Bonnie Hayes

All Music Guide:

San Francisco pop singer Bonnie Hayes applied the new wave updating of '60s girl-group pop (Blondie, the Go-Go's, etc.) to bright, bouncy songs with a strong, self-confident outlook. Hayes recorded two albums with her backing band, the Wild Combo (guitarist Paul Davis, bassist Hank Maninger, and drummer Kevin Hayes); those records were 1982's buoyantly enthusiastic Good Clean Fun and 1984's Brave New Girl. Hayes signed with Chrysalis and employed a larger backing band for 1987's Bonnie Hayes, but then disappeared from view for quite some time. She returned in 1995 with a new album, Empty Sky, which featured longtime cohorts Paul Davis and Kevin Hayes, a guest appearance from friend Huey Lewis, and many others.

Wikipedia:

Bonnie Hayes is an American singer/songwriter/keyboardist from California, USA.

Late 1970s and early 1980s

In the late 1970s, she founded a New Wave band called The Punts, who released a 45 RPM single, "Shelly's Boyfriend" (a song inspired by her sister), b/w "Rochambeau," which received considerable airplay in the SF market. In 1982, the band changed their name to "Bonnie Hayes with the Wild Combo" and released their first album entitled Good Clean Fun, a New Wave/rock offering. The Good Clean Fun album was finally released on CD in September 2007. The song "Girls Like Me" from that album was used in the opening credits for the 1983 movie Valley Girl. Perhaps because of the label's (Slash) limited muscle, the record was only regionally successful.

1982 brought the release of Brave New Girl, on Hayes's and producer Steve Savage's Bondage Records. This sophomore effort expands even further the broad musical range of Good Clean Fun, ratcheting up the sophistication of the earlier release, in the material as well as the production. "After Hours" is a soaring ballad, while "Night Baseball" and "Brave New Girl" bring a distinctive power pop tilt to its new wave core and hint at things to come in Hayes' writing.

Late 1980s and beyond

Hayes signed with Chrysalis Records and, in 1987 released Bonnie Hayes, produced by Stewart Levine (UB40). This album, recorded and mixed in Los Angeles, favors Bonnie's pop sensibility and, with layered horns, sheets of keyboards, dense backing vocals, and lots of processed reverb, the production colors of choice in the L.A. pop scene at the time. The record was not a commercial success. "Some Guys", the first single from the Chrysalis record, was later released by Cher, and was Hayes's first commercial cover.

In 1988, Hayes and Savage, having signed a deal with Muscle Records and Miles Copeland, went into Soma Studios in San Francisco. The duo was joined by Bonnie's brother Chris (HLN) and Wild Combo member Paul Davis on guitars, Benny Reitveld (Santana, Miles Davis) on bass and Dennis Chambers (Parliament, John Scofield, Santana) on drums. Due to difficulties between Muscle and Copeland, the album was never released.

Later that year Hayes joined the traveling band of former Go-Go Belinda Carlisle for a world tour. She has also toured with Billy Idol (1991-2) and Bruce Springsteen (2000).

In 1989, Bonnie Raitt heard Hayes' catalog through the auspices of their publisher, Bob Brown of Bob-A-Lew music, and chose "Love Letter" and "Have a Heart"for her comeback release Nick of Time. The album was a smash hit, selling over 6 million copies in the US alone, and winning the Grammy for Record of the Year. The Hayes-penned "Have a Heart" was the top charting song on the album, rising to number 3 on the Adult Contemporary Chart. Although this gave Hayes her first commercial success, she was known in the business from that point on as a songwriter, to the detriment of her career as a performer. Hayes went on to place many songs with other artists, including Bette Midler, Natalie Cole, Robert Cray, David Crosby, Adam Ant and Booker T and the MGs.

In 1996, Hayes was signed to Fuel records and recorded Empty Sky in Los Angeles, with Savage again in the producer's chair. Drawing on session players Keith Brown (bass), Alvino Bennett (drums), brother Chris (guitar), and a guest appearance by Huey Lewis playing harmonica on a version of Bobby Gentry's "Ode to Billy Joe". This release is a toned-down, jazzier follow-up to the stillborn IRS project. Bottomless, written for Hayes' daughter was later covered by Bette Midler.

2004's "Love in the Ruins", written after Hayes learned to play the guitar, features a capricious rough-edged quality evocative of her first record with a rootsier, Americana sound.

Bonnie Hayes is the sister of Chris Hayes, former lead guitarist of Huey Lewis and the News, and Kevin Hayes, drummer with the Robert Cray Band.

Songwriting Teacher

Bonnie Hayes began her teaching career at the Blue Bear School of music on Ocean Avenue in San Francisco, where she began as a student in 1970. She went on to become an instructor in piano, music theory and band workshops. Blue Bear since moved to Fort Mason, and Hayes continues to teach songwriting there, as well as run the summer camp program and serve as a trustee on the board of directors. She has also worked as a keyboard instructor at Family Light Music School in Sausalito, CA, a small private school whose staff also included Michael Bloomfield (Electric Flag, Super Session), John Cippolina (Quicksilver Messenger Service, and Toni Brown (Joy of Cooking), the Stanford Jazz Workshop, the ASCAP workshops in Los Angeles, and at the WCS Conference at Foothill College. Students of hers have won various songwriting prizes, such as:

Albums

Good Clean Fun (1982)

This album was released on CD on September 18, 2007.

Track listing

Reviews

Allmusic said that Good Clean Fun is "probably the finest album of the entire early-'80s California girl pop scene... the songs on Good Clean Fun are almost embarrassingly catchy. The first two tracks... are three-minute classics with more vocal and musical hooks than many whole albums... Good Clean Fun works brilliantly on every level, and only Slash Records' limited distribution muscle -- and possibly the unfortunately cheesy cover art -- kept it from being a hit. As it stands, Good Clean Fun is a neglected '80s pop masterpiece."

Robert Christgau said that on Good Clean Fun, Hayes "comes off smarter, surer, and more sisterly than just about any new rock and roll woman I can think of."

Brave New Girl (1984)

(With the Wild Combo)

Bonnie Hayes (1987)

Track Listing

Empty Sky (1996)

Track Listing

Love In the Ruins (2003)

Track listing