Country singer and “Bachelorette” contestant Wes Hayden wants the Hayden haters who show up at Friday’s concert at Hog Creek Icehouse to realize one thing: “The Bachelorette” is all about television, not real-life romance.

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Country singer Wes Hayden is on tour to get beyond his "Bachelorette" persona. (Wes Hayden photo)

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Wes Hayden sits with Jillian Harris, the most recent "Bachelorette" for ABC. Hayden says he still stays in contact with Harris through e-mail. (ABC photo)

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“Reality is not 30 guys and one girl and marriage,” he said in a recent phone interview from his Austin home. “You’d be surprised how many people believe this show is the gospel truth.”

Well, maybe not the gospel truth, but enough to make millions of viewers link his name with “liar,” “jerk,” “snake” and worse for how he came off as Jillian Harris’ potential suitor in this summer’s ABC reality series.

In “The Bachelorette,” 30 wooers of one woman sought to win her hand over the course of several months. Hayden, 32, found himself a contender for eight weeks until his “bad boy” persona — demonstrated in apparent statements that he was in the show for his career and continuing a supposed relationship with another woman — caused Harris to ditch him. She ultimately chose Ed Swiderski, a Chicago tech consultant whose name likely will never appear on country music charts.

The allegations about the girlfriend, Hayden says, weren’t true. He had dated Austinite Laurel Kagay for three years, but the two had broken up a year before “The Bachelorette,” though they are still friends, he explained. 

As for career advancement, Hayden admitted his manager had suggested “The Bachelorette” might help his national exposure after the singer discovered his youngest sister, Tarleton State University student Kayla Hayden, had entered his name in the competition. 

“It Don’t Take That Long,” the song he sang to Harris, is prominently labeled as such on his Web site, and his charges that “Bachelorette” producers were guilty of shaping him as a villain have won him space in People, Us, In Touch and the New York Daily News as well as airtime on roughly 100 radio stations. 

Traffic to his Web site during “The Bachelorette” and its aftermath caused the site’s servers to crash several times, he added. 

Asked what he’d be doing now if Harris had picked him as The One, the country singer said they might be dating now, but no marriage. “It’s impossible to get married in such a short time. I was only with her alone for four hours,” he explained. “And what kind of relationship is it when you know she’ll be making out with another guy 35 minutes after she leaves you?”

It’s all television, he said. Viewers didn’t see the score of producers and film crew members out of reach of the camera in each scene. Nor did they hear what topics or themes producers told contestants to talk about with Harris. 

 As “The Bachelorette” proceeded, Hayden perceived he was being set up as the villain, a suspicion verified once the series began airing. “Pretty much from the beginning, anything serious or abrasive I said got in (the program), but I’m a real funny guy,” he said. 

The Texas native is now back to his music, something he’s done for the last 14 years, with three CDs released in that time. He and his five-man band are ramping up their performance schedule to put the flesh-and-blood Hayden before fans, not the “Bachelorette” persona, with time spent to meet with the public, let people take pictures and sign autographs. 

Hayden still trades e-mails with Harris — he heard from her last Saturday, he noted — and says some of her supporters who turn out for his concerts are starting to change their minds. “We’ve had some Jillian fans in the audience . . . but by the end of the show they’re dancing on top of tables, drinking beer and having fun.”

choover@wacotrib.com

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