Walker Hayes’s “Fancy Like,” aka the “Applebee’s Song,” wasn’t supposed to be as big as it became.
It was a last-minute add to his 2021 EP “Country Stuff” and that 30-second TikTok of him and his daughter dancing was never intended to be seen by a million people on the day it was released in June 2021.
“I wish I could be like, ‘I saw the world (needed this),’ but I didn’t,” he confessed early this week during a phone call to talk about his show at Tucson’s AVA at Casino del Sol on Friday, June 14. “It was crazy. It was absolutely bonkers.”
But there was something about that song and the timing that struck a nerve with America when we needed it most.
“I don’t think that’s me; I think God uses people in mighty, mighty ways and I think a lot of people hear some of the silliest songs I write and they feel hope,” Hayes said. “Honestly, if I could give the world a hug like that every day, I would love to.”
“Fancy Like,” on the surface, is a song about a guy who treats his girlfriend to “Applebee’s on a date night/Got that Bourbon Street steak with the Oreo shake/Get some whipped cream on the top, too/Two straws, one check, girl, I got you.”
But look beyond that, and you find that it’s a song about being happy with what life has given you.
“It says if tomorrow is just like today, that’s awesome, which is something that we rarely give gratitude for,” Hayes explained, ticking off a list of things we worry and wish for rather than appreciate who we are and what we have. “I know it says it in a very flippant, trite way, but it’s like ‘I live in strip mall land and if I live there tomorrow, let’s go. That’s good. That’s where we live.’”
Throughout his 14-year career, Hayes has tackled tough subjects like sobriety and breakups with a slight wink-wink that says everything will be OK. His song “AA” is about a guy trying to do right by his wife and kids, wrapped in sentiments about keeping his daughters away from pole dancing and his sons out of jail while he tries to keep himself out of AA.
“They are not happy lyrics, but there’s a sense of that ... let’s sing along and there is a hope in them,” he said.
Hayes has a lot to be hopeful for, he says, from becoming sober eight years ago to raising six children – “the most beautiful mess we ever made”– with Laney, his wife of 20 years. But he also has tragedies, including the death of a daughter shortly after she was born in 2018.
“We’ve lost a kid; we’ve passed a dead child back and forth and looked in each other’s eyes and buried her with our family,” said the 44-year-old Hayes. “We have experienced the bookends of life and so after all that is said and done, I’m a very hopeful person. There are things that I don’t ever want to experience again.”
But Hayes, like his pop music counterpart Andy Grammer (“Keep Your Head Up,” “Honey, I’m Good,” “Fine By Me,” “Joy”), has been able to find hope in heartache.
“When it all comes down to pen and paper and I’m writing a song, I do find myself going, ‘I’m not your typical, tortured, tormented soul’,” he said. “I don’t think I just wake up and decide, ‘I’m gonna have a positive attitude among all this pain and suffering that we have known.’ But I do feel like God has given me the ability to look at what I do have and kind of see, in slightly some perspective, where I go, I’m appreciative. I have a really good life.”
His show Friday, the fourth stop on his summertime “Same Drunk Tour,” will be his first in Tucson. Tenille Arts open the show at 8 p.m. at the AVA, 5655 W. Valencia Road. Tickets ($28-$76) are available through casinodelsol.com.
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