Grayson Hugh

“In a world where music is often a brittle artificiality, the music he makes is hard and strong, convicted and convincing. And true. Most of all, true. It's there in the gritty lament of his voice, in the roughhouse eloquence of his piano, and the atmospheric poetry of his words.  He has that thing Sam Cooke and Ray Charles had, that thing you still hear sometimes in Bruce Springsteen, that lonely, train whistle in the dark thing, that yearning, keening thing that gets right to the heart of what it means to be alive, what it means to be a human being.”
- Leonard Pitts Jr., Miami Herald, March 8, 2010, Winner of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary

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Raised in the quiet suburb of West Hartford, Connecticut, singer/ songwriter/pianist Grayson Hugh moved to New York in 1986, determined to get a record deal. After several months there he met the producer Michael Baker, who, after hearing Hugh play and sing live, told his girlfriend, "I've just found the next Buddy Holly".

Baker brought Hugh to RCA Records, and that meeting resulted in the making of his RCA debut album, BLIND TO REASON, which was released in 1988 to international acclaim. Hugh has been wowing audiences and gathering loyal fans around the world ever since with his masterful piano playing, his poetic lyrics and his soulful singing. Blind To Reason produced several global mega-hits (Talk It Over, Bring It All Back and How Bout Us) and some award-winning music videos. The album eventually went Gold, first in Australia, then in the U.S.

His follow-up release, ROAD TO FREEDOM, was called one of 1992’s Top Ten albums by Billboard Magazine. Grayson’s music also caught the attention of Hollywood. New York filmmaker Nancy Savoca asked him to record the soul classic "How 'Bout Us," for her first full length movie TRUE LOVE, released in 1989. Grayson asked soul diva Betty Wright to join him in an updated duet version of the song. It was featured prominently in the film and was added to a second printing of BLIND TO REASON. It became Hugh’s third hit single from BLIND TO REASON, and the video for it, shot in New Orleans, went into heavy rotation on VH1, MTV and BET.

In 1990, Director Ridley Scott heard an advance pressing and requested the use of several of Hugh’s songs for the 1991 film THELMA AND LOUISE. They settled on two of them, "I Can’t Untie You From Me," and "Don’t Look Back." That same year another director, Jon Avnet, asked Hugh to record Bob Dylan's "I'll Remember You," for the ending of his film FRIED GREEN TOMATOES. Using Eric Clapton's touring band, Hugh dipped back into his experience as a pianist in a black gospel church in Hartford as a youth, and arranged and recorded “a gospel-style assault of the song that could raise the dead." ~Peanuts, The Cleveland Sun, Dec. 3, 1992).

His songs have been called "a soul/rock stew with a dash of blues and a pinch of country" ~ Stone Phillips, The Today Show, and his voice has been compared to soul legends Sam Cooke and Otis Redding. His piano playing has been called "a veritable cyclone of soul, drawing its energy from such diverse regions as the swampland funk of Professor Longhair, the testifying soul of Ray Charles, with the rhythms of African drumming and American bluegrass thrown in the mix." ~ Benny Metten, Ctrl. Alt. Country, August, 2010.

Following some unpleasant experiences with his record label and business managers, Hugh took a sabbatical from the music industry. He relocated in 1994 to coastal North Carolina where he continued to write songs and perform. He returned north in 1999, and took a job teaching songwriting at Berklee College Of Music in Boston. A near fatal relapse with alcohol and pills that began in 2000 found Hugh living in a sober house in Cape Cod from 2004 through 2007, where he began to rebuild his life and rejuvenate his spirit. In 2010 the long-awaited release of the album AN AMERICAN RECORD heralded the return of Grayson Hugh.

Grayson released BACK TO THE SOUL in August 2015 on his own Swamp Yankee Records label it and has been garnering rave reviews. Howard Dukes of SoulTracks.com wrote: "With his feet firmly rooted in the soul and blues of Memphis and New Orleans, Hugh has crafted a record that is about as eloquently biographical as a music project can be. This album beautifully completes a more than three decade story of a talented artist who, after too many years away, found his way back to his musical home. Strongly Recommended." - Howard Dukes, SoulTracks.com, August 15, 2015

On March 15, 2025 Grayson released "Save Your Love For Me", a collection of thirteen of his songs written in a roots country style, as well as his arrangement of his favorite Hank Williams songs "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry". Grayson has always said "there is a fine line between country and soul music". On this record, he manages to blend the two genres seamlessly. Grayson has taken some of his earliest influences of bluegrass, old time country, The Everly Brothers , added a twist of Cajun and a dash of Rockabilly - and created a unique landscape for his poetic lyrics.

For this project, Hugh assembled some of the top names in roots music today. Cindy Cashdollar is on dobro & lap steel guitar; Pete Kennedy plays acoustic and electric guitars, mandolin and banjo; Tony Garnier is on acoustic upright and electric bass; Gary Oleyar plays fiddle and electric guitar; Tyger MacNeal is on drums and Grayson's wife Polly Messer is on harmony vocals.

The songs on “Save Your Love For me” are cinematic. The stories Grayson tells on this record range from the joy of seeing Spring explode in a North Carolina pasture, to a screen door slamming in northern Maine; from a heartbroken wanderer haunted by a long lost Summer, to a cowboy camped up in a high Montana mountainside, writing a letter to his true love back home. So sit back and enjoy this ride through the hills and valleys of the human heart.