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| INTERVIEWS ARCHIVES RESCHEDULED |
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Name: Donna Hughes
Date: Friday June 22nd, 2007
Time: 1:00pm EDT
Website: www.donnahughes.com
Interviewer: Gracie Muldoon
Description:
Donna cultivated a love of acoustic music born of hearing the bluegrass bands brought in to perform at her local church as she was growing up. Raised in a closely knit family in tiny Trinity, North Carolina, Hughes pursued music from an early age, picking out tunes on the family piano at age three. She never sang in front of an actual audience until 1996, in church – and say she was scared to death. While Hughes is a strong rhythm guitarist, piano was her first instrument, and producer Tony Rice was insistent that it play a part in Gaining Wisdom. “Donna sent me demos of songs she’d written,” Rice recalls, “and sometimes she’d play them on the piano. Piano is not a standard bluegrass instrument, of course, but the more I heard her piano playing and how it colored her songs, the more I liked it and the more I felt it had to be heard on this album.”
Hughes learned to play classical piano by listening to her mother perform pieces by Bach and Beethoven and then learning them by ear. “I think being exposed to classical music has helped me to construct more innovative-sounding bluegrass chord progressions,” she remarks, “that is different from your run-of-the-mill three-chord patterned songs.” Her knack for composing in minor keys is immediately evident on the haunting “Father Time.” The subject of time’s passing is one that fascinates Hughes. “We are bound, motivated, and controlled by time,” she says. “I hope the dark sound of ‘Father Time’ might remind the listener to stop, and be more grateful of each moment, each day.”
Despite earning a B.A. in History at High Point University and embarking on a career in real estate (with a sideline as a gymnastics coach), music was never far from her mind. She began writing and recording in earnest in 1996, cutting an album’s worth of songs that proved to be more of a learning experience than a career-builder. Continuing to write relentlessly, Hughes spent five years gathering material for her first bluegrass album, 2001’s Somewhere in Time. That album picked up word-of-mouth buzz and won her a devoted following among both bluegrass fans and critics, and was followed by the twenty-one track collection Same Old Me in 2003. Union Station bassist Barry Bales heard a track from Same Old Me on WNCW’s bluegrass program, and brought Hughes to the attention of Alison Krauss, who quickly became a fan of Hughes’ powerful, insightful songcraft. Her quest to continually uncover new perspectives is what makes Hughes so remarkable as both a writer and performer, and why she has been referred to by the renowned bluegrass/country writer and producer Carl Jackson as “One of the best new singer-songwriters in the world of bluegrass…” With fellow maverick Tony Rice at the helm, Gaining Wisdom makes a powerful statement from an artist who has only just begun her career. |
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