Review: Andy Hughes questions America, the past & his life on ‘Songs for Sunday’

Truth be told, America is nothing more than a savage wasteland of sociopolitical unrest these days. The resulting rifts have only furthered the cultural divide and exposed rabid wolves living as sheep amongst our ranks. Fear struck down from certain political elections has wreaked mayhem and escalated emotional cruelty, yet art continues to offer necessary relief as much as stimulate the conversation. Right out of middle America, hailing from a town called La Crosse, Wisconsin, long-bearded Americana torchbearer Andy Hughes grabs the listener by the throat right from the outset. “Little miss America, time to play hardball / One nation up on a tin roof / Liberty and Justice for all? That’s the question,” he stokes the fire with his sharp discourse, permitting the flames to lick at his own heels as he dashes across the barren stretches of concrete and mud.

Such thematic fabric stretches and folds and creases outward from there across the entirety of his new album, Songs for Sunday, produced by Joe Gantzer. “Scheme of the Song” punctures the pressure for a mid-summer honeysuckle called “Scheme of the Song,” hinged together with Siri Undlin’s tangy-sweet harmony work (a welcome presence throughout much of the album). “So sad that he called ’em pretty / Wanders the world with his words / Taking everyday normal nobodies / Making monuments out of their hurt,” sings Hughes, who nuzzles each syllable before letting it flutter up to the sky. He combs the perhaps weary burden of being a storyteller, whose destiny it is to give a voice to characters and peoples collected along life’s pathway, and his vocal both buckles underneath his craft and is subsequently re-energized by it. He stains the ground upon which he walks, marking each chapter of his life with dense, penetrating tears or a gentle, whisker-ruffling bellow.

With “Gold Wedding Ring,” Hughes traces unconditional, undying love through his grandfather’s legacy and never-wandering eye for his grandmother. “My grandma had to say goodbye / When Grandpa’s soul went on up to the sky / She held on for a month or two / When her heart broke she went to heaven, too,” he sings. Lacing up inspiration from a George Jones or Keith Whitley playbook, a classic fiddle tune if there ever was one, “Ring” ferments Hughes’ astounding potential as a trusty traditionalist who isn’t afraid of adhering to the past as he blazes a trail forward down the winding, overgrown path ahead.

Swamp-song “Witoka Ridgeway” bends with gnarly, suffocating smoke akin to Gretchen Peters’ “Wichita,” Charles Wesley Godwin’s “Seneca Creek” and Emily Scott Robinson’s “Shoshone Rose” and slides across the guitar with a chilling hiss. “Winter moon is glowing / Showing signs not yet known / When he gets past Potosi / He buried that pistol in the snow,” he unwraps a mysteriously-twisted tale of a man running from his blood-soaked wrongdoings. “Kept on sliding southbound / Past Paducah and the freeze / And He laid that body down (somewhere) just like a memory.” Hughes crushes his stories between guitar chords, and thanks to his trusty league of players ⏤ which includes Ben Rohde (drums, percussion) and Rick Kreuziger (pedal steel guitar) ⏤ arrangements are charred to a crisp. But within wooden frames, the imagery evokes breathtaking beauty outlined with stunning tragedy and truth. “Band-Aid” then seeks to remedy every possible wound in the world (“This doesn’t have to be a sad song / But sometimes the tears / They just gotta fall”), while “Stuck in Heaven” begs for atonement from a lover without hope for solace ⏤ “You’re the wind stars, soul and moon / I’ll be right here, if you’ll take a fool,” he sings.

More than anything, Hughes’ Songs for Sunday puts the human condition under the microscope. He traces out the delicate features, as he does quite eloquently with “Old Shiny Thing,” and often sprinkles in other social or cultural insight. “She has stared down her share of men / Who didn’t believe her when she said / That all are created equal,” he sings as a statement of fact, rather than a barbed taunt. “Dancin’ Down in Nashville” wiggles across the dance-floor with a subtle wink to classic line-dancing (think Billy Ray Cyrus’ “Achy Breaky Heart”), and closing waltz number “Sunday Blues” sets a sultry mood for the end of the weekend.

Songs for Sunday might feel familiar upon first glance, but far below the surface, Hughes masterfully injects classic structures with charm, warmth, compassion and pin-point poetry. He’s the kind of songwriter and musician, whose stylistic habits are only growing stronger, that is keeping the very heart of the Americana scene alive and flourishing.

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