{"id":556,"date":"2018-10-22T22:59:15","date_gmt":"2018-10-22T22:59:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/terryhughesmusic.com\/main\/?p=556"},"modified":"2018-10-23T00:14:12","modified_gmt":"2018-10-23T00:14:12","slug":"new-release-the-other-side","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/terryhughesmusic.com\/main\/2018\/10\/22\/new-release-the-other-side\/","title":{"rendered":"New Release: “The Other Side”"},"content":{"rendered":"

At a time when the trend for songwriters is to release singles, EPs and one-off tracks, Minneapolis-based musician Terry Hughes has crafted an actual album<\/em>. Remember those? Long-playing adventures that careful listeners would take with one artist in the form of two sides, several songs and spirits? That\u2019s what Hughes\u2019 third album achieves over the course of 13 songs, and then some.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the record I always wanted to write,\u201d said Hughes, of the four-years-in-the-making The Other Side<\/em>. \u201cThis is sort of the culmination of learning how to sing, and how to play rock music again. I\u2019d been playing jazz for thirty-five years. This has been a learning experience for me. My first couple records, I kept writing the same song over and over again. That\u2019s changed, a lot. I stopped worrying about what people think and now I can write a lot freer. It just comes a lot easier to me now.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Backed by Marco Kielholz (guitar\/vocals); Erik Fratzke (bass\/vocals); Josue Hurtado (drums and percussion), and Owen Davis (cello\/vocals), and engineered by Joe Johnson, The Other Side<\/em>is Hughes\u2019s third release in five years, after In The Blink Of An Eye<\/em>(2014) and More Than Black and White<\/em>(2013).<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of these songs are basically vehicles for vocals,\u201d said Hughes. \u201cIt\u2019s very layered big-time vocals. Some of these things have 40 vocal parts on them. I tried to channel Brian Wilson as much as possible. He\u2019s the guy who kind of inspired me to want to really work with vocals, because I don\u2019t hear anybody doing it, and the reason you don\u2019t hear anyone doing it is because it\u2019s hard, right? What I\u2019ve learned is, back then, if you were in the Beach Boys, you were a singer<\/em>. But I\u2019ve got good guys, and we can actually pull it off with multiple vocals. They love the music and they bring a lot to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Terry Hughes<\/p><\/div>\n

Since his first two records, and since his days leading Bay Area-punk bands, Hughes admits that he now, for the first time, has something to say as a songwriter. In that sense, The Other Side\u00a0<\/em>is a refreshing and uneasy slice of the times, coming from a writer who has obviously been paying attention\u2014and reacting\u2014to the tumultuous here and now. \u201cD.E.A.\u201d is a Joe Jackson- or Elvis Costello-worthy tale of paranoid dreaming that, given the state of our elected officials and intelligence community, could be the lament of any would-be criminal in the U.S.A. The eerie ballad \u201cDangerous Man\u201d is similarly steeped in real life headlines, as is the Queen-meets-Trip Shakespeare operatic slow-burner \u201cLost Amid The Promises.\u201d \u201cViewer Discretion Advised\u201d warns of the evils of the omnipresent advertising matrix and the overstimulation of our screen society that could be a lite pop soundtrack to Black Mirror<\/em>. Similarly, \u201cThe End Of Wonder\u201d is a funky-n-trippy rumination on the effect of technology on the soul, and \u201cAn Invisible Man\u201d details the very modern plight of navigating communication, the ego, and technology.<\/p>\n

\u201cW\"\"<\/a>hen I started to write songs eight years ago, I was writing about things that happened to me 25 years ago in San Francisco\u2014drugs and this crazy life\u2014and all this rich stuff that I could draw on to write about,\u201d said Hughes, a husband, father, and business owner. \u201cSo I learned the craft over the last five, six years, and now when something happens that\u2019s significant or meaningful to me in my life, now I have the tools to write that song. There\u2019s great stuff happening in my life right now. We just got a dog, Lily, and I\u2019ve got a song in my head about Lily and I just need to get it down on paper.\u201dIn addition to topical tunes and sharply crafted pop-rockers, The Other Side<\/em>features Hughes\u2019 personal storytelling, including the beautifully sung and real-world romantic ballad \u201cBottom Line,\u201d the Jayhawks-worthy lament \u201cI\u2019ve Never Been So Alone,\u201d the lived-in heartstrings-puller \u201cYou Can\u2019t Save Me,\u201d which cuts through with Hughes\u2019 willowy vocals and real emotion, and vocal-centered tunes like the righteous ode to Hughes\u2019 nephew \u201cDanny,\u201d and the beautiful call-to-stay-in-the-moment ballad \u201cBless These Grateful Tears,\u201d inspired by\u2014what else?\u2014a trip to the dog park.<\/p>\n

\u201cI went to the dog park, and I was just not in serenity,\u201d said Hughes. \u201cLots of stuff going on, and I was just walking around the dog park and I just had this moment where everything stopped. My mind cleared up and I felt peace, literally. I felt a peace. And shortly after that, I felt hope. And at that moment, the wind came up and it blew through these trucks that are parked at the top of this hill, and you could hear all these quarter tones, like this really odd sound and color that you normally don\u2019t hear in music, and because I was in songwriting mode, I was able to catch that experience and write a song.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Other Side<\/em>lands in record stores and on streaming services all over the world in August. It\u2019s the sound of hope amidst troubled times, and makes its bow at an autumn CD release party at Studio 2 Caf\u00e9 in South Minneapolis, where the Terry Hughes Band currently throws down at its monthly residency.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really love this material,\u201d said Hughes, who plays keyboards exclusively on the new record. \u201cI would say this is the best work I\u2019ve ever done. It\u2019s important for me to just put it on record. It\u2019s not important for me to sell a lot of records or to be a big star. I don\u2019t care about that. I\u2019m doing this so that I know, \u2018Here\u2019s what I did. I have this. And I stand behind this.\u2019 Also, when I move back to California, or when I move on to somewhere else, it goes with me. I wrote these songs. I can play them all just me and my guitar.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The Other Side Track list<\/p><\/div>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At a time when the trend for songwriters is to release singles, EPs and one-off tracks, Minneapolis-based musician Terry Hughes has crafted an actual album. Remember those? Long-playing adventures that careful listeners would take with one artist in the form of two sides, several songs and spirits? That\u2019s what Hughes\u2019 third album achieves over the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":404,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/terryhughesmusic.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/terryhughesmusic.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/terryhughesmusic.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terryhughesmusic.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terryhughesmusic.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=556"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/terryhughesmusic.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":602,"href":"https:\/\/terryhughesmusic.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556\/revisions\/602"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terryhughesmusic.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/terryhughesmusic.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terryhughesmusic.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terryhughesmusic.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}