These days, JD Hughes is logging some decent mileage. He’s working on an album at two different studios; teaching at Mozingo Music; working with a smaller group of independent students; plus gigging between two and five times a week. What makes things work is he’s mostly working with and around friends, which’ll help keep his next month of work a little more tolerable.
In that time, he hopes to finish the basic tracking for his album, JD Hughes & The Fuze, while also plotting a show at Joe’s Cafe on Friday, July 13, that will mark his 10-year anniversary of recovering from leukemia. To add one more item to the laundry list, he’s moving soon, into a city house that’s got two shipping containers on the property, one of which he hopes to turn into a small demo studio before the year’s out.
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Ideas and energy, he’s got them.
Yesterday afternoon, Hughes arrived at Andrew Stephen’s Eightfold Studios just past noon, quickly kicking off his sandals and getting down to the business of discussing his work, in between moments of ribbing his host and engineer. Along with working at Sherpa Studio, Dogtown’s Eightfold is where Hughes spends a decent amount of his time right now, working on cuts with Stephen that’ll be pieced together into a seven-, maybe eight-song affair by the end of summer.
The best description for the music, he figures “is happy funk jam jazz. That’s the theme of this music; one of my friends came up with that. We go through a lot of different styles. There’s some reggae, some almost-disco, some ’70s funk blended with something like a borderline jam band. These aren’t songs that jam forever and constantly, but are songs that… jam, I guess.
“I’m just thankful to be pulling the trigger on getting my original music out there,” he says, envisioning this release on flash drive, rather than CD or vinyl. “I play a lot of cover music. And then things like Spanish jazz. I’m all over the board with my playing; nobody can lock me down. Which can be a bad thing, but it’s also opened some doors for me. I’m happy to have an album of original music out there. I have a presence here in St. Louis. I’m a strong songwriter and also a strong guitar player, who can play in pretty adventurous settings. We’re all trying to get our music in front of as many people as we can.”
Referencing the home studio he hopes to evolve with Stephen’s help over the next few months, Hughes talks about a specific idea for the next set of tracks he hopes to release. In his mind, it’s a trio of shorter EPs, each one with three songs and two bits of interstitial music: essentially five tracks per EP. The whole batch will be called “Get In Tune,” with releases coming in Chapters I, II and III. He’d love to release the first EP later this year, with the balance of the trio coming in 2019.
Unlike the unabashed good vibes of the current release, he sees the next batch as “very much spiritual songs, nature songs. They’ll be much more heart-driven.”
At the July 13 show at Joe’s Cafe, expect that he’ll be bringing the more-upbeat stuff, as he’s booked the room for a Friday night show with an expectation that a host of folks he plays with come out and perform a tune, or three. With an emphasis on health and celebration, at that. After the gig, the album/flash drive release should be on the near horizon. And then comes the “Get In Tune” trilogy.
Ideas and energy, he’s got them; as well as a message.
“After cancer,” he says, “it feels like this is my purpose—inspiring people to just move forward and follow their dreams. You can view suffering as your finest gift. I truly believe that cancer set me on my path.”
For more info: jdhughes.net.
