Claude Hay "the one man band"

Hailing from the Blue Mountains near Sydney, awardwinning Australian solo artist Claude Hay blends slide guitar, sitar, bass and drums to create music that invokes the best of stomping traditional blues, hard rock and booty-shaking funk, all delivered with chops to burn and a vocal range to match. Claude is perhaps the world's ultimate Do-It-Yourself musician – forging his live sound on the back of looping technology which allows him to create a band vibe without the band. This appoach has seen this fiercely independent artist build an audience for his music globally with the release of three award-winning home-made albums.
Taking DIY a step further than most, Claude has built all his own equipment: there's 'Betty', his doublenecked guitar which he made out of a kitchen benchtop; there's Stella, his new 'Cigar Box' guitar which started its life as a six dollar baking tin. He's also built his own dome house and studio from the ground up,and pimped out his tour van with a shower and bar(a great move when you consider how much time he spends on the road).
'I Love Hate You' is Claude Hay's brand new third album and was recorded and mixed in his home studio 'Deathstar' (a huge back-lit Darth Vader mask overseeing production) and continues Claude's move away from traditional blues and back to his love of rock – both alternative and hard – with his childhood love of 80's cock rock starting to show its influence. The signature slide is still there, along with the four-on-the-floor rhythms and gut-bucket sensibility, but new to the mix on album number three is an increased focus on guitar riffage along with a more refined aproach to songwriting and
production.
This new release sees Claude in a rare collaborative mood, with the input of other musicians on a number of tracks, most notably the rhythm section of Sydney band Chase The Sun. Mastering is courtesy of the great William Bowden (who mastered Gotye's last album amongst thousands of others in his prestigious career).'I Love Hate You' is a concept album – dealing with the things Claude loves, hates and loves to hate. From loved ones, great gigs, motor vehicles and treacherous trans-continental bus rides, bad customer service and indifferent radio programmers.
'I Love Hate You' follows up 2010's 'Deep Fried Satisfied', a very successful album for the indie artist that allowed him to get a foot in the door overseas. While promoting the launch of the album in the US, Claude performed live on the National Public Radio Network (which boasts a weekly listenership of about 27 million) and 'Deep Fried Satisfied' promptly shot to number nine on the US Billboard Blues charts in response. The album went on to rank number
five on Amazon's top ten Blues albums of 2010, with track 'Miss You So' polling third in the Best Blues Song of the Year category.
Claude's affection for New York-style pizza was the inspiration for the album's lead track 'Get Me Some' which won the Australian Blues Music (Chain) Award for 'Best Song of 2011'. A track about the aggravation caused by faulty printers, 'How Can You Live With Yourself', hit number one
on Triple J radio's Unearthed chart around the same time. 'Kiss The Sky' (2007) is the debut lo-fi masterpiece which started the story for Claude Hay's solo career and still sells like hotcakes whenever Claude Hay performs at festivals and venues around the world.