The story of “Little by Little,” the new album by Ward Hayden & The Outliers, began like so many Bruce Springsteen songs do: in a car with the radio on, hurtling down a highway, headed for distant destinations. But in this instance a voice of sour rhetoric ignited Hayden’s desire to balance the scale with the pursuit of something unifying, constructive, and positive. Unfortunate statements made by a fellow Massachusetts Country artist that directed their audience NOT to listen to Bruce Springsteen kicked off what became a two year recording project that has resulted in an impressive collection of meaningful Springsteen-penned songs that connect us through the acknowledgement, acceptance, and celebration of our hardships and triumphs. Songs the Outliers perform with soul and passion, showcasing the meaningfulness of what unites us, and the ties that bind us together through the perseverance of the enduring human spirit.

An impressive endeavor that was two years in the making, Ward Hayden and The Outliers wound up with a clutch of 16 finished Springsteen songs, all interpreted Outliers-style, that they decided to split down the middle into two separate, yet thematically linked albums. Their respective release dates will coincide with the Outliers always-busy touring schedule so fans will have fresh, new music to latch onto live and on record. “Little by Little” drops first on April 18th, with the second installment, “Piece by Piece” (both titles are gleaned from Springsteen’s lyrics to “Racing In The Street”) due later this year, right around the time the band heads for Europe & Scandinavia.

As any fan of this prolific Massachusetts-born band knows, the music on “Little by Little” is outfitted in the inimitable Outliers’ style. That is, to say, with a marvelously e?ective, updated dose of Country & Western flavor. All told, the musicianship here is so comfortably tight you could bounce a jukebox quarter o? of it. Of course, the sonic package is topped o? by the Outliers’ calling card and ace-in-the-hole: Hayden’s emotionally resonant, supremely silken vocals. It’s a voice that, in the span of a verse or a moment, can e?ortlessly summon the highest of spirits or sink the saddest of hearts. And as if that wasn’t enough to draw listeners in, for “Little by Little,” Hayden even taught himself to play harmonica, which you can hear augment the wistful, twin elegies of “Used Cars” and “Promised Land,” the latter of which is slated to be the album’s first single. Taken together, what the whole shebang sounds and feels like, unmistakably, is nobody but Ward Hayden & the Outliers.

“Well, you can’t out Boss The Boss,” says Hayden, who spent his formative years on the South Shore listening to Springsteen and watching Bruce’s videos on MTV. “We had always felt a little intimidated about trying to tackle his songs because some of them are so iconic. We knew that if we were gonna do them, we had to play them the way we play our music, and that was the first challenge.”

“We chose the songs that meant something to us,” Ward says of the selection process. “A lot of the songs have been the soundtrack to growing up – back when you were hanging out with your friends in the kitchen, songs you’d listen to while driving home from school, or during the course of you just living your life. And with this collection, I felt we were able to say some things that I’ve not been able to say myself yet in my own work, and here we were able to cover some important and meaningful ground that I’ve been wanting to cover.”