Hayley Sales – child of flower children, activist, major-label folksinger (at this year’s Vancouver Folk Music Festival, for example) – says we all should take some time to waste time.

Island Girl

Story by GARY BARCLAY  Photography by KHAREN HILL

Hayley Sales leads an adventurous life. Cheerful and easygoing, the 21-year-old singer-songwriter-musician-poet-painter and environmental activist has just returned home to her family’s organic blueberry farm on Vancouver Island after a month-long roam along the West Coast, surfing. She is now packing her bags and will join her bassist Darren Parris to embark on a European tour – London, Belgium, Berlin, Cologne, Oslo, Stockholm and Copenhagen – opening for Gavin DeGraw. “I’m really excited because I really haven’t been to Europe before, so it’s a new experience for me.”

Sales travel adventures are nothing new. “I’ve got two fantastic hippie parents who have taken me all over the place, at a very young age. I was born in Washington, D.C. and I was babysat by Cambodian refugees and whatnot,” she says with a laugh. “My dad had a recording studio in the basement and he’d record all the R&B artists and reggae artists in the Washington, D.C. area. I’ve kind of had that as a soundtrack to my very young years. And then we basically packed up the van and moved to Portland, Oregon, when I was four, and I fell in love with music right around that time on my own accord and just knew it was what I needed to do, wanted to do. Once again, my parents decided to make a move, when I was 16, and we moved up to the blueberry farm here on the Island. And this is definitely the right place for me; it’s the right vibe. It’s been a long journey, but I’ve found my home,” she enthuses. “It’s only an hour and a half away from surfing, so I’m perfect!”

Her father, Richard Sales, built a recording studio on the farm. Wisely, he did not teach his daughter how to use it but created an environment where she could teach herself. “It initiated my desire to learn. You learn in a different way. Given the opportunity to record my album [Sunseed] for Universal, I basically said, ‘OK, I want to record it on my blueberry farm and I want to produce it and arrange it and mix it,’ and, you know, they let me do it! So it was very empowering. I could have fun drinking blueberry tea on my blueberry farm and recording an album.”

How has the beauty of nature affected her music? “It’s a feeling; it’s an atmosphere. Most of my songs I’ve either written on the beach or sitting in the field in my yard. And, essentially, it’s so relaxing, the inspiration kind of comes up and it’s … you know, when I’m in nature and when I’m in a very peaceful environment and whatnot, I realize how important it is to take the time to relax. The world’s running so, so fast – to whatever finish line it is for each person or for each country – I think we should take some time to waste some time. I think that’s what the environment teaches me.”

Sales’ music and lyrics are genuine. “I see so much music being made. It’s fun music but it’s very shallow; it’s very much just a quick fix and it’s not very real to me. It’s based on radio singles and, you know, people dancing around in as little clothes as they can … a lot of it. I’ve started to see recently people like Ben Harper and the Jack Johnsons of the world – I mean, there are tons of people starting to write songs that are actually honest and are capturing the human experience again and communicating. I think that’s so important because music is one of the most fantastic mediums for connection between the person sitting next to you or you and a million people. It’s something that everyone understands. It’s really important that my songs are completely honest and completely me and I don’t hide. You just try it and see whether anyone takes ya,” she adds with a smile.

Through music, Sales not only communicates the beauty she experiences in nature but hopes someday to protect nature itself. “People miss out a lot because we’ve created a very cement world and I think that it’s actually an incredible experience to have the environment around for no other reason than just for humans to be happy. One thing, if I ever become really successful and really famous, I want to start buying up land and forests in Canada and preserving them so they can’t be logged and exploited any more.”

Affected profoundly by encounters with individuals, she says, “The Dalai Lama is the most incredible person I’ve ever met, and simply because he is the most content and loving and honest and innocent person out there. It was fantastic. Basically, about 50 teens were selected to go and sit in a really intimate space with him – teens that were active, like environmentally or socially or whatnot. So you know what I did? I got to go into this little room and we got to ask him a question. I asked him – I was thinking about his situation and whatnot – ‘How do you manage to forgive when so much unforgivable has been done to you?’ He was really cute. He had some candy stuck in his tooth and he says, ‘Excuse me!’ and he reached up and he started trying to get the candy out of his tooth – and [he had] the biggest smile. He basically said, ‘You learn to forgive and not forget and realize everybody still deserves love.’ It took me about a week to remember what he said because I was so awestruck. So that’s something that I’ve tried to live my life according to.”

Sunseed has just been issued in Denmark, where the single “What You Want” is now, according to her manager, in the national Top 100. The album will be released in Australia and Japan this July and in the UK in August. “For me, what I was aiming for on Sunseed was to really capture the feeling of the Island and where I live because that’s where the songs came from, so I wanted to – even in the tonality of the instruments and everything – keep it very mellow and very warm. I wanted the music to make people take a minute to sit on their porch and drink some lemonade, or whatever it takes, to have a minute of observation and kicking back and having some fun.”

And the future? “Hopefully, I’ll be bopping around the world and seeing lots of new places and singing lots of music, internationally and doing festivals in Canada.” Hayley Sales will make her début at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival in performances with her band on Friday and Saturday, July 18 and 19, and at the Surrey Fusion Festival on Sunday, July 20.