Then there were three

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This article was published 15/02/2023 (982 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Hailey Legary and Hailey Hunter needed a drummer.

It was the summer of 2021, and the roommates were in desperate need of percussion. With Legary on the guitar and Hunter on the bass, and both splitting vocal duties, the two Haileys knew that there was a vacancy in their sound that was holding them back.

“We put up an ad on Kijiji,” Legary recalls. “It just said ‘Drummer wanted,’ with a picture of us and a video we made of our first song, Now and Then.”

They got some strange responses: someone who didn’t read the ad offered to play bass and someone else sent in hip-hop beats, which were nice, but not exactly what Legary and Hunter were looking for. The Haileys are a good, old-fashioned rock band, making intelligently structured songs that inspire foot-stomping and head-banging. They needed a drummer to fit that bill and to give their music some rhythmic glue.

“Then we get a message that just said, ‘My name is Haley and I play the drums. I’ve been playing since I was seven,’” Legary says.

“We were like, ‘Uhhhhh. You’re in.’”

The Haley in question, who spells her name without an ‘i’, was Haley Matiation, and thankfully for the first two Haileys, the third name-triplet to join the trio was exactly the musician they dreamed of finding. Her first name didn’t hurt her resumé either.

Matiation, who studies environmental science at the University of Manitoba, got a drum set for Christmas in Grade 2 and never looked back. Her parents encouraged her, and she drummed along to whatever was playing. “My mom didn’t get to play the drums growing up,” Matiation says. “I think she played the accordion.”

The music the Haileys make hasn’t yet featured a squeezebox, but it does include thrashing guitars, impeccably punky vocals, and with Matiation at the kit, no-nonsense percussion. On the single Late Night Rush, released in January, the Haileys announce themselves as the city’s — and probably the world’s — pre-eminent all-female, all-Ha(i)ley rock band. Their next single, Like You Want Me, is due this spring.

Counting as influences groups such as Veruca Salt, plus the talk-singy band-of-the-moment Wet Leg, the Haileys are proud of their femininity, but there’s much more to them than their gender identity. “We’re proud of the fact that we’re all female, but that’s not why we’re a band,” says Hunter.

They’re also not just a band because they have the same name, though that helps with their marketability. When they played for the first time, the three only children felt a solid musical connection grounded in mutual independence.

In January, the band played one of its more interesting gigs, opening up for a pro-wrestling match at the West End Cultural Centre, wearing matching black bike shorts and white runners as they paced the squared circle. “I want to mention how bouncy that stage was,” Legary says. “Microphones hitting us in the teeth, trying not to trip over our own feet.”

“This crowd was on all sides of us,” says Hunter. “I imagine this is what musicians feel like when they play a stadium.”

“It was definitely a punk-rock experience,” she adds.

The band’s next gig will have less wrestling and more maple syrup: The Haileys play Festival du Voyageur’s Tente des Neiges on Feb. 23, along with sets from Love Letter Writers, Neighbour Andy, and the Jace Bodnar Band.

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com