Sean Hayes is a Bay Area singer-songwriter who makes music to dance to or cry to, or maybe both at the same time. He was born in New York City, raised in North Carolina, and honed his earliest musical chops in a band playing Irish and old-time tunes — but his unique style of deeply felt, R&B-inflected folk really matured during his two decades singing and playing in cafes, bars, and night clubs of San Francisco.

His voice layers wonder and heartache upon grit and gravel, sex and soul. His lyrics carry an unpretentious wisdom. He’s dueted with Aimee Mann; been covered by the Be Good Tanyas; and toured with Anais Mitchell (performing songs from Hadestown, before it was an award-winning Broadway show). His songs have appeared on NPR, NBC and HBO.

Be Like Water, out Nov. 19, 2021, is Hayes’ ninth full-length, and his first record in five years — a time period in which, after nearly 20 years in San Francisco, Hayes moved north with his family to Sonoma County. The resulting songs are warm and enveloping, bluesy and lived-in, and have the feel of someone stretching out their legs on a back porch, perhaps a little unused to having the space to do so.

Album opener “Shine” sets the tone — exuberant yet unhurried, it serves as a get-well note and rally cry for his friend Charley Crockett, the acclaimed country-blues singer who underwent heart surgery in 2019. On tour together in 2016, the musicians bonded over their shared history of busking — of singing for the joy of it in the humblest of settings.

“Tell me how you keep believing, is it just a feeling?” asks Hayes over layered, effervescent guitar, before landing on the song’s hymn-like refrain: “You shine when you’re singing; keep shining, keep
singing.”

Other inspirations run the gamut: sly, funky jams like “Bell” and “Gold Tooth” revolve quite literally around a celebration of the bell shape and Hayes’ gold tooth, respectively; while “Joy” is a seductive, slow-burning afternoon love song, and “Invisible Weight” sings the praises of a simple apology, no matter how long overdue. Taken together, these tracks comprise a meditation on balance and acceptance — on learning to see life’s bruises and heartaches as necessary parts of the ride.

“To me, the phrase Be Like Water is about being patient,” says Hayes, of the record he made during a year when such a mantra felt perhaps more necessary than ever. “Rolling with your nature, and trying to stay present. I think of it as James Brown meets the I Ching: You have to get up to get down.”

Though he grew up in the generally frozen landscape of Troy, New York, Sean Rowe spent many of his formative summers in DeLand, Florida where his father was a residential caretaker at a home for troubled youths. It was there, in a mercifully air-conditioned, mostly unused building filled with donated musical instruments, where he taught himself to play drums and then bass. Sean credits those early experiences for what has evolved into his distinctly low and percussive approach to guitar playing.

During those same years, when he wasn’t listening to heavy metal or building his early musical chops, Sean was in the woods exploring, foraging, and obsessively learning all that he could about the natural world around him. Since then, his fascination with the subject has only grown and through his web-series, Can I Eat This?, he’s found a means of indulging two of his great passions: music and nature. In each of the forthcoming episodes, Sean will guide a fellow musician on a foraging mission for all manner of wild foods. The two will use their harvest to prepare some tasty creations and end their adventure by performing a cover song together.

Over the course of his career, Sean Rowe has recorded five full-length albums and several EPs. His music has been used widely throughout film and television, with notable examples including NBC’s hit drama The Blacklist and Parenthood. Rowe’s song “To Leave Something Behind” was one of two non-score tracks to be featured in Ben Affleck’s hit 2016 feature film, The Accountant. The song accompanied the film’s final scene and has since received nearly 14 million streams on Spotify alone.