When the country band Ward Hayden put together for a one-off show needed a name, he thought of “every name under the sun,” and the rest of the band rejected all of them.
“I was thinking of the key elements of country music, and I said to the guys, ‘Girls Guns and Glory,’ ” he says by telephone from his home in Boston. “We could have had four, but drinkin’ doesn’t start with a ‘g.’ ”
Eight years and a few lineup shifts later, Girls Guns and Glory has released five albums, plays about 200 dates each year in North America and Europe, and headed Friday to The Livery in Benton Harbor for an Independence Day show with — and accompanying — a favorite of Livery audiences, Sarah Borges.
“From the very beginning, she’s been very supportive,” Hayden says about Borges, a fellow Bostonian. “She gave us a lot of opportunities to open for Sarah Borges and The Broken Singles. She was talking about her new album and I was talking about our new album, and it made sense to combine forces for touring.”
Indeed. Borges and Hayden split the job of booking the shows, with her concentrating on markets where she’s done well and him doing the same where Girls Guns and Glory has built a following. And, in an instance of two venue owners helping each other and the musicians, Leslie Pickell of The Livery introduced Borges to Steve Martin of Goshen’s Ignition Music Garage, where Borges and Girls Guns and Glory will each make their debut on Nov. 21.
In effect, by touring this way, they each get introduced to new audiences already predisposed to enjoy the evening because of the other’s presence on the bill.
That’s certainly Borges’ intent in bringing Girls Guns and Glory to The Livery.
“We used Benton Harbor as the anchor date for the Fourth of July,” she says by phone while sitting in traffic in Boston. “I wanted to go to Benton Harbor with the band and show the band to Benton Harbor.”
Released on Feb. 4, Girls Guns and Glory’s latest album, “Good Luck,” highlights the early rock ’n’ roll side of the band’s sound that Hayden says has always been present at its live shows but never on the band’s records.
“It’s been enjoyable,” Hayden says. “For the bulk of my career, I’ve written a lot of songs in the country vein. The topics have leaned more on the sadder, heartbroken side of life.”
The band made the shift at the instigation of its producer for “Good Luck,” Eric Ambel, who has worked with Nils Lofgren, Steve Earle and The Bottle Rockets and who noticed how well such rockers as “Shake Like Jello” went over in concert.
“Working on the rock ’n’ roll, it gave me an outlet to have more fun with the lyrics, maybe be more tongue-in-cheek,” Hayden says. “It just didn’t feel right to focus on the more melancholy aspects of life. … Rather than writing about being torn up by heartbreak, we wanted to write about fast cars and fast women and shakin’ like Jello.”
For this tour, Chris Hersch, Paul Dilley and Josh Kiggans of Girls Guns and Glory accompany Borges during her set, and then Hayden joins them for several duets — Borges sang “1,000 Times” with Hayden on the band’s “Sweet Nothings” album in 2011, and they’ve been adding more to their repertoire for the tour and a new release.
On July 20, Borges and Girls Guns and Glory will release “Mixed Messages,” a seven-inch vinyl single featuring a cover of Sonny Cher’s “Baby Don’t Go” and the Borges original “Get as Gone Can Get.”
“It’s two different sides” of the same scenario, Borges says of the songs. “The artwork is a hand waving, but it could be hello or goodbye. We were trying to show that dichotomy throughout the whole thing.”
Lonesome Day is Girls Guns and Glory’s label, but on June 24, it re-released Borges’ self-released “Radio Sweetheart” from last fall.
“Those guys were so instrumental in making that record come out,” she says. “They introduced me to the owner of the label, and he was willing to take me on.”
Borges and The Broken Singles played The Livery four times between June 2006 and July 2010, and for fans of honest live rock ’n’ roll, their gigs became much-anticipated events for the audience and the band, which recorded a self-released live DVD there.
But family commitments, financial constraints and general burnout from touring thousands of miles and hundreds of nights a year led Borges to break up The Broken Singles in August 2010.
Two weeks after The Broken Singles’ final tour, she and the band’s guitarist, Lyle Brewer, married. A year later, she gave birth to their son, Elliott, and stopped touring until Borges initiated a few fly-in solo gigs last fall, including one in September at The Livery.
“We were road-weary and ran out of money,” she says about The Broken Singles. “You can beat your head against the wall only so many times before you rest. (Girls Guns and Glory) haven’t had that experience. It’s an upward trajectory, and it’s been really interesting to come back to music and see that perspective again. … Luckily, they’re all nice guys and don’t mind having a girl in the band.”