Some songs are a mood. Some, an emotion. And yet others, an experience altogether. Haley Heyndrickx is a beautiful soul who often composes soulful songs replete with subtle emotions and delicate experiences. She has been able to secure a place in our hearts with her melodious voice, unique music and brilliant lyrics. Musical brilliance with a touch of lyrical tenderness is what endears her to her listeners. She primarily plays acoustic guitar and performs solo. However, she has a loveable and “ridiculously talented” band as she describes them, to have her back.
Haley Heyndrickx stepped into the musical arena with her debut EP, Fish Eyes, 2016 and in 2018 she released her full-fledged beautifully composed album, I Need to Start a Garden.
In this month’s “Artist of the Week Section”, we’ll have a look at the journey of this soulful songwriter and a promising musician. We’ll try to look at the meaning behind her poetic lyrics, what inspired her to pen them down and about the people who supported her. Haley’s shy personality, with a hint of mysticism is what we are secretly craving for in this contemporary world!
Haley’s Life and Career
Born on 28th May 1993 in Stockton, California, U.S. Heyndrickx grew up in Portland, Oregon with her Filippino-American parents. Heynderickx dreamed of shredding as a child. She sought out the single guitar tuition in her rural community of Forest Grove, Oregon, when she was 11 years old. She was a great pupil, hardworking and determined. There was just one concern: Her teacher only offered bluegrass.
She gradually began to appreciate her mentor’s influence. Heynderickx recognizes her roots as a vital feature distinguishing her from other Dylan acolytes. After graduating from Portland State University, she spent a few months in Prague, and further developed fascination with Bob Dylan. This allowed her to meet Megan McGeorge, a member of a local band LEO. Haley says that she let her open for Megan in random bars. This gave an initial exposure to writing songs for her debut EP.
One of the first videos that fixated the world’s eyes onto Haley Heyndrickx was her cover of Bob Dylan’s It Ain’t Me Babe. Here’s a video of this beautiful piece :
Bob would be proud to see his songs been covered so elegantly without losing the essence!
About Fish Eyes | Haley’s EP
One of the songs in the EP, Fish Eyes, is about her parent’s first date! She tells the story in an interview with Uproxx that her parents met in Christian Pen Pal service. Her mother was working in Hong Kong and her dad flew out to meet her. Their first meal together was soup. Her mother ordered fish head soup and nervously slurped up the eyeballs in front of him which freaked him out. “They get shy when I tell this story, haha,” she says.
Haley never went to study music, instead, she studied business, whose degree she never used. She was fascinated by the riffs of Jimi Hendrix but Bob Dylan influenced her sense of music.
She’s currently going to join ‘The Milk Carton Kids’, a folk duo at a concert in Phoenix in late August. Major bands like Guns n’ Roses and The Maine are going to play there. Off to a new beginning!
Heyndrickx’s Songs and Music
Haley Heyndrickx is the shy queen of country and folk music. And it’s no surprise that she’s into the outdoors, as witnessed in her upbringing. She even named her first album ‘I need to start a garden”. Initially into electric and rock, Haley gradually found her fondness towards acoustics. This fingerstyle acoustic guitar was inspired by another artist of a similar style, Leo Kottke and John Fahey who was introduced by her father to her in childhood.
But this doesn’t make her first album deprived of other genres. The eight-minute-long “Worth It,” is a totally energetic tune infused with punk rock. Haley Heyndrickx frequently draws delicate, lyrical tendrils and driving bass rhythms from her instrument at the same time.
Her songs in “The Bug Collector” are among her most imaginative lyrical compositions. A vengeful centipede, a priest reborn as a praying mantis, and a grouchy millipede are portrayed by brass voices that banter with Heynderickx’s jaunty guitar as she seeks to expel them from her home, lest they spoil her loved one’s “beautiful morning.”
Some of Haley Heyndrickx’s Songs you Gotta Check Out
1. Thoughts of an Anxious Twenty-Something
This song is something every millennial and a good number of GenZ will surely identify with. Filmed in Ireland, this masterpiece by Heyndrickx is a single released in 2014. As the name suggests, the song beautifully captures how anxiety feels. The soft-mellow guitar tunes and the imagery used in the lyrics is bound to make you play it on a loop.
2. Drinking Song
This is one of the songs from her full album of “I need to start a garden”. As the album’s name goes, this song (like others in the album) is filled with nature’s imagery and metaphors. The acoustic guitar and her slow-rhythmic singing charms the listeners. These songs have a hint of her childhood summers and it is portrayed beautifully. The song is best suited to listen to while sipping a warm cup of tea and appreciating her voice. Her natural metaphors make this song more endearing.
3. Oom Sha la la
Who doesn’t love a cathartic song where you just want to scream out loud? This is it!
Oom Sha La La is another gripping song from the album I Need To Start A Garden. The song begins with noticing each “issue” in her body and it gradually moves to accepting them and growing out of the insecurities.
4. Untitled God Song
This is a thought-provoking song that shows different interpretations of how God must look like. She suggests that she might have been a curvy lady with big lips and who knew every language, basically God is a woman who has beauty with brains. She says to Uncut-
Growing up with a religious background, I always grappled with the idea of what God looks like. I mean this in a humorous sense. The older I get, the more convinced I am that God is just a busy mother trying to balance all the chaos around her, and I have no idea why, but I do love this imagery. Maybe it’s an illusion to my own mother, but please don’t tell her that.
5. Worth It
This is the longest song in the album which is an epic of around 8 minutes. ‘Worth It’ comes after an emotional uptick—the meticulous, cathartic untangling of pain. Her generous remark demonstrates an admirably mature commitment to artistic practice as well as self-healing. The song is all about accepting ourselves and how our lives are worth living even when we have flaws. Although all of the songs are open to different interpretations, major similarities can be seen in that all of them represents the journey of loving and growing oneself.
These were a few of the immensely enjoyable songs by Haley Heyndrickx. We believe that she is a rare talent that the world is all the richer to have.
Check out the link below to find out more about her:
- Her website- https://www.haley-heynderickx.com/
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