Cracking America where the fans are...
Hudson Taylor gain some traction in musical hot spots Stateside
Trying to keep the customers satisfied, as Simon & Garfunkel once sang, is something Hudson Taylor have always understood. They used to make their living playing music on Dublin’s streets as buskers. As a former busker myself, I can also attest, if passers-by don’t like what you play, they don’t pay and they walk away!
Their new album, Loving Everywhere I Go, demonstrates that awareness of a public who will pass if something doesn’t grab them. Luckily, for Alfie, 27, and Harry, 28, some or most of the 14 songs will. The songs run the gamut of country, pop, folk and rock-on bangers and tearjerkers.
‘We have put five of them out already as singles or on EPs but there are nine new songs that no one has heard,’ Alfie says.
‘Each new song introduces us again. We are always new to somebody.’
They recorded the album in Dublin, Seattle and Nashville. They’ve spent a fair proportion of the last two years in the States on tour with labelmate Hozier. That heightened their profile with fans checking them
‘Songs really affect me. I can’t listen to too much sad music at any one time’
out on Spotify and Apple Music. It all means they are gaining traction on an almost weekly basis across the Atlantic.
‘The reaction (to us) on the Hozier tours was almost unbelievable,’ Alfie says.
‘Ninety per cent of the audience were in before the main act, so they saw us – which was really good exposure.
‘But cracking that nut (America) is exhausting and expensive,’ Harry cautions.
‘If you want to crack America you would have to go there for maybe six months of every year and then hope you are in the right place and right time for opportunities to arise. Nobody can just click their fingers and make it work. One of the things about Spotify is that you can tell where the people are who are listening to you. We have found that most of the people listening to us now are in the States.’
As well as the shows with Hozier and headline gigs of their own, tours with Alfie’s girlfriend, English singer Gabrielle Aplin, have also introduced them to another type of audience. She took a shine to the cleanshaven brother after spotting two busking in Temple Bar over nine years ago. Fans of both acts can rest easy, the tearjerkers that Alfie sings on the album such as Nothing But A Stranger, Just Like That or Loving Everywhere I Go do not reflect any trouble in their part of paradise.
‘Nothing But A Stranger is about our father. We didn’t grow up with him and we just wanted to write a song about how we felt about that,’ Alfie says.
‘My relationship with Gabrielle is going better than ever. The assumption is that when you write a heartbreak song that it is about a partner. The saddest song I’ve ever written is Just Like That, it’s on this album, and at that time I was very happy. Having said that, songs really affect me emotionally so I can’t listen to too much sad music at any one time.’
Another standout track on the
album is I Will Be There For You. There is a striking female vocal on the track but it is not Gabrielle Aplin.
‘That’s our sister, Holly,’ Alfie says.
‘Oh, she is following in your footsteps,’ I say to them.
‘Soon wis following in your hers,’ Harry quips.
‘She is amazing. She’s only 22. Although her name is Holly, she goes under the name Halli,’ Alfie says. ‘Her music, her message, her story, her art is at another level and I would be a bastard of a critic. When were listening to old music from the Sixties, we would be listening to songs that we could learn to play to people in a pub.
‘She dug way down into more alternative stuff. We would be listening to Bob Dylan; she would be absorbing Leonard Cohen.’
‘You should check out Fcuk Fear on Spotify and you will hear music quite dissimilar to the kind we brothers make. Her voice may remind you of Sharon Van Etten or Nico in her Velvet Underground days and musically a bit like Anna Calvi.
‘It surpasses anything we’ve ever done,’ Harry says modestly.
‘We stay out of the way. I think that’s why she chose that name. It has no connection with Hudson Taylor.
‘We don’t want to influence her. I don’t think she needs it. She is clearly all right on her own.’
Meanwhile Harry and Alfie will continue to keep their own customers satisfied.
Loving Everywhere I Go will be released on February 28.
See hudsontaylormusic.com for tour dates