Q&A with the Glitter-Bombed, Neon Punk Rockers Hayley and the Crushers

The self described “poolside glitter trash” female fronted punk band, Hayley and the Crushers sat down with Off Record to discuss the release of their latest EP, the struggles and triumphs of being an independent punk band, the influences on their aesthetic and art and more in this Q&A.

The California raised, Detroit based Hayley and the Crushers is a punk project from the minds of vocalist/guitarist Hayley Cain and husband/bassist Dr. Reid Cain featuring a constant rotating cast of drummers. The band began in San Luis Obispo, CA several years ago as a passion project between the couple, which they are extremely committed to as they constantly craft fun loving, hard hitting, energy fueled music. The female fronted punk band often uses their feminine power, regional and nostalgic influences as strengths to help create their uniquely indistinguishable neon colored, fierce, angsty, sunny California sound and aesthetic that is the world of Hayley and the Crushers.

Although still connected to the west coast through their label Kitten Robot Records and occasional drummers, Hayley and Dr. Cain made the decision to make the move to Detroit in 2022 in prospects of better tour access and musical opportunities. Since moving, The Crushers have released several new singles and have upcoming EP dropping on the 10th of September titled, Unsubscribed From the Underground, with drummer Gabe Mastic and lead guitarist Ryan DeLiso. While gearing up for the release date, front woman Hayley spoke with ORB in an interview discussing the latest release and a glimpse into what fuels The Crushers.

OBR: What does punk mean to you? Is it an aesthetic thing, is it about the sound, or lyrical content?

Hayley Cain: To go philosophical with it, Punk is a window into another world. It doesn’t matter where you start out. Everyone starts out in a different place in life but, for most people that get into punk rock, as with myself,  I needed a window to get out of my life and go into a new realm. So, I think of it more as a philosophical portal into a place of self expression, freedom, joyfulness, irreverence, humor. You can have a lot of melody and energy brush in at the same time. The best punk in my mind is music that is both really inspiring and energetic and makes your heart palpitate, but music that is so sticky that you can remember it forever. And that could be Black Flag, it could be Operation Ivy, it could be The Ramones, but that’s how I see it. But my first answer really is my real answer, which is it’s a window into another realm that’s outside of the norm. When I was a teenager I needed a window and that was my window.

ORB: What made you make the decision to move from California to Detroit, MI and how has it affected the band, positively or negatively?

HC: Well the core nucleus of the band is myself and my husband Dr. Cain, who’s our bass player, which is a double edged sword because it’s a very #blessed thing that you’re with your partner. You know that you’re going to stay together, you know that you’re going to keep the band together no matter what, so you can move it anywhere and know that that core is there. It’s also difficult to be in a band with your partner, but we knew that we had that intact, and through touring since 2017 when we really started touring, we’ve assimilated this honorary Crusher army of drummers and lead guitar players in different area codes. We have our California West Coast guys and we have our MidWest guys. We knew that there wasn’t the ability to be more mobile and to be more centrally located from a touring perspective.

From Detroit you can pop over to the East Coast and do New York, you can do Chicago, Ohio, the south, you know? So we knew that that was an option, but we also knew that it could be the only reason we’re moving to Detroit. Because touring is great but we wanted the right lifestyle choice for me and my husband/bass player. He had been in California, the San Luis Obisbo area for 20 years and I was coming up on my 10th year in that community, and it’s one of those communities, very small beach communities, where it’s rural and there’s art, culture, wine country. It’s a very cool, California place but, it had become very fancy, very muddied, white and homogenized, and the artist had just been pushed out. We looked around and were like oh my gosh, what are we still doing here? We needed to be around artists, so we decided to move to one of the places we liked when we toured, which was Detroit. Musically, there hasn’t been any downsides. Musically it’s only been up because there’s been a plethora of musicians, there’s been great opportunities to play really cool local venues, so all the negatives were from lifestyle changes.

ORB: How has moving to the Midwest affected your influences in your sound and how big of an influence do you think the region has on your music?

HC: That’s interesting, because you hear about bands that move places and find themselves. It’s kind of a cool idea, to go somewhere different and have that place change you. It’s a very classic story and it does affect a lot of bands. We didn’t realize how West Coast we were until we got here. I think if anything it’s solidified how sunny California we are, and crystalized that. I don’t think we’ve become any grittier but our EP coming out next month, Unsubscribed from the Underground, it was recorded half in detroit and with our lead guitarist Ryan DeLiso, and half away at Kitten Robot Records, owned by Josie Cotton, who’s our punk godmother. And when I listen back to the EP I go, oh my gosh, there is something here.

HC: There is something angstful and gritty and it’s something more indicative of the move, than it is Detroit itself. Being destabilized and going to a new place, you can hear it in the new music, and there’s a rawness there that’s somewhat coming through from that experience. But in terms of Detroit MC5, Iggy and the Stooges, rock n’ roll, loud, bluesy, dirty…I love that stuff. It’s iconic. I love that stuff but, I think for a lot of bands that’s become their sound, but in our weird case we’ve become more Califorinian coming out here. We’ve really only been here a year and a half, in terms of actual time. Ask me again in two years.

ORB: Your band has created a certain aesthetic for itself with the neon colors, attitude, and unique style you bring, from the album artwork to the band photos. How important is imagery to you in music? Do you think it’s just as important as the musical content and stage presence you bring?

HC: RuPaul says we’re all born naked and the rest is drag. Somebody else said something about how all gender is a performance, so it’s like how deep do you want to go. Applying that drag kind of thing to music and art, we’re all putting on a show. It’s just what kind of show are we putting on? Are we putting on a really tepid, safe show? Are we putting on a really wild show? And I don’t think you have to be super colorful and crazy, aesthetically, to be authentic, it’s just what’s authentic to you. And I am a ham.

HC: I am authentically loud and colorful, and that is something that I struggled with as a teenager, because I was in the punk scene as a fifteen year old trying to fit. I felt like my expression was joy could be a rebellion in it’s own way. I suffer from some mental illnesses and stuff. I definitely get anxiety. I do have really intense emotions. I always felt like why can’t joy be rebellious? Why is it not a rebellious act to be joyful, to be colorful, to be bright in the face of everything that’s going on in the world?

That’s where the color comes from and if you ask people, even comedians, where they get their humor from it’s because they have crazy demons. Part of our colorful world we created is an extension of wanting to disassociate from the world that we’re in. Going back to the window, the B52s are a good example of this, that band created a world. That’s our world, we all wear wigs and sing about rock lobsters and sh-t. When you watch the B52s, that’s what’s so charming about them is that they created their own world and inhabited their own world. I also draw a lot from Dolly Parton in a sense, where it’s like yeah she’s putting on a show and is playful. I personally feel like it’s completely a part of what I do. And for Dr. Cain, he’s a visual artist, he’s a painter, his favorite color is pink, you wouldn’t always know that. The best bands, in my opinion, when I go see them, or who I consume their content, there’s like an intentionality that I’m clicking with. It’s not just left up to chance. It doesn’t have to be inauthentic to be intentional.

ORB: On your latest single, “Blood and Treasure”, it sounds like you decided to take more of a country, almost folk approach to your sound. How important is it for you to experiment in your sound, and do you plan on experimenting more in the future?

HC: I take a lot of inspiration from early LA punk, and if you look at that whole scene and look at the breath of music, you’re looking at The Germs and The Stray Cats at the same time, and Alice Bag, X, The Go-Gos and all of these bands happening at the same time, and The Blasters, which is an Americana band essentially, a rockabilly band. And you look at that early LA scene, you see so many facets of American music like put into a blender and spit out, and some of it’s very angular and edgy, and some of it is almost folksy and happy. And that’s the genre that I feel I always go back to, to be inspired. Speaking of X, which I guess you can say is my favorite punk band, they just put out a record very recently. They have this thing where they traded off vocals between the two lead singers, one’s John Doe, he’s the male vocalist, and one’s  Exene Cervenka, the female vocalist.

HC: I know country influences their music, and when Dr. Cain came to me and said oh, I want to do a cover of Juiced Newton’s, or sorry…He’s not even talking about this f-cking song but this is also on the EP, Juiced Newton’s Queen of Hearts, I was like what? But that’s a country song, there’s another country song on the EP you’re just not going to hear it until it comes out. I was like okay, that actually makes sense to me and I feel like Queen of Hearts is a song that X could have covered. And to answer your question about “Blood and Treasure”, like with the pedal steel, I was thinking more like The Ramones do Ronettes, like “Baby I Love You” kind of thing, where we’re this punk band trying to reach for this lush wall of sound kind of thing.

HC: Like kind of this 60s girl group thing with the pedal steel winking at Americana. I’ve been writing country songs lately, and that’s how Dr. Caine and I first came together. I was playing banjo in a bluegrass band and he was playing guitar in his country band that he had for ten years, and I became a singer in that band as well, briefly. We do have country roots and like when we get in the van it’s everything from ABBA to Waylon Jennings.

HC: I just feel like it’s just another extension of, like just experimenting, and not being afraid to play. I was hoping “Blood and Treasure” would be a nice little taste of a little twang, because “Queen of Hearts” is going to come out. Although, We kind of make it rowdy and crazy, it doesn’t really sound country, I know what you mean, you can’t really divorce that from the music when you hear that. It’s almost like a dog whistle for people that f-cking hate it or they can go with it. We’re probably going to do some more weird sh-t. The next thing after the EP is an instrumental record that is real weird. Like we’re not going to make a lot of money doing what we’re doing, and we certainly aren’t getting a lot of notoriety so we might as well have a good time. That’s where that philosophy comes from.

ORB: What are your biggest influences, both inside and outside of music, on both the sound and aesthetics of your band?

HC: Aesthetically, Dolly Parton is a big one, RuPaul is a big one. Like everything RuPaul creates. RuPaul is always saying if you can’t love yourself, how are you going to love somebody else? There’s emphasis on positivity that I feel like RuPaul and drag in general that is very present. I don’t know, I’m trying to think of more female, like Joan Jett. I try to embody Joan Jett as Gidget from the 60s surf TV show. I take a lot of inspiration from women who are both strong and flawed and Gidget is a good one if you watch the old Gidget shows because she was considered not cool and wanted to be one of the cool kids. But then, what makes Gidget so cool is she is wacky and embraces herself. So like the Punky Brewster is probably pretty strong with me (laughs). I love all those pop idols too from like the 90s that I grew up with, embarrassingly. I still have a really big soft spot for Britney Spears (laughs). If I could just have a little microphone thing and have backup dancers I probably would, but that’s not for me. That’s never going to happen.  But I do get to wear a cheerleading outfit on stage sometimes, so I feel like that’s close enough. I don’t know the B52s I guess a little bit. If you ask Dr. Cain he’d say different things. He’d probably say Dwight Yoakam. Steals a lot of his guitar moves from Dwight Yoakam. Country artist. We’re just a blend of a lot of real random sh-t. 

ORB: What does the future look like for Hayley and the Crushers?

HC: Well, we’re going to Nashville and New Orleans, it’s our first time in the south, this October. We’re going to do a punk rock prom for our vinyl release, so that’s going to be really fun. I’ve been thinking a lot about that, and we’re going to be working with Gabe Masdeck and Ryan Deliso. Both of those guys, first is the drummer, second is the lead guitar player, continue working with them and continue writing and recording new music. Definitely touring more east coast and now we’re doing a few southern dates. We’re just trying to expand and take advantage of being in this awesome city, being in a centrally located place. So that’s what we’re going to do. And vinyl. We got vinyl for the new EP.