Grayson Hugh

I wrote "Cleaning The Cobwebs" (the opening song on my new album "Save Your Love For Me") has its origins in a poem I wrote while living in the village of Coventry, Connecticut. It was February 1978. On Sunday February 6, it started snowing while I was drinking my morning coffee. It didn't stop until the evening of the following day. All in all, a total of around 30 inches fell, with some of the snowdrifts measuring up to 10 feet high.
On the morning of Tuesday February 8, the sun came out. I was stir crazy from being cooped up in the house for two days so put on my Winter boots, put on several layers of wool and took a long walk around the still unplowed streets. I brought my Miranda camera, with a fresh roll of film, and hiked through the white buried countryside.
One of the things I associate with that blizzard was the sound of the pigeons that I heard in my neighbor's barn that stood next to my house. When I returned from my long walk that day, I heard them, their low curdling murmuring was louder than usual in the hush of the snow-blanketed world all around.

"...pigeons huddled up down in the barn
I can hear them murmur in their sleep
still dreaming of that blizzard bird
but she's gone."

It seemed like February got slowed way down to a halt that year. It just sat there in the middle of Winter 1978. Thinking back to those snowdrifted days, I remember how I felt a desperate need for a change. It was the year I broke up with a girlfriend of several intense years. It was the year I moved to a new place. It was the year I crashed my old life and moved to a new one, visiting a film school or two, sowing the seeds of complete new beginning, climbing out of those heavy snowdrifts of old days, old ways and worn out plays.

Those snowdrifts of February 1978 held me as tight as quicksand. Yes, they were beautiful, but I had to get away.

About all of this I wrote, after many changes in places and people. It's a song/poem/story/movie about how the life you want to land in is like the Spring that finally comes after long grey weeks of Winter.

Cleanin' the Cobwebs CLEANIN’ THE COBWEBS words & music by Grayson Hugh There’s a dove on the roof pigeons huddled up down in the barn I can hear them murmur in their sleep still dreaming of that blizzard bird but she’

Get your CD copy (with the 12 page booklet containing lyrics, liner notes, detailed musician & recording credits) of my new record "Save Your Love For Me"!

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Initially inspired by the Ray Charles album "Modern Sounds In Country & Western Music" (ABC-Paramount 1962), "Save Your Love For Me" is the new Roots album by acclaimed singer-songwriter Grayson Hugh. Five years in the making, "Save Your Love For Me" is a collection of thirteen songs written by Hugh in more of a Country style. Grayson rarely does anyone's music other than his own, but, for this record, he wanted to pay homage to one of his favorite Country songwriters. And so he decided to record his arrangement of his favorite Hank Williams song: "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry". It's a duet with his wife singer Polly Messer. Grayson has always said that there is a fine line between Country and Soul music. On this record, the two genres blend 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. Pete Kennedy is on acoustic and electric guitar, mandolin and banjo (he's recorded and performed with Emmylou Harris, Steve Earle, his duet with his wife Maura - The Kennedys and he is a former member of Nanci Griffith's band); Tony Garnier on acoustic upright and electric bass (Tony has been the bass player Bob Dylan’s band since 1989 and he’s worked with Asleep At The Wheel, Paul Simon, and Rockabilly artists Robert Gordon and Brian Setzer); Cindy Cashdollar on dobro and lap steel guitar (Cindy won 5 time Grammys for her work with Asleep At The Wheel, and has recorded and performed with Paul Butterfield, Levon Helm, Willie Nelson, Van Morrison and Redd Volkaert) ; Gary Oleyar on fiddle and electric guitar (Gary has toured and recorded with Jim Messina, Kenny Chesney, Marty Stuart, Trisha Yearwood, Pam Tillis and Mick Fleetwood’s band Zoo); Tyger MacNeal on drums (he’s worked with blues legend Johnny Winter, The Average White Band, Freddy Fender, Grayson Hugh & The Moon Hawks and was Jose Feliciano’s drummer from ’92 to 2017); Polly Messer on harmony vocals (Polly toured and recorded with Western Swing band Eight To The Bar, Rockabilly band Eugene Chrysler and with Grayson Hugh in concert halls in the U.S. as well as in Europe).

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.

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Grayson Hugh - Save Your Love For Me (CD) Initially inspired by the Ray Charles album "Modern Sounds In Country & Western Music" (ABC-Paramount 1962), "Save Your Love For Me" is the new Roots album by acclaimed singer-songwriter Grayson Hugh. Five years in the making, "Save Your Love For Me" is a collection of thirteen songs written by....