Ryan ChartrandShe smiles and people catch the wonderful disease and smile back. She laughs and the whole world lights up. Whether or not she’s aware of her positive impact on people, Cal Poly agricultural business senior and recording artist Hayley Maynard is loving life.
Finding time between juggling 28 units, getting in her daily run and surf, mountain biking, volunteering as a Spanish teacher at Bishop’s Peak Teach Elementary School, working at the Cal Poly ropes course, doing evening yoga and spending quality fun time with her roommates, Maynard also writes music.
She has been playing the piano since kindergarten when her parents first enrolled her in lessons. But the first time Maynard picked up a guitar was a more dramatic story.
“I got into a really bad rock climbing accident at the end of my freshman year,” she said.
“I fell 15 feet, shattered my leg and was in a cast for eight months. I couldn’t do anything and life sucked. So I would crutch down to the beach every day and taught myself how to play guitar. I played on the beach every day.”
A Laguna Beach native, she just released her first CD titled “Tentatively at Ten.” But unlike most albums, the proceeds will go to a bigger cause than just paying for Maynard’s rent and personal expenses.
One hundred-percent of the album’s proceeds go to several Save the Ocean Foundations like Surfrider and Save Trestles, a Southern California volunteer program protecting the well-known surf spot Trestles.
The idea came to Maynard last year when she spent three quarters backpacking and exploring in Central America. “I just did my own thing,” she said about her decision to leave the study abroad program she was enrolled in and travel on her own.
Besides music, surfing took most of Maynard’s time in Central America. Spending most of the days paddling around for waves to ride, she looked around at her surroundings and was horrified at what she saw.
“The ocean waters there are so badly contaminated. People were getting sick, the ocean water was so bad,” Maynard said.
Since sitting around and doing nothing is not an option for Maynard, she decided to do something about what she saw and combined her love for music with her appreciation for nature to make a difference.
She picked up her guitar and ukulele, tinkered melodic chords on the keyboard, brushed up on her already fluent Spanish, raised up her soothing, angelic voice and sang.
“I wouldn’t like to say I’m like somebody else, but I suppose I could be like Joni Mitchell or Jewel. It’s mostly pretty mellow acoustic stuff,” Maynard said about her music style.
While some of her songs were written while she was in Costa Rica last year, others date all the way back to Maynard’s early high school years. For example, one of her songs, “Extraordinary Girl” took her six years to write.
“It was definitely hard to write because… it means a lot to me. I never wanted it to be in just one form. I wanted it to be expressive of all the emotions I’ve ever felt anytime I’ve ever sung it, which is really hard to do. I don’t even know if I like it that much,” she said.
Language is one tool that Maynard uses in her album. As a Spanish minor, she sings some of her songs in Spanish.
She says she owes her language fluency to her family. “My aunt is from Guatemala and she pretty much raised me when I was growing up. She was super crucial to my Spanish and really encouraged my learning,” she said.
One of her favorite songs on her album, “Pas y amor,” is sung entirely in Spanish and hits on topics of war and need for balance. The chorus of the song translates to “Where did you learn to fight in a war? Did you learn it at home or did you learn it abroad?” Maynard wrote it a few years ago when the war in Iraq was escalating.
“It just talks about how we need both sides; we need black and we need white and we need there to be harmony and accord in the world for things to work out. How much more are we going to lose in this world before we realize that a harmony does exist?” she said.
“It’s just way mellow music that keeps you centered,” she said.
With the entire revenues from her CDs going to the cause, Maynard said, “You’re not only helping the oceans when you’re buying this CD but you’re also helping yourself because you get to listen to some cool music.”
Maynard’s album is on sale on iTunes, in record stores in downtown San Luis Obispo, Morro Bay and Orange County, and she’s currently working on a Web site.
And what’s in store for Maynard besides the success of her album’s efforts and plans to graduate in June?
“If I could, I would surf, run and play soccer everyday. At the end of the day, (I would want to) just play guitar for the sunset and drink a beer and then just wake up early and do it all over the next day,” Maynard said with a smile.