With a brave idea, Hayfitz sought ultimate closure by isolating in a cabin for three weeks to record and co-produce his forthcoming sophomore album, Everything Else - out on Oct. 6 - with the very person it was written about.
A lengthy path towards his late-discovered queer identity via an unrequited love with collaborator-turned-best friend, Sam Cope, Hayfitz details a confusing, often excruciating three-year period following a chapter of necessary separation and eventual reunion between the friends.
“I knew that as soon as I admitted to Sam what it was all about, that it was no longer going to be just hypothetical,” says Hayfitz. “It was a very dark internal chapter for me. But it had to happen one way or another as far as me telling him. And it’s all embedded in the record. It’s right there, starting with the first song, ‘Music Room.’”
At 25, Hayfitz was questioning his sexuality and confronting the consequences of his response to Cope’s rejection and the falling out of their friendship.
"For one thing," says Hayfitz, " I didn't think that we were going to be friends again, necessarily. For another, I didn't think we were going to make music together again. And then I definitely didn't think that both of these things would happen. So, I don't take anything for granted at this point."
Hayfitz reveals,"'Music Room' is in a lot of ways the thesis statement for this new record. Sonically, conceptually, emotionally - all of it really outlines what’s to come in the record. For me it was the quickest song to write and the song that I knew I needed to write more than any of the others. I remember showing the demo to Sam for the first time and him being shocked by how all of these experiences we had somehow fit perfectly together rhyming wise. Everything about its conception just felt very mystical and we tried to capture that with how it sounds too.Thinking about how I genuinely never expected to make music with Sam again and then flashing forward to years later listening back to this song together at the cabin after recording it.. it was just the most emotional moment with music I think I’ve ever had. Music has taken on a whole new level of meaning and purpose for me from that point forward - really understanding the power that it can have."
After a two-year period of silence followed by an eventual reconciliation, Hayfitz and Cope finally reunited in the fall of 2021 to produce a set of songs as lush as they are intimate, a near-chronological depiction of their story. The album was recorded outside Pittsburgh at the cabin of their close friend, with the musicians having hauled out a carload of gear from Brooklyn and set up their studio in a large, fully windowed three season porch.
Hayfitz captured the three week recording process on Super 8mm and shares the first footage from that with the lyric music video for ‘Music Room’.
Everything Else releases in full on 10/06/23 with extensive tour dates to include the UK, EU, US, and Canada between May and December.
https://hayfitz.com/
UK Concerts:
UK Concerts:
May 11 London, UK - Spiritual Bar
May 12 Brighton, UK - Folklore Rooms
May 12 London, UK - St. Pancras
May 13 Winchester, UK - Railway Inn
May 16 Brighton, UK - Folklore Rooms
May 13 Winchester, UK - Railway Inn
May 16 Brighton, UK - Folklore Rooms
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