Video Premiere: Ward Hayden & The Outliers “Youngstown”

Here is a powerful re-imagining of Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Youngstown’ by Ward Hayden & The Outliers. This isn’t just a cover; Hayden takes a great song and fashions it into something genuinely new and brilliant in its own right. It begins quietly, stripped back and emphasising Hayden’s voice, which is perfect for raw, authentic roots and country music – it’s weary yet warm and engages like a fireside storyteller. Then, the song really kicks in thanks to the powerful bass from Greg Hall. The final third of the song is instrumental and utterly absorbing.  Tyler Marshall and Samuel Crawford deliver hypnotic guitars as ‘Youngstown’ builds towards its conclusion. The video, directed and edited by Mickey Prout, uses footage of factories and working lives to reinforce the song’s themes and place the narrative.

Hayden says of the song: “‘Youngstown’ was a song I’d heard back when I was pretty young. Napster was big in the early 2000s and it had become an incredible resource for a kid with barely any money, all of a sudden there was access to an unlimited amount of music. I had seen The Ghost of Tom Joad CD at my friend’s house when his dad had left it on the kitchen table and when his dad saw we were looking at the CD, he played the album for us on a really nice stereo. I was starting to get into classic country music at this point in my life and I’d downloaded a lot of Springsteen stuff, but mostly demo songs and acoustic songs that found their way onto Napster. But, once I heard that album, I went home and downloaded every song off of it that I could find. I’d never heard of Youngstown, Ohio before I heard this song, but I was able to look up the town and learn more about their story. Once I had that connection this song resonated with me, and I’m sure anyone else who’s familiar with the story of Youngstown, as being truly meaningful and important in the preservation and sharing of their story and their plight. The boom and bust of Youngstown’s steel industry is something that’s played out in a lot of towns in our country. My hometown and the area I’m from has had a lot of similar struggles with the fishing industry, and it was once a major area for textile and shoe manufacturing. While ‘Youngstown’ tells the story of that one town, the concept of areas becoming dependent on a specific trade and then that trade moving on was very relatable. By the time I was growing up, a lot of the industries that had once helped build my hometown and the towns around me were gone or reduced to shells of their former selves. This song captured the despair and the feeling of loss that’s left behind when those industries move on and I think those are important stories to be aware of in the history of our country. Preserving those stories and doing what we can to learn from them is important. Springsteen masterfully captured all of that in this song and we did our best to honour that by doing it in our own style. This was one of the first songs where we realised we couldn’t chase Springsteen’s versions, that if we wanted to do these songs in the most authentic way then we had to arrange them and play them Outliers style.” Hayden really captures, here, a sense of why the original is such a powerful song: while being very specifically tied to the history of one town, it tells the universal, connecting story of so many places where industry and, indeed, hope are in decline. It gets to the heart of those conflicts between hardship and pride, loss and sentiment, a hopeless future and the past.

‘Youngstown’ appears on “Little by Little”, the new album from Ward Hayden & The Outliers, which is out now. Rather than being a rehash of Springsteen’s greatest hits, these new versions of classic Springsteen songs have been carefully chosen because they resonate with the band and reflect their personal life experiences. These are songs that Hayden and the band could work their way into, blending the spirit of the originals with their own style and sound. The result is more than a homage to their hero, it’s something personal and fresh. The project started two years ago when Hayden was provoked into action by a radio interview. Hayden explains: “The person being interviewed told his audience not to listen to Bruce Springsteen. That struck a nerve. Bruce has always been a tie that binds — not a wedge to divide. That moment inspired us to respond the only way we knew how: with music.” Of course, that’s also Springsteen’s way: responding to conflict and injustice with the unifying power of music. Check out both “Little by Little” and Springsteen’s new EP “Land of Hope & Dreams” to feel that musical spirit.