Since he was a kid, he says, he always planned to be a musician. While his parents weren’t into live music and preferred to play it at home, his father’s friend, Brian, was the closest thing he had to an early mentor. Playing in what Hattaway described as a “grimy pop covers band”, Brian showed the young player his first Rolling Stones riffs. It was only fitting that Hattaway’s father – and Brian – took him to his first concert, The Rolling Stones, when he was 12. What followed was an affinity with the “old stuff”, the rock’n’roll music of the 80s his parents enjoyed. In the decades following, his mum and dad dropped out of engaging with new hits, which is why Adam thinks he feels an empathy towards old music. “I think it’s really important to go back and understand where everything came from.”

While in primary school, Hattaway’s first band was a set-up in the lounge; in his first year of high school, he started “going hard”. At the time in Christchurch, there were two youth venues – Zebedees and The Media Club. Zebedees, a favourite of Hattaway’s, was near Blenheim Road in Sockburn, located in the industrial area of the city. Every Friday and Saturday nights, the venue put on gigs for 13-year-olds and up, and soon Hattaway and his band would be playing there every second month. He met a lot of people who were playing who would later become, in his words, “semi-successful”. Back then, there was a lot of pop punk and death metal, he says.

Hattaway and his band began playing at Zebedees in their early teens

Although he described himself as a Bob Dylan wannabe, Hattaway was making headway in the youth music scene. Between the two venues, he quickly became friends with like-minded young musicians, including Oli and Callum Devlin from Hans Pucket, Brad Craig from Mini Simmons, and Lorenz Weston-Salzer from Yurt Party. Marlon Williams, who is three years older, was out and playing these venues, too. Almost a decade later Williams would produce Hattaway’s fifth album, High Horse; the pair had become close friends by then.

After the Christchurch earthquakes, many venues – including Zebedees and The Media Club – closed down. But ever since he was little, Adam wanted to write songs and be the front man for his own band. After graduating, his spirit was crushed. “It got a little broken, end of high school, and I kind of didn’t believe in myself so much,” he says. It was around this time, in 2013, that he met Lyttelton stalwart Al Park and was invited to join his band. Park, who has played in popular pub-rock bands such as Vapour and the Trails, Louie and the Hotsticks, and worked for iconic record store Echo Records, taught Hattaway everything he knew. He dove straight into the deep end of live performance, professionalism, and gigging on the road. It was music for adults, and at 19, Hattaway was just getting started.

Park told him that performing and playing the music you want to be good at will make you a good musician. “A lot of musician friends of mine have looked down at me for doing covers gigs, but I probably know thousands of songs,” says Hattaway. “That’s how you learn to write songs. By learning other songs.”

He says, laughing, that Park “also taught me restraint when it comes to guitar solos.”

After a strong run with Park for a couple of years, Hattaway connected with longtime Christchurch musician Adam McGrath and joined his band, The Eastern. The pair had first met when McGrath came out to play at Hattaway’s high school, which had relocated due to the earthquake. Sixteen years older than Hattaway, McGrath became a significant mentor.

Hattaway first saw The Eastern when he was 14 years old, in a pub with his dad. The group has described itself as a string band “that roars like a punk band, that swings like a gospel band, that drinks like a country band, and works like a bar band,” and has been an integral part of the Christchurch music scene since 2010. The earthquakes saw their profile increase nationally when the band worked on the charity record The Harbour Union, which spent time in the New Zealand Top 20 chart, and was nominated as the top New Zealand country album of the year.

When Hattaway joined the band years later, he was entering a well-established band about town in which he could cut his teeth. And cut his teeth, he did. “Adam [McGrath] is a really, really amazing performer,” says Hattaway. “I obviously just picked up so much from him, but he also helped me figure out what I wanted to do … I learned some tricks from him, and found the importance of connecting with an audience.”

From Adam McGrath, Hattaway found the importance of connecting with an audience.

Performing with The Eastern taught Hattaway what kind of music he wanted to make and where he wanted to go next. Something different, he realised. While he admired McGrath’s ability to reach the audience and create a sense of togetherness, Hattaway knew his music wasn’t destined to do that. He just didn’t know what that looked like yet. Working with McGrath and Park “all started me on a journey of figuring out what I wanted to do. I took some things from [Park], some things from McGrath, and lots of things from lots of other people to end up becoming something that is an amalgamation of many things, which any good performer will be.”

When he left The Eastern, Hattaway began playing in several different groups, including Christchurch rock band, Wurld Series. All the while, his solo project, Adam Hattaway and the Haunters, bubbled away.

After releasing two EPs as Adam Hattaway in 2015, he released his first album in 2017 under the name Adam Hattaway and The Haunters. The following year, he and the band officially stepped out together with Adam, Elmore Jones, Liam Quinn, and Thomas Isbister. Since then, there’s been a revolving lineup of members, from four in the band at any one time, to 12 that tag-team in and out.

“I learned that from The Eastern,” Hattaway said. “Everyone’s busy, and without sounding like anyone’s dispensable, no one person is available all the time.”

In 2019, his second album Crying Lessons was released, then Woolston, Texas (produced by Lyttelton stalwart Ben Edwards) two years later. When Rooster – featuring 22 songs – followed on Bandcamp only months later in 2021, Graham Reid wrote in Elsewhere, “This is such a confident album they open with a downbeat piano ballad ‘Back In Jail’ when they could have rocked in with the electric country blues of ‘It’s Hard’, the country-soul Stones-meets-dance of ‘It’s Too Late’, the Petty-power-rock of ‘Crime of the Century’ or the rockabilly title track.

Bug Eyes – Hattaway’s fourth album – came out in 2022. His next release, Adam Hattaway and the Haunters’ Anthology 2018-2023, drew a line in the sand, he said, for what would come next.

High Horse, Hattaway’s sixth full-length album, was released in 2024 and produced by his long time friend, Marlon Williams (his first production outside of his own records). Hattaway’s noisy, alt-rock’n’roll shifted to what his press kit described as “frustratingly quiet”, with a track list of “dark yet warm, reverb soaked, rainy day collection loner anthems”.

On ‘High Horse’, produced by Marlon Williams, Hattaway’s noisy, alt-rock’n’roll changed

Inspired by crime scene photography, dark places, and cowboys, High Horse was a contrast to his electric-guitar oriented albums of the past. Williams’s influence can be heard in the carefully produced vocals, layered acoustic guitars, strings, MIDI keyboards, and drum machines made for a cleaner, tighter sound. Recorded at Te Ra in Diamond Harbour, the project also features co-writing from longtime band member Elmore Jones, vocals from Erny Belle, pedal steel from Ray Suen, and engineering from Mark Perkins. ‘Smile’ – a hauntingly slow track – was written by Williams.

Looking back, Hattaway describes his early albums as perhaps “overcooked,” or “insane”, delivering these lines with an affectionate chuckle. He had a blast working with the likes of Delaney Davidson, and Ben Edwards as mentioned. Bringing in Mark Perkins, he says, was such a secret weapon. “Marlon knew that Mark could sonically take us into a space we’d never been before.”

In September 2025, with the Haunters, Hattaway released his seventh album, Hot Variety. It is on the same trajectory as its cowboy-themed predecessor. Upbeat and fun, the band’s music is in a place somewhere that, says Hattaway, “just makes sense”.

Understandably, considering his productivity, Hattaway is a full-time musician through and through. He says he only ever wants to play music: “I just want to be able to play shows with my band and not have to do anything else.”