No Moss Grows on Wade Hayes

Nashville isn’t really home for singer-guitarist Wade Hayes. Hayes still makes his records in Nashville, still spends his holidays there. But he’s usually counting the days before his next bus ride.

“We love to be out on the bus, picking,” Hayes said of playing and touring with his band. “That’s what we do this for. I once heard an alternative band say, ‘Our albums are just fliers for our live show.’ I thought that was a pretty great assessment of what’s going on on our bus.”

Not that his recorded work is unimportant to Hayes, who performs Sunday at the Crazy Horse Steak House in Santa Ana. He has enjoyed regular airplay on country radio since his 1994 debut album, “Old Enough to Know Better,” whose title song topped the country singles chart for two weeks.

Hayes, who hails from Oklahoma, is a celebrated newcomer in mainstream country music, but his roots are firmly planted in old school honky-tonk, following the examples of Lefty Frizzell, Merle Haggard and Waylon Jennings. It’s the genre that first distracted Hayes as a child, when his parents played those old records around the house.

“I couldn’t wait to get off the school bus to get home and listen,” said Hayes, 29. “[That music] really hit a chord with me.”

Inevitably, it’s a sound Hayes works to re-create in his own work, either by crafting new songs with his writing partner, Chick Rains, or by seeking worthy material from others. “I look for stuff that’s got a little hair on it, a little meatier, not lightweight at all,” he said.

“I’ve never been a fan of fluffy music,” Hayes added. “I like it to either have great musical aspects or lyrical aspects. It doesn’t have to be ‘We Are the World’ or anything, but I do like the songs to be special.”

That’s an issue much on Hayes’ mind as he prepares for his next album. The fourth release, Hayes said, will be in much the same vein as last year’s hit, “When the Wrong One Loves You Right,” though he expects to use more acoustic tracks.

Hayes plans to enter a Nashville studio later this month with his six-piece band to record half the album.

This time, however, Hayes will play more of the guitar parts. ThTe guitarist began playing professionally as a 14-year-old sideman to his father, singer Don Hayes. Even so, the younger Hayes said he was so intimidated during the making of his first album that session players did the guitar parts.

“It was pretty wild,” Hayes said. “With all of my guitar-playing heroes on my record, it was pretty intimidating. All the musicians that I’d been watching the last few years were [playing] on my record. It was pretty cool and a big learning experience.”

From those early sessions emerged Hayes’ signature tune, “Old Enough to Know Better,” which he wrote as a struggling musician. Hayes usually closes his live sets with it.

“It was just about working for a living and trying to have a little fun in between all the responsibilities,” Hayes said. “I took that from a time in my life when I was working two jobs and not sleeping much at all and still going out and picking in the nightclubs. It’s a pretty true-to-life song.”

* Wade Hayes plays Sunday at the Crazy Horse Steak House, 1580 Brookhollow, Santa Ana. 6 and 9 p.m. $36.50-$44.50. (714) 549-1512.