Only a nor’easter could have stopped Boston hardcore band Haywire from performing the dates leading up to the release of their new album, I Don’t Wanna Say Goodbye. They were booked to play a string of gigs late last month, including a high-profile slot
at New York’s CBGB Festival, until they were all wiped out by that East Coast storm.
“It takes a miracle for us to cancel,” says frontman Austin Sparkman. That’s not hyperbole for Haywire, who have played more than 400 shows since forming in 2023. In fact, they played 96 gigs in 101 days across all 50 states in the summer of 2024. “I just try to do everything to the extreme,” Sparkman adds.
He’s been like that since he was a kid. He dealt with familial drug abuse before moving in with an adoptive family in the tiny village of Barnesville, Ohio, when he was a child. His new family provided for him, but he still brought his books to school in a grocery bag. Before he moved to Barnesville, Sparkman was into hip-hop, but his new brother taught him about heavy music. He went to his first show at age 13 and started playing music at 15. Eventually, he began booking shows in his adopted parents’ basement, a.k.a. the Lakeview House, and driving hours to hardcore and emo gigs in neighboring cities.
The young musician moved to Boston in 2013 with no cellphone and two duffel bags of clothes. “I was a child with a pizza shop job,” he says. “I couldn’t afford anything but T-shirts.” Once he got to South Station, he called a friend on what he thinks must be the last payphone in existence. “I was met with, like, 30 people that were awesome and kind of adopted me,” he says. “I immediately had a friend group and started going to shows, started playing in bands, and one thing led to another.”
In just three years, Haywire has played more shows than most bands ever will, including tons of DIY gigs and a tour with the Dropkick Murphys earlier this year. They dropped their debut album, Conditioned for Demolition, in 2024, before signing with Roadrunner Records for I Don’t Wanna Say Goodbye, which came out on Oct. 2. That record runs the gamut from straight-ahead, anthemic ragers to more tongue-in-cheek ruminations on life’s bumps and skips.
Take the opening track, “That’s Life,” a breakup song that kicks off with a pitch-perfect Frank Sinatra impression courtesy of Jesse Wagner of the Aggrolites (who also performed the backing music). “Anytime something severely bad would happen, my friends would just yell the words ‘That’s life!’ super loud, and it almost made a dark moment comical,” Sparkman says.
He came up with the riff for that song while playing a show under a bridge in London. That’s not so unusual: Haywire are partial to a bridge show. “It feels like you’re living outside of society’s rules, and you can do whatever you want with all the people that are the same as you,” Sparkman says. “All these missing puzzle pieces from under the couch all link up under a bridge and light shit on fire.”
The album features even more guests, including Nothing on the title track, which is about a friend-hangout you never want to end; designer Cheyenne Snider (daughter of Dee) on couple’s spat “Trouble in Paradise”; singer Mat Kerekes on the bittersweet “Sincerely Yours”; and hardcore musicians Aaron Butkus and Bruce Lepage on “Forever Alone,” about overcoming addiction. The title is a reference that works on a few levels: Lepage’s former band 100 Demons has a song about the same subject called “So Alone,” featuring Butkus. Butkus’ band Death Threat then did a song called “Still Alone,” featuring Lepage. So it’s a full-circle moment.
Songs like “Interstate Love Affair” capture a feeling that Sparkman cherished as a kid: hitting the road with pals. “That song is straight-up about getting into the van with your friends and driving to a show,” he says. “Sometimes the show wasn’t even worth going to, but some of the best memories I have are those car rides to different states to go to shows.”
Other tracks, like “Perfect Strangers” and that Snider duet, deal with lost love — the feeling of someone you once knew so well becoming a stranger again. “The nuances, like how they hold a fork or what their fucking coffee order is,” Sparkman says.
Closer “Sincerely Yours” delves into the harder parts of Sparkman’s life. “The song reflects the relationships that you have with your parents when they should be your parents, but as you get older, you realize that some parents are just kids,” he says. “It’s about moving forward past that, and dealing with that, and moving on with your life, and realizing that you never needed them — you can become your own person without letting that define you. I feel like I have made a lot out of nothing from where I came from.”
And Sparkman isn’t wasting a minute. Those East Coast fall tours may be toast, but they have 250 more shows planned in 2027 and miles to go before they tap out. “I always refer back to this video I saw that said: ‘How lucky I am to be tired of the dream, of the life I once dreamed to have,’” he says. “I’m living my life. I don’t want it to stop. I gotta strike while the iron’s hot. Eventually there will be another shiny toy, and I want to do as much as I can in the least amount of time I can do it.”
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