Behind The Tracks: Hedra - Head Held High (Single) (2024)

Jim Marten: The concept of the lyrics for ‘Head Held High’ came about from a really early demo not from this band, more from a bedroom band I had with a friend Scot Taylor, grunge was around at the time and we were writing something a bit more in the style of Soundgarden, this demo track Kamil sent over to me reminded me of it so, as I reminisce I thought it’s be cool to include a lyric from that very first thing I’d recorded on a 4 track tape and that line is ‘every day I wake up, I need a coffee and a smoke’ something that hasn’t really changed over the years, so hence the next line after and that then inspired the rest of the song.

It made me think about my own progression from being homeless to getting that flat to start making music in, I was homeless for 8 months and had to beg the council to give me a place because I was sleeping in hay fields and suffering from a bad back, I remember waking up one morning after covering myself in straw for the night to the sound of a combine harvester in the distance heading my way. Sometimes I’d sleep in a friend’s car or a mate’s house but generally I was left to my own devices with not much at all.

When I got my own flat that opened up an avenue for me, I had my own place to be creative and eventually ended up in a band that had some success, I was working 12 days in an airbag switch manufacturer called Hamlins in Diss Suffolk but I lived in Norwich next to the Stanley Pub where I’d go and watch bands play to. It was there that I saw a folk band that mentioned ‘music and life is all about planting seeds’ and that’s what I used to make the chorus of the song. Onwards to now, I’ve been working in a distribution center a real people-orientated place, during my time here there’s been one guy who has inspired me also in the song because he’s made changes around the business with the nature of the outdoors, in work he seems so miserable but when that break comes to go and do the garden he comes back rejuvenated from doing the work and is always excited to watch his plants grow, he’s younger than me but it also reminds me of my father, a successful businessman who was at one point a compere for Hunstanton Pavilion and hosted bands such as Queen, Judas Priest and partied with the best such as Buddy Rich, who told me there was no point in my trying in music, I’d watch his evenings in the later years watering plants and watching the bird feeders which was really of no interest to me. I wanted to rock and I wanted to prove I could do that well to him. When he died 8 years ago I left the ‘days repeated’ with him, also in the lyrics I was often left to feel like a joke to his success, often bragging that he’d take home more in a month than I did in the year, I always tried to meet the standards that he asked me for, but for some reason, I never really got there, again that’s reflected in the lyric ‘ I must persist that this is a part of me, well done that man that is ahead of me’ because it’s all just chance as to whether or not you’re able to give the answer of success to someone on how they gauge it, to my Father it was easy to gauge, I wish I could say he wasn’t rude and unencouraging but at the same time I thank him for preparing me for that failure, I continue to try and make failure my expertise so that I can be that strong person, the educator of ‘what not to do’ I do hold my head high for doing that much!