Riversdale home life inspires blues hit
Covid-19 brought the blues artist, Kenny Hughes, home in 2020.
Home is Riversdale, where his parents - dad Tubby, an entrepreneur and mom Annamarie from Helpende Hand - live.
They moved to Riversdale three years ago.
With the outbreak of the pandemic and the restrictions it caused, especially for performers, Kenny decided to join them. He is only 25, but admits he has the soul of a 73 year old.
While he was enjoying the serenity of the Sleeping Beauty mountains and the vastness of the surroundings, he was touched by the emotions linked to family time. He longed for his older sister Nicole, who lives with her husband in Germany.
Then he wrote the song, 19:20. “It is born from the strange times we are in and the seemingly perpetual period Covid-19 created - causing subsequent years to feel like one protracted trek towards normality ... It is about the challenges we face because of it. With the hope that 2020 would have been a better year than 2019 - but was ultimately worse for many reasons. Also good for many reasons, to be fair.”
He sings:
Rain outside reminds me of home Far away and all alone
A quiet place for my demons to escape It’s the only way to isolate
Test me now see if I’m clean
Or littered with sickened disease Split my brow and break my knees Festered dreams hang on every breeze
The song was produced by the respected Albert Frost and Evert Snyman. A video of the song is available on YouTube. It reached the top position for several weeks on a specialist radio station in Gauteng.
“My music taste came from what my parents listened to: real music, good music and its where I developed my idea of how music should make you feel, more or less. That’s what blues is to me, deeply emotional music. You feel it, you don’t just hear it.”
Kenny started off selling insurance, which he is grateful for as it showed him what he didn’t want for his life.
“It also taught me communication skills which I still use today. After that I taught guitar lessons briefly, but then I realised full-time music was all I wanted to do.”
He became a talented musician, singer and songwriter and recalls some memorable shows, opening for Jeremy Loops, Albert Frost, Valiant Swart and Arno Carstens.
Living on the platteland gives him time to cook, read, laugh and relax. “I have recently started exercising for the first time in my life and I’ve taken quite a liking to pushing myself physically and also mentally. Normally, I spend a lot of time on the road – driving from show to show; just me and my thoughts. I love it!”
He fancies himself as a bit of a philosopher – and he loves stand-up comedy. “I come from a family of bikers and have never really learnt how to ride a motorcycle with a clutch!”