Texas singer-songwriter Hayes Carll released his 10th album, We’re Only Human, on August 8. While on tour in support of the album, Carll visited The Current to play songs from the new record and to catch up with host Bill DeVille.

Watch and listen to the music performances above, and watch the interview below. Beneath the interview video, find a transcript of the conversation.

Interview Transcript

Bill DeVille: Hey, I'm Bill DeVille, and we're here with Hayes Carll. Nice to see you, Hayes.

Hayes Carll: Good to see you.

Bill DeVille: Yeah, it's been a while since September at Americana Fest. It was fun chatting with you at that at first night's party.

Hayes Carll: Yeah!

Bill DeVille: So here we are. You got 10 albums under your belt. How does that feel? When you started out, did you ever dream you'd make 10 albums?

Hayes Carll: Yeah, it feels pretty surreal, really. Time flies. I still feel like that kid who was just excited to be around music and hoping to write a decent song. So, yeah, when I look at 10 records, it's kind of hard to comprehend.

Bill DeVille: Yeah. Well, the 10th one is called We're Only Human. What can you tell us about the record? I personally think it's one of the best records you've ever made. There's a lot of good songs on it, a lot of sad ones, and there's some fun ones, too. And I thought you made a winner.

Hayes Carll: Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. It was sort of the result of ... I've just been like, I'm sure most people have, my struggles in life, and I never seemed to be able to fix them or correct them, or wasn't making any changes. And so I just got tired of having the same conversations with myself over and over, and was trying to figure out a way to live with a little more ease and contentment.

Bill DeVille: Did you find it?

Hayes Carll: I'm a work in progress.

Bill DeVille: Yeah?

Hayes Carll: But it felt important to me. And so that personal work sort of blended into the creative work, and that became kind of the thing that was most interesting to me to write about, was sort of codifying these lessons I was learning for myself, or things that worked for me or didn't, or reminders, and turning them into songs. And so that was sort of the genesis of the record and the theme behind it. It's just about grace for yourself and others, and trying to settle in and get a little stillness and not give up on your own spirit.

Bill DeVille: It seems more introspective and personal than some of your other albums. Is that true, do you think?

Hayes Carll: Oh, yeah, absolutely. It's the first time I really wrote a record with intention. In the past, I've always just, you know, write songs, and each one can come from its own place. And some of them are observational. Some of them are life experience. Some of them are just made-up word games that turn into something. And this was the first time where I kind of set out with this idea that I knew what I was trying to accomplish. And it was very gratifying to do that work and then to get there.

Bill DeVille: Yeah. What can you tell me about the title track, "We're Only Human"? I was struck by that one.

Hayes Carll: Yeah, I think I had I expected myself to have life figured out. For some reason. I don't know why; I thought I was supposed to. And it started becoming very clear to me that I didn't. Instead I was struggling! And as I sat down to try and do some of that work and figure out where I was going wrong, I felt a lot of shame, a lot of sadness and regret, and I didn't want to live in that place. I wanted to acknowledge it, but I didn't want to live in it. And so it required kind of giving myself some grace for not being perfect, for being flawed. And then I started thinking about that we're all going through that experience. It's this universal thing of life, and maybe it's important for me to have grace for others, and especially if I, you know, would hope that they would have that for me. I'm asking for that grace, that maybe I needed to start with myself and give it to others. So that became the the idea was, we're all going through this trip. It's not easy. There's no guidebook for it. And maybe we can all relate on that level that this is a challenge, and let's have some grace for ourselves and each other.

Bill DeVille: And another song, "Progress of Man (Bitcoin &Cattle)."

Hayes Carll: Yeah.

Bill DeVille: What was the inspiration behind that one?

Hayes Carll: That was sort of an outlier on this record in that most of the record is about stillness and grace and following your soul. And this one was just sort of my little protest to the state of the world these days. It's hard to navigate life without being bombarded by everybody's opinions and instructions and judgments and information, and everybody's an expert, and they feel entitled, seemingly, to shout their advice to you, and it all can just be overwhelming to me. So this was my just kind of throwing it back out there and trying to re-establish that I can live without it and be the center of my own judgment. And before I let all that noise in.

Bill DeVille: Are you a Bitcoin guy?

Hayes Carll: No! I wish. I have a buddy who is, my friend Corb Lund.

Bill DeVille: Canadian guy!

Hayes Carll: Canadian, yeah.

Bill DeVille: I like Corb, he's awesome. You guys have toured a lot over the years, haven't you?

Hayes Carll: Yeah, we've done a lot of tours and done a lot of work together, and he's one of my best friends. And he got into that fairly early, and he gave a Bitcoin many years ago as a wedding gift to a couple, and the bride was very unimpressed, and she was actually angry. She's like, "What are we going to do with this worthless piece of imaginary whatever?" And I think the value was like 400 bucks at the time. But they held on to it, and now the word is they're going to remodel their house.

Bill DeVille: With the proceeds?

Hayes Carll: They're going to sell it and do a remodel. And so it turned into the best wedding gift.

Bill DeVille: Yeah. So you lost a friend a while ago, Wrecks. And Wrecks founded that place called the Old Quarter in Houston. First, tell us about Wrecks and the Old Quarter. That place is so legendary. I know I have that Townes Van Zandt album that was recorded live there. You know, where you hear how hot it was, and they didn't want to run the air conditioner because it was too loud to record when it was playing. So tell us about Wrecks and the Old Quarter in Houston.

Hayes Carll: Well, so Wrecks Bell, and he spelled it W, R, E, C, K, S, that was just his sense of humor. And was a bass player. And he played with Townes Van Zandt for many years. He also played with Lightnin' Hopkins, Lucinda [Williams], and he was just this very colorful character. And he co-owned the Old Quarter in Houston, where Townes made that live record, and then sold this stake and and he moved down to the beach in Galveston, Texas, on the island, and opened up the Old Quarter Acoustic Cafe, and it was just a 70-seat folk club.

Bill DeVille: Did you volunteer there and stuff, too?

Hayes Carll: Oh yeah, yeah. I stumbled in there one night on accident during an open-mic night, and it changed my life in like every way, because I was just playing covers four hours a night, six nights a week on the beach for these dive bars. But there was nowhere I could play my own songs. And I walked into this place, and they encourage you to play your own songs. And on the weekends, touring acts would come through, like Ray Wiley Hubbard or Steve Young or Vince Bell or Steve Fromholz, or Willis Alan Ramsey. All these, like, masters would come through. And so it became my school, my church, my home, and Wrecks and I were very, very close for a number of years. And everything that kind of came out of my career came from that place. A lot of those acts started taking me out on the road and showed me that you could make a life doing this, so I had no idea. And so it was a hugely important spot to me. And, yeah, it was sad news when Wrecks passed earlier in the month.

Bill DeVille: Yeah. And we lost Todd Snider.

Hayes Carll: Yeah.

Bill DeVille: You guys were pretty close. I know that he did your "Stomp and Holler" with the Hard Working Americans, and he appeared on the KMAG YOYO album.

Hayes Carll: Yeah. Yeah, Todd, this has been a tough one. It's tough, a tough loss. Like with Wrecks, I knew it was coming, and that was hard in a lot of ways, but Todd was has been even tougher. He just, he was my hero.

Bill DeVille: Yeah.

Hayes Carll: And I'm not alone in saying that. I know it's been really moving to watch all the tributes and the stories come out, and it was just, he was such a singular figure and kind of showed us all that it was — I think we all admired his artistic integrity and the way he lived his life. It wasn't always pretty, it was often messy, but he did his own thing, and he showed the rest of us that it's OK to do that, that you can do that. And that's a tough thing to be in this world, to be unique, to be uniquely yourself. And as an artist, as a performer, in the studio, and just in life, he was just always that, and it was amazing and magical to watch. So, yeah, it's been tough. I've known Todd for 23 years.

Bill DeVille: Seems like everybody has a story about him. You must have a good kind of funny story somewhere about him, don't you? 

Hayes Carll: Oh, yeah. I mean, I've spent a lot of time the last few days just laughing with friends, telling Todd stories. One of my favorites was I used to throw a songwriter festival down on the beach, and I had a very limited budget, and it was just all self done. And I call called Todd's agent, who has been my agent now for last 15 years, but this was before I was working with him, and I said, "What does Todd cost?" And they they gave me a number, and it was like much more than I could afford. And so I did what you're not supposed to do, and I emailed Todd directly and said, "Here's my situation, man; anything you can do?" And he said, "If you'll give me a golf cart with my name on it and an ounce of weed, I'll come play." And so he and Elvis, his tour manager at the time, flew from Nashville to Houston, rented a car, drove two hours, came down, and we had a golf cart that said "Todd Snider rules" on it, and handed him an ounce of weed. And, you know, he lost a bunch of money to come down there and do that, and then put on the most incredible show under really challenging circumstances. And I just, I don't think of anybody else that that would do that. And just, yeah, countless ones, some much more bizarre ones and funny ones, but that told me a lot about him, and what was important to him.

Bill DeVille: Yeah. That's an awesome story. I had never met him, but I did see him, you know, many times over the years. The last time I saw him was he opened up for John Prine in 2019 here in the Twin Cities. And he had his dog side stage. 

Hayes Carll: Yeah.

Bill DeVille: Yeah. And he duetted a little bit, sang with John, and it was a great night.

Hayes Carll: Yeah, he was a link to a lot of those guys, Prine and Kristofferson, and Billy Joe shaver and Jerry Jeff Walker and Jimmy Buffett, and, you know, so many of my heroes. And it was always special to me when Todd would tell me advice that Kristofferson gave him, or something that Prine said or did, and that was a link to me, to this other generation of heroes and now, and Todd was very much a major hero for me. He was a friend, but more than anything, and long before that, he was just somebody I so admired and respected as an artist.

Bill DeVille: Yeah, a guy who had plenty of songs that could make you laugh and quite a few that make you cry, too.

Hayes Carll: Yeah, he had it all, and was always pushing himself musically, like trying to find something interesting for himself. And then every performance was its own unique thing. In the studio and in person, he was always just going for that moment, and he wasn't about wasn't about going back and making it perfect. He just captured the thing. So if you were in the studio with him, a lot of times, it was just "Roll the tape, keep it rolling," and and when he feels it, he'll go do it. And a lot of times make up words on the spot. But being at a live Todd show was, even if he was repeating some of the stories, it was each thing was unique, and wherever his mood was and his intention, that's what you got. And it was as far from unpolished and as real as you can get.

Bill DeVille: All right, last question: A guy like you has played a lot of gigs over the years. What's the weirdest gig you ever played?

Hayes Carll: Oh, man!

Bill DeVille: One of the weirdest gigs you played.

Hayes Carll: I mean, yeah, I've had some weird shows over the years, but I think the strangest one to me was, I was in California, and Mike Nesmith from the Monkees used to have this thing out there, like an office building in a strip mall, and he was real into Second Life — it was an online thing where you had an avatar and you had a whole world, and you could have a job and date people and have money and go around this digital world. And he was really into it, and he set up a honky tonk inside this digital world, and I played it.

And so it entailed that we're in this strip mall in this building, and with Mike Nesmith, who I, like, I was a huge fan of the Monkees growing up, and so that was just surreal. And then we stand in front of a green screen with my full band, and we play, and it's being broadcast live on KPEG radio. And then he pulls down a screen in front of us, a projector screen, to show us this online world. And everybody that's online is an avatar, so they're flamingos and pigs and giraffes, and that's my audience. And so when we played, he told me the way they applaud is they spin and do pirouettes. And so we would just finish this loud rock song, and it would be silence, and then all these avatars would be spinning around, and Mike Nesmith from the Monkees is standing there, and we're live on air. And then the final straw was, there was people could type in comments. And I had upset some guy in Texas, a festival promoter a few months earlier, and so he joined the party and started trash-talking me in the comments section. It was just too much of an overload. There were so many different things happening and, yeah, I think that was maybe my weirdest gig.

Bill DeVille: Sounds pretty weird!

Hayes Carll: Yeah.

Bill DeVille: Hayes, thanks so much for coming by. It's been a pleasure chatting with you.

Hayes Carll: I enjoyed it. Thank you for having me.

Bill DeVille: It's Hayes Carll. New album is called We're Only Human. Thanks so much.

Hayes Carll: Thank you.

Gallery: Hayes Carll in studio at The Current

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Songs Performed

00:00:00 High
00:03:36 Progress of Man (Bitcoin & Cattle)
00:06:37 Stay Here Awhile

All songs from Hayes Carll’s 2025 album, We’re Only Human, available on 87 Records/Thirty Tigers.

Musicians

Hayes Carll - guitar, vocals
Noah Jeffries - fiddle, mandolin

Credits

Guest – Hayes Carll
Host – Bill DeVille
Producers – Bill DeVille, Mike Pengra
Video – Josh Sauvageau
Audio – Evan Clark
Graphics – Natalia Toledo
Digital Producer – Luke Taylor

External Link

Hayes Carll – official site