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Paye, who grew up in West Newbury, Vt., looked around at the bones of the former Grafton County Courthouse and listened to the acoustics.
“I thought, ‘I have to play here,’ ” Paye, a 1994 graduate of Oxbow High School, recalled during a telephone conversation this week. “I could tell it was a hot spot.”
On Sunday afternoon at 12:30, Paye will heat up the converted landmark with a concert aimed at reacquainting him with his neighbors, meeting new followers and raising money to complete and market his fifth album. The evolving, four-song EP will include The Sound of Amplified Youth, a track featuring performances by Oxbow students.
The title “came into my head,” said Paye, who turns 40 next month. “From that, the rest of the song unfolded. I try to write anthems. This started becoming an anthem for the time we live in in this world, but I wanted it in the point of view of the younger generation.”
Growing up in the Upper Valley during the 1980s and early 1990s, Paye preferred chasing soccer balls to pursuing his creative muse. Then he went to Champlain College in Burlington.
“Back then, if you didn’t know what you wanted to do, you studied business,” Paye said. “I quickly found out that I didn’t like any of my classes. I switched to liberal arts, taking things like abnormal psych and philosophy.”
He also studied poetry, encountered the music scene in Burlington, picked up the guitar and took the leap into open mic sessions. On visits home, he also played the occasional set at Middle Earth Music Hall in downtown Bradford.
“I was not a natural-born performer,” Paye said.
He would hone that skill, along with his songwriting, with a cross-country trip West with friends in 1998.
“I ran out of money in Santa Barbara (Calif.),” he said. “It was landing in a place where I knew no one that got me going. The freedom of not knowing anybody, having nothing to lose.”
Before long Paye was opening for the likes of Train, Michelle Shocked and guitarist Ronnie Montrose. Between the professional touring and travel to places like Southeast Asia, he started finding a voice.
“To be a good writer, you have to have experience. Or experiences,” Paye said. “After a while, I realized you could seek that out, become a better writer.”
South Newbury-based fiddler and record producer Patrick Ross saw Paye’s progress when they finally met in Newbury a few years ago. Paye was taking care of his ailing mother, and he and Ross started playing shows and private parties together.
“He builds a song like a master stone mason would build a tower,” Ross, who will join Paye after intermission on Sunday, wrote in an email this week. “He has a way of writing about heavy stuff and making it digestible to the human heart. Original, yet not so out there that you can’t relate.”
After years of solo touring and recording, most recently 2011’s All the Walls Are Windows, as well as touring as a duo with Ginger Hebert of The Fairweather Watchers, Paye this past spring formed a new band, Arrows in Orbit, which started playing around Portland and recording an album.
“He has arrived,” Ross concluded. “And from now on will always be spinning on his axis with a gravitational pull that will someday unlock masses of peoples’ ears.”
Before going back to Portland after this weekend’s show, Paye will take a deep breath and sample the quiet of the Upper Valley.
“I call this home and I call that home,” Paye said. “Portland is one of the most progressive bubbles around: lots of music, lots of ideas, light rail. And you can instantly get out into the woods.
“At the same time, the pace back here is a beautiful break from the city.”
Before Hunter Paye takes the stage at Haverhill’s Alumni Hall at 12:30 Sunday afternoon, a catered brunch will start at 11 a.m. and continue through the show. Admission minus brunch is by donation of $10 as supporter, $20 or more as sponsor, while brunch costs an additional $12. For more information, visit courtstreetarts.org.