Hayseed

Hayseed, aka Christopher Wyant, may not be able to play an instrument, but his music has earned accolades from no less than Lucinda Williams, who has claimed that Hayseed's talent rivals that of Bob Dylan and Van Morrison. Hayseed's debut album, Melic, was released in September 1998 on Watermelon Records, but vanished from the marketplace when the label filed for bankruptcy at the end of the year. After nine months of entreaties and a personal letter to Sire president Seymour Stein, Hayseed was able to retrieve the album and independently return it to circulation in late 1999. Besides his own compositions (which were brought to life with the help of guitarist Bryan Sutton from Ricky Skaggs' Kentucky Thunder), Melic featured the hymn "Precious Memories," which featured guest vocals from Williams and the Allman Brothers' classic "Melissa."

A musical career was an unlikely path for Wyant, who was born in Western Kentucky in 1966. His father was a minister in the strict United Pentecostal Church International, and Wyant grew up only with the music of his church, which didn't allow for secular entertainment that included popular music or television. When he moved to Nashville at age 20, he grappled with his faith and slowly withdrew from the church. (Though he did obtain employment in the Christian music industry, working with gospel star Bobby Jones and as a roadie for Christian alternative rockers Chagall Guevara.) Hayseed made an important inroad when he met Richard Price, Williams' bassist and onetime partner. Price helped the non-instrumentalist shape his songs, which frankly reflected Hayseed's spiritual crisis. A demo of "God-Shaped Hole" made its way to Bloodshot Records and a re-recording of the song was included on the 1996 insurgent country compilation Nashville: The Other Side of the Alley. After that, a six-song demo cassette, called Homegrown, started making the rounds, drumming up interest in Hayseed's provocative blend of old-time music, contemporary sentiments, and literary notions. (References to such high-minded folks as T.S. Eliot and Percy Shelley are a typical part of the Hayseed universe.) When Watermelon signed Hayseed, the label actually ended up using the six tracks from the demo, touching them up only slightly and then releasing them with another half-dozen tracks as Melic.