A Chat with Grayson Hugh (31.08.25)
Interview with Karen Beishuizen (guest contributor).
Grayson Hugh is an American singer-songwriter, pianist and composer. He is best known for his 1988 hit, ‘Talk It Over’. We talk with Grayson about growing up, musical instruments, his new album Save Your Love For Me, and more.
Did you always want to be a singer/musician growing up?
Hugh: Well, from my very earliest memories, I was making music. First, as an infant, I was banging rhythms out on cans & bottles, anything I could find. My parents gave me a cheap drum set at age four, the bass drum of which I promptly broke. When a spinet piano appeared in our house, I began playing that. It was the perfect combination of instruments for me: a percussion instrument whose hammers played notes. I never looked back. Then, in the fifth grade, I begged my father for a saxophone after seeing a jazz quartet perform at my elementary school. He brought one home one day, and I started taking lessons on alto saxophone. I continued for several years. I also played the organ at my church whenever I got the chance. I was fascinated by all the sounds and the huge pipes that got smaller and smaller in a separate room. I picked up an acoustic guitar and learned chords, but really favored the piano and percussion instruments. I was also good at learning various other wind instruments, like recorder, panpipes, penny whistle, bagpipes, Chinese hulusi and bawu.
I studied African drumming with ethnomusicologist John Miller Chernoff, who I met when he was getting his doctorate at The Hartford Seminary in my hometown of Hartford, Connecticut. I learned all the drums and bells he brought from Ghana back to the States. He went on to publish a well-respected book called African Rhythm and African Sensibility, University of Chicago Press.
I formed my first band at age 13 called The Hugh 4 or something equally pompous. I played saxophone and piano, and sometimes drums and sang. Singing was something I just did. I never studied singing, not until much, much later, when I wanted to preserve my voice on tour.
I led about twenty different bands after that, often being the youngest, singing lead and playing a Vox continental organ or Wurlitzer electric piano. I guess I just assumed I would always do this, after around the age of 15, when I realized I could make money with my bands.
I also studied piano in my early 20s with jazz legend Jaki Byard. And I studied composition and piano with Ryan Blake, who was head of the “Third Stream Department” at New England Conservatory in Boston, Massachusetts. He came to The Hartford Conservatory as a guest professor. I brought my improvisational group, The Wild Goose Trio, to perform for his class in front of my fellow students. He was very encouraging and thought I should move to Boston and try and get my compositions performed by the Boston Symphony and other serious venues. But my heart was not really in it. I felt more at home in writing words and music to create small little worlds.
So it wasn’t a formal decision. It was gradual, and very natural, obvious process. I initially thought I would be a scientist, a doctor, a naturalist, or an artist (painter). And then I thought I would be a filmmaker in my early twenties, going so far as to have interviews at the film department of NYU, and taking a course in independent filmmaking at The University of Bridgeport in Connecticut. I also seriously wanted to be a writer – I wrote poetry in a very serious way from age fourteen on, trying to get published a little, even.
Who did you look up to in the music world as an example?
Hugh: As for who inspired me to seriously consider a career, so to speak, in music, there were several artists of different types of music. In songwriting, I listened to several writers and performers: The Beatles were more of an adolescent influence, but an intriguing influence nonetheless. I was really moved by Laura Nyro, whose emotional, poetic lyrics and old-fashioned soul music chords moved me. I also loved the keyboard playing and singing of Ray Charles. I liked Tim Hardin, Tim Buckley, Leonard Cohen and Stephen Stills. I loved the lyrics of Joni Mitchell. I also loved Weather Report, led by Joe Zawinul. I loved Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus.
The piano and organ: What age did you start playing, and how important are these instruments to you?
Hugh: I started playing piano at age four, organ a few years later, mainly a pipe organ at my church. In all my bands, from age 13 on, I was the keyboard player (either piano or organ, often electric) and lead singer. The piano is an extension of my musical thoughts, containing the necessary ingredients of rhythm and melodic tones. So it’s vital to my art.
I love that 1988’s ‘Talk It Over’. Did you expect it to become this big? It was a hit in my country, Holland.
Hugh: When I first heard it from a songwriter, Sandy Linzer, who was initially trying to help me get a record deal, he played me a bunch of songs, including that one, adding that “Smoky Robinson had passed on it”, and quickly went on to play the next one. I quickly said, “Wait, wait, go back to that ‘Talk it Over’ one.” I heard the potential immediately, probably the whole arrangement in my head that I would do. But I wanted to change some chords, slow the tempo way down and make it a soul song, not really a ballad, more a Sam Cooke kind of thing. I asked if I could take it home and arrange it, which, with his blessing, is what I did.
I then recorded it in a very detailed way, using my guitar-playing housemate, Tom Majesky and also some sounds I had created with my Korg Poly 6 synthesizer. He made fun of those sounds, one of which I called a “puffed organ”. That became the major warmth sound of the song that fit my voice perfectly. I changed some of the chords and did a note-for-note piano solo, also used an electric sitar in it. It became one of the songs that I ended up shopping around to labels on my own. I stopped working with that guy because he said he couldn’t work with anyone who didn’t like Billy Joel (sorry, Billy), but I had mentioned that his style was too “Broadway musical” for me. I liked a more raw rock/soul style of singing and playing.
Interestingly, when RCA signed me, this songwriter, Sandy Linzer, actually called RCA and lied to them, saying, “Grayson Hugh had no part whatsoever in the creation of this song ‘Talk It Over’!” Of course, I had arranged it and actually re-wrote parts of it. He then later did a behind-my-back “right of first release” deal with my own publisher! He got Olivia Newton-John to record MY arrangement. RCA and I just waited until her version fizzled, and I had the hit with it. It was the first taste I had of the unethical behavior of people in this strange business.
Ridley Scott put 2 of your songs in the movie Thelma & Louise. How did this happen?
Hugh: When I was about to release my second major label album, Road To Freedom, on MCA Records in 1991, Ridley Scott heard an advance recording of it. I suspect that musical director Kathy Nelson (of Universal, of which MCA was a part) played it for him. My English managers told me that “Ridley Scott is flying around the world saying he has discovered Grayson Hugh!”
He actually wanted to use three or four songs, but we settled on two. Naturally, I couldn’t give that much of my album away to a film. Before I decided to let him use ‘I Can’t Untie You From Me’ and ‘Don’t Look Back’, Kathy Nelson sent me the screenplay by Callie Khouri. I loved it and had a long phone conversation with her.
From 1993 to 2007, something happened that got you away from music and writing, but you conquered it. How did you do it, and what kept you together?
Hugh: What happened was in 1994, not 93. In 1991, I made a video in Los Angeles for what I wanted to be my first single, ‘Soul Cat Girl’. I chose director Sam Bayer to direct it. I liked his wild free style. He had just done ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ for Nirvana. MCA paid for it, and then VH1 wanted to feature me as Artist Of The Month, for I believe January of 1992. My managers told me that VH1 kept asking them where was the “Soul Cat Girl” video? They wanted to start filming the spots with me for the Artist Of The Month series. MCA told them they sent it. They lied.
What I next found out was that the A&R man who had signed me to MCA, Paul Atkinson, was fired. My business manager told me he read it in the Hollywood Reporter. All of Atkinson’s acts, including me, were being dropped. So, after finding out about this blatant lying to my face, and not getting a good feeling about finding another record label, I got so angry at the music business that I wanted to move as far away from it as I could. So I chose the northern tip of coastal South Carolina, where I moved with my girlfriend at the time.
A lot of road later, after picking up alcohol in 2001 after 20 years of not drinking, I reached a bottom in my life and ended up in a hospital after a seizure in an alcohol-fueled blackout. I built my life back up from scratch, starting in 2005, until I started working on a comeback album, An American Record, in 2007. In that process, I became reacquainted with my old friend and former backup singer, Polly Messer and fell in love during the making of that record. We married in 2008. The concerts I do with her, featuring me on a grand piano and both of our voices, are the truest version of my songs I can think of.
Your new album, Save Your Love For Me, was 5 years in the making. Tell me the story.
In 2017, I started thinking about the next record (following Back To The Soul in 2015). I had some songs I loved that were in a more roots country style, including a song, ‘Save Your Love For Me’, that I first wrote in 1987 when I first moved to New York after being signed to RCA. Then I rewrote it in 1994 as a bluegrass song. In 2017, I finally thought I could include it in a new album. That became the direction of the new record. It would be a “country” side of my writing. So I assembled some of the top names in roots music. Cindy Cashdollar, I knew from working with her in 1991 on a Caroline Doctorow album song that Caroline asked me to produce. So, Cindy Cashdollar would play dobro and lap steel guitar. I asked Pete Kennedy to do the guitars, mandolin and banjo. I also knew him through my friend Caroline. I asked Pete about bass players, and he suggested Tony Garnier, who had been playing in Bob Dylan’s band since 1989. An upright acoustic bass would be perfect! NY drummer (in Grayson Hugh & The Moon Hawks), Tyger MacNeal, would provide a solid rock groove, and of course, Polly would sing superb harmonies. l also wanted to do one cover – my favorite Hank Williams song, ‘I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry’.
So, I crowdfunded and began recording the rhythm tracks in late August 2019. Started the overdubs, took a break for Christmas, and started in again in 2020. You know what happened soon after. The pandemic shut us down for almost two years, and then we kept running out of money. It was a LONG road, but I finally finished the mixing and mastering in January 2025.
I listened to the album, and it is a mix of country and soul with up-tempo and slow songs. My favorites are ‘I Had a Dream’, ‘Wide Awake’ and ‘Hoppin on the Housatonic’. Do you have a favourite song or songs on the album?
Hugh: I’m glad you like those songs! don’t have a favorite, that’s like asking which child do you love the most? I love them all equally, for different reasons.
What is next for you? Are you touring? Hope you come to Holland!
Hugh: I would love to tour, but I don’t have an agent, so I book myself. It is not easy. One requirement I must have to perform my music is an acoustic grand or baby grand piano. That limits it somewhat. Polly and I have performed a short tour of Poland, and we have done many concerts in New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Florida, all around. I really would love to get a good agent. That has been a missing piece for some time now.
I have received some very good attention in Holland, actually – perhaps because my mother had a little Dutch blood? A music writer, Benny Metten, has written two very favorable reviews of my last two albums, An American Record and Back To The Soul, for Alt Country. I haven’t been able to contact him recently, though, so it’s nice to have received your request for an interview.
Thanks to Grayson Hugh for speaking with us. Find out more about Grayson Hugh on his official website, Facebook, YouTube, and Spotify.
