and All Time Low. My favorite acoustic is the one from All Time Low with 'Jasey Rae,' it’s awesome. Ya know, not a lot of people did that, and I loved when bands did that because at the time all I could play was acoustic guitar so it was easy for me to learn their songs, and to me it seemed more genuine.
- Now this week you released your first Album, Nimbus, how does it feel to have released an album?
- It feels like I just threw a baseball into the moon and it shattered the moon.
- How do you think Nimbus is different from your first two EP’s?
- Nimbus is definitely more thought through. My old EPs were just whatever songs I had made at the time. Each song on Nimbus had a specific purpose for the audience. That's why there isn't a single. Every song is a single to me. Thinking like this makes me put everything I have into each tune.
- Why should people listen to Nimbus?
- There's a lot of me inside of Nimbus, these songs really do come from a different place inside of me. Listen to Nimbus if you want to learn and experience my life and how I think. Step into my shoes if you will. It also just happens to have like 8 bops too.
- You’re not currently signed, if you were approached a week from now and were offered a record deal would you sign it, or would you wanna keep doing this independently?
- No I’m not, I don’t want to be. I don’t know it really depends on the company, record companies are shifty, I have yet to find one that treats their artists well.
- If you had the chance to tour with and open for anyone who would it be?
- I was so close to opening for Blackbear, you have no idea, bruh, but it just didn’t work out. But Blackbear, or Jon Bellion, or Gnash, or Call Me Karizma, I have respect for them.
- What's next for HTHaze? Any plans of releasing more music? Any performances coming up?
- Well, Nimbus was just released, so that’s exciting. No performances, I wish, if you know anyone that needs an opener, let me know.
- Alright, that about does it, I just have one more question, if there’s one thing you want readers to take away from this article what would it be?
- Don’t sleep on me, I know a lot of people come out here "don’t sleep on me, I’m making big shit." But I’m not making big shit yet, but I promise that I will. And I promise that when these people find me in a few years are gonna be like "damn I wish I would have stuck with him" because everybody that fucks with me now is gonna be glad that they did, this is a family type thing. I’m not one of those social media people that are like "yeah y'all are my fans haha" like no, we’re family, we support each other. If I’m doing good y’all are doing good.
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Troy (HTHaze) has quickly become one of my favorite musicians. His new album, Nimbus, is one of the best albums I have heard within the past year. Not only is he incredibly talented but he is one of the most genuine and humble guys I have ever had the chance of meeting. Give him and his music a chance, I promise you will not be disappointed.