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Dirty Linen USA (March 2000)
DAVID HUGHES
ENGLISH RHYTHM & VIEWS
English songwriter and acoustic guitarist David Hughes delights in playing the role of a cheerfully cynical iconoclast. He proudly smokes cigarettes, drinks vodka, writes some politically incorrect songs, and generally enjoys being a sardonic voice from the middle-aged middle class, a demographic group that's largely unrepresented among contemporary singer/songwriters. His songs can be smooth and jazzy or clipped and percussive. His subject is often contemporary suburban life viewed with a combination of appreciation and disillusionment. There's occasional anger, lots of subtle humor, and always, a mature journalist's eye for details. "Anything that sort of goes against the grain suits me fine," he dryly explained in a recent phone conversation.
Hughes has toured with Pentangle and Fairport Convention, and some of the best-known names in English folk-rock contribute to his albums, including singer Jacqui McShee, bassists Danny Thompson and Dave Pegg, and drummers Gerry Conway and Dave Mattacks. His music shows a complex, reflective personality that is not always quite as curmudgeonly as he sometimes suggests. "I'm standing at the crossroads of an ordinary life / Not the one I had in mind," he disappointedly notes in a song called "An Ordinary Life." In another track called "Being A Poet", he curtly observes "Being a poet, stupid thing to be / Writing pretty things, mostly doing it for free." But he can also write lines like "I gave you roses and you gave me wings / A safer heart closes its mind to those things," from a love song called "It's Hard To Imagine."
Hughes was born in Liverpool in 1950 and grew up in the port town of Maldon on England's southeast coast. One of his earliest influences was the politically outspoken African-American comedian Dick Gregory. "I think I must have been around 10 or 11 when they imported him onto the BBC from the States. He was a very sophisticated man, and I loved that. It was the fact that he had an edge." Music was later in coming. "I was given guitar lessons when I was 13, and it put me off for seven years! I never got on with the straight-ahead rock 'n' roll. It wasn't until I heard Bert Jansch and Pentangle that I realized there was something else that might be interesting, and it wasn't until college that the opportunity arose."
During his second year at Loughborough College he met two fellow students who introduced him to fingerpicking guitar styles. "One guy showed me how to play 'Angie'. It was the first thing I learned. Immediately I had the rhythm, and I played 'Angie' for two days solid on a weekend. by Monday morning I had my chops together, and I started playing then." There followed a four-piece college band called Deadly Dudley that drew its repertoire from groups like Steeleye Span, Pentangle, and Fairport Convention.
After graduation, Hughes travelled through Canada, busked in London, and eventually took a teaching job. "But it was my intention to try to make a go of it as a guitar player and singer," he remembers. "I wasn't ready, but I knew I was going to do it." In 1976 he met London-based guitarist Mick Linnard, with whom he formed a duo that released an album two years later. "It had its moments," Hughes says of Russell Square, "but as a songwriter I'm sure it's immature, and vocally I was trying to sing more than I should. It didn't quite capture the essence of what Mick and I did." Hughes and Linnard played together for about five years, releasing a second album in 1980, and toward the end, becoming a trio with the addition of young Scottish singer Eddi Reader. "We did a few wine bars and stuff, but we weren't making our way into the folk scene - we were far too off-the-wall for that. So it wound down, and I was left with not knowing quite what to do."
Working at a marketing job in London, Hughes still played solo on occasion, and, as a third trade, built models of historical Thames sailing barges for commercial clients (who used them as displays). His model-building craft led him to research the 19th century history of Maldon and its shipbuilding industry, which in turn led to a book called The Maldonians, published in 1996. It's a true story of my home-town," he says. "I was looking for any kind of biographical details of a barge builder who worked in Maldon. He built some of the most beautiful vessels on the coast in the last hundred years, a real artist. In the process I discovered this whole generation of people weaving in and out of the background of national events - councillors, doctor, shopkeepers, fishermen, everyone. I knew the surnames because this is my hometown and all the surnames are the same. So this fantastic little story sort of came out, and it's the story of a community."
In 1992, encouraged by American guitarist Duck Baker and other friends, Hughes decided to take one more shot at a full-time music career. "It took me about a year, and over that time I rid myself of the last things that I thought I ought to be playing but wasn't comfortable with, and honed in on the idea of being comfortable with everything I did, rhythmically and lyrically. I found that a little irony went a long way. It was my natural self! By that time, with my increasing age, I had rid myself of the ghosts of the people that had influenced me, like John Martyn. I wasn't trying to be like them anymore. So my natural self was more at ease coming out."
The result was the self-produced album Curtains, followed in 1995 by Active In The Parish, an often acerbic picture of life in a small English town, and in 1998 by Fifty Yards Of David Hughes, a sharp-edged look at middle age and the re-evaluations it brings. The songs are often half-sung, half-spoken, with rapid-fire strings of words backed by quick, complex fingerpicked guitar lines and popping percussion. "Rhythm is my strength," he says. "With rhythm you can approach most styles of music, and I like to spread it around. And then on top of that I like to be sort of sophisticated lyrically. I like to make an impact with rhythm and also with lyrics, as though I'm talking. It's like a conversation with an audience. That's what I do best."
Hughes' latest album, This Other Eden, has a lushly produced, richly percussive sound. It includes songs like the sarcastic "Nobody Smokes In America" ("I like doing one song on every album that's totally bigoted!" he comments with a laugh) and the more serious title song, a look at negative changes in English town life. "I remember Maldon as a community where you knew every face," Hughes explains. "It had its ups and downs, but now at my age I yearn for that sort of community. There's the post-Thatcherite sense of aggression in this country, a survivalist kind of tone in society. It's a dreadful thing."
But Hughes has a droll sense of humor, too, best captured in book-plus-live CD The Fairport Tour, an often hysterically funny account of his 1998 adventures as opening act for Fairport Convention's annual U.K. tour. He describes it as the story of "one man's four weeks on the road with a lot of other blokes," and he succinctly captures both the camaraderie and the occasional strains of life aboard a band's tour bus.
Aside from his ongoing performances in Britain, Hughes hopes to play some shows in the U.S. in the coming year. Wherever he shows up, he'll bring that sense of humor. It's also safe to assume that he'll bring his cigarettes.
Tom Nelligan
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