As long as I can remember, I’ve been particularly enamored
with songwriters. I’ve spent countless hours listening to
records by The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Tony Joe White, John
Fogerty, and so on. To my ears, artists who wrote, sang,
and played their own material ruled as far as I was
concerned, and in the back of my mind I was confident I
could do the same if I tried.
I dabbled in writing with some of my early garage bands, but pretty much put those efforts on hold after I landed a hotel lounge lizard gig back in 1975. Playing homogenized music for homogenized people six nights a week over the course of three years is a sure-fire way to suck the soul right out of any aspiring songwriter. As a matter of fact, I was thinking about quitting music all together when that gig finally came to an end. Thank God! I was out of work, but never felt better! All of those years of muted self-expression came pouring out of me like a faucet as I began writing with the fervor of a man possessed. I took my new originals, plus a notebook of acoustic covers, and started playing pubs and cafes as a solo act. I continued to perform solo for the next few years, but would occasionally work in a duo, trio, or band when the opportunity presented itself. Meanwhile, I was quietly building my catalog of original material.
In 1985 I moved to Muscle Shoals, Alabama in hopes of finding work as a songwriter. I recorded a couple of dozen demos while living in the Shoals area, but was eventually sidetracked by an aviation career that was steadily growing. Over time I found myself flying more and playing less, until I eventually gave up the life of a working musician altogether. But I never stopped writing. In early 1999 I was hired by a cargo airline, which subsequently based me in Brussels, Belgium. It was during a trip to Gothenburg, Sweden that I met guitarist Erik Weissglas. We hit it off so well (musically and personally) that we decided to put a band together and do some live gigs. It had been quite a few years since I last played in public, so the only songs I really knew were my own compositions. But that was okay--welcomed actually—as I began digging into my big fat songbook to select tunes for the newly formed group, “Pat Huggins and A Damn Good Band”. Before long we ended up in a recording studio laying down the first few tracks of what was to become “Swede Home Alabama”. Finally in 2004, at age 52, I released a debut album of all original material.
Since then, I’ve released two additional albums with “A Damn Good Band” (“The Lost Causeway” and “Write On!”), with two more scheduled for release in 2010. Plus, in 2008, I released a compilation of my old Muscle Shoals demos called “Shoal Music”.
I still have quite a bit of material left in that big fat songbook--not to mention the fact that I keep adding to it on a fairly regular basis. Lord willing and the creeks don’t rise, there are many more albums yet to come. I hope.
Now available from the following distributors:
> iTunes
> CD Baby
> Fridhammar Music CD Mail Order
> Dusty Records
> Last.fm
See MySpace for friends, links and comments
I dabbled in writing with some of my early garage bands, but pretty much put those efforts on hold after I landed a hotel lounge lizard gig back in 1975. Playing homogenized music for homogenized people six nights a week over the course of three years is a sure-fire way to suck the soul right out of any aspiring songwriter. As a matter of fact, I was thinking about quitting music all together when that gig finally came to an end. Thank God! I was out of work, but never felt better! All of those years of muted self-expression came pouring out of me like a faucet as I began writing with the fervor of a man possessed. I took my new originals, plus a notebook of acoustic covers, and started playing pubs and cafes as a solo act. I continued to perform solo for the next few years, but would occasionally work in a duo, trio, or band when the opportunity presented itself. Meanwhile, I was quietly building my catalog of original material.
In 1985 I moved to Muscle Shoals, Alabama in hopes of finding work as a songwriter. I recorded a couple of dozen demos while living in the Shoals area, but was eventually sidetracked by an aviation career that was steadily growing. Over time I found myself flying more and playing less, until I eventually gave up the life of a working musician altogether. But I never stopped writing. In early 1999 I was hired by a cargo airline, which subsequently based me in Brussels, Belgium. It was during a trip to Gothenburg, Sweden that I met guitarist Erik Weissglas. We hit it off so well (musically and personally) that we decided to put a band together and do some live gigs. It had been quite a few years since I last played in public, so the only songs I really knew were my own compositions. But that was okay--welcomed actually—as I began digging into my big fat songbook to select tunes for the newly formed group, “Pat Huggins and A Damn Good Band”. Before long we ended up in a recording studio laying down the first few tracks of what was to become “Swede Home Alabama”. Finally in 2004, at age 52, I released a debut album of all original material.
Since then, I’ve released two additional albums with “A Damn Good Band” (“The Lost Causeway” and “Write On!”), with two more scheduled for release in 2010. Plus, in 2008, I released a compilation of my old Muscle Shoals demos called “Shoal Music”.
I still have quite a bit of material left in that big fat songbook--not to mention the fact that I keep adding to it on a fairly regular basis. Lord willing and the creeks don’t rise, there are many more albums yet to come. I hope.
Now available from the following distributors:
> iTunes
> CD Baby
> Fridhammar Music CD Mail Order
> Dusty Records
> Last.fm
See MySpace for friends, links and comments
