Edmonton/Vancouver Songsmith Blake Havard Waves Heartbreak Off With A Wurlitzer Grin On "Wave Goodbye"

The phone call came the morning after a gig. A friend of Blake Havard's had just caught a Seattle songwriter named Pete Droge in concert, and he couldn't wait to report back.

"He said, 'I saw this Pete Droge guy last night and he was just like you!'" Havard remembers. That tip set off one of the happiest creative partnerships of his career, and it finally reaches listeners now with "Wave Goodbye," a warm, rootsy and wonderfully wry song about letting go.

Havard did what any curious musician would do. He bought one of Droge's CDs and heard a kindred spirit right away. "I could hear some of the same influences in his music," he says, and those influences read like a perfect road trip mixtape: '70s rock, Tom Petty, Bob Dylan and the whole golden era of songwriting he grew up loving. So, he went to one of Droge's shows, said hello, and soon the pair were sifting through Havard's demos. "We began tweaking the lyrics and arrangements, and we just seemed to work really well together," he says.

Droge was a pretty great person to click with. He has toured with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, co-founded The Thorns with Matthew Sweet and Shawn Mullins, and carries the Pacific Northwest songwriting tradition in his bones. Here he co-writes and produces, and plays acoustic and electric guitar.

"Wave Goodbye" started life in a setting straight out of a novel: an upstairs room in an old mansion in a Vancouver park, where Havard had set up a little studio and spent long stretches writing and recording. The demo he made there eventually travelled to Droge's studio on an island near Seattle, where the song was cut the way great roots records are made, live off the floor. "We tracked them live as a band, which gave the recordings a really natural feel," Havard says. He played Wurlitzer electric piano and electric guitar, and Droge brought in two players from his band the Sinners: Rob Brill on drums and percussion and David Hull on bass. Hull's résumé includes filling in for Tom Hamilton in Aerosmith. "I was surrounded by some great musicians," Havard says. "We overdubbed the vocal afterwards, but the foundation of the song was all of us playing together in the room."

That room chemistry is all over the track. The groove ambles, the guitars feel lived in, and Havard's vocal sits back and lets the story land. The lyric is the real treat, a clever, tongue in cheek step by step guide to heartbreak that opens with "Step one, find someone to love, give it everything you got." By the chorus, Havard is handing out comfort: "Wave goodbye to the dearly departed / Then hang on, step three's started / It's ok to have a broken heart." One verse even winks at the whole tradition of the breakup song: "She's gone, you're living out a worn cliché / You can't find an original word / So plagiarize the feel of every hard-luck song you've heard." Songwriters have been trying to say that out loud for decades, and Havard does it with a smile.

Then there's the piano, which carries an unmistakable nod to Elton John, and Havard can trace that line all the way back to grade school. "Elton was a huge part of my musical upbringing," he says. "When I was a kid, I'd come home from school, put on my Mom's sunglasses, sit behind her little tin fold-out coffee table and pretend it was a piano while I sang along to Elton's greatest hits. I guess some of that kid eventually made it into the song."

For a while, "Wave Goodbye" sat on the shelf. Then, the way great songs do, it came knocking again. "Every now and then, though, a song comes back around and reminds you why you wrote it in the first place," Havard says. "I decided it was time to pull this one out, dust it off and finally let it go. 'Wave Goodbye' is a beautiful little tune, and I think it's time for it to be heard."

Havard has earned the right to trust his gut. Born in Edmonton, he landed in Vancouver during the city's buzzing 2000s indie rock boom and built a reputation as a songwriter, producer and musician respected by players from the Foo Fighters, Bryan Adams' band and Bob Dylan's band. "Wave Goodbye" moves easily between Americana, roots, indie and classic pop, and it makes a terrific introduction for anyone meeting him for the first time.

Blake Havard dusted off a shelved gem, cut it live on an island near Seattle with Pete Droge and turned heartbreak into a step-by-step singalong. Everything to know about "Wave Goodbye" starts right here.

Mom's sunglasses, a tin coffee table standing in for a piano and a lifelong Elton John obsession all led to "Wave Goodbye.

Meet Blake Havard and dive into the live Seattle sessions behind his warm new single