ARTIST
NEILSON HUBBARD
These are the words that open Digging Up The Scars, Neilson Hubbard’s new album. Hubbard has been making
beautiful music for decades, as a member of Strays Don’t Sleep (with Matthew Ryan), The Orphan Brigade (with co
producer Ben Glover), as a solo artist, and as one of Nashville’s most renowned producers. But with Scars, Hubbard
has reached an apex of his art, epic and intimate, symphonic and simple, the record is a pleading question to a lover
and the universe at the same time, asking “What do I believe in? What do you believe in? What do we believe
in?” It’s a rare artist that can ask such synchronous questions of simplicity and grandeur in an album based on soft
acoustic guitar and pedal steel under a sweeping orchestration of strings and still keep the songs direct and
personal. Nobody is making records like this anymore.
Scars contains songs that touch on fierce love and loyalty to beliefs and time. As a songwriter, Hubbard has always
been concise and descriptive, illuminating specific details wrapped around epic choruses that ask the big questions,
direct pleas to both the Divine and mortals: “Where you been,” “will you wait for me?” But with Digging Up The
Scars, Hubbard has taken on a symphonic fabric that underlies and elevates the drive of each song. The second
track, “Where You Been” begins simply with acoustic guitar and lap steel and builds to an incredible sweep of
orchestra with the violins and cellos driving into parts that chop at the urgency of the chorus’ pleading question.
This is a record that takes on a layer of new meaning in this specific time in our history.
Also new to Hubbard’s sound is the addition of Juan Solorzano’s lap steel, which is undoubtedly the supporting actor
to Hubbard’s soft understated vocals. Adding a ghostly atmosphere underneath the constant rhythm of skin on
strings, the lap steel lifts each song to the stars, hanging over the listener as a comforting voice of unity and
communion, asking each of us to question our place in the universe. Hubbard’s art, whether as a solo songwriter or
as a producer has always done that: reached to join parts to a greater whole.
Authenticity is an overused word, but Hubbard embodies this in all of his art. In 2019, Hubbard produced the
Grammy nominated Rifles and Rosary Beads by Mary Gauthier. He has always been a deft director of sound.
Hubbard’s production specializes in staying true to the song and he chooses a small ensemble of players that are as
spontaneous and loyal to beauty and space as he is. Recently moving into photography and film, Hubbard directed
the documentary and produced the soundtrack of The Orphan Brigade: Soundtrack to a Ghost Story which won a
number of awards and birthed the band The Orphan Brigade (Hubbard, Joshua Britt and Ben Glover). With Joshua
Britt, through their company Neighborhoods Apart, he directs and produces music videos and has worked with John
Prine, Jason Isbell, Lucinda Williams and The Blind Boys of Alabama as well as a host of artists without household
names. And as a songwriter, his work has been featured in Grey’s Anatomy, One Tree Hill and Private Practice as
well as several films. And his photography captures the stark and gorgeous reality of each subject, unadorned and
genuine.
One of Hubbard’s greatest gifts in his songs and his vocal delivery is the simple humility which he employs like a
whisper. In an era of flaunt and flourish, Hubbard stays simple and true. The song, “The End of the Road,” is an
instant classic, a Tom Waits promise “They’ll tear it out when we’re gone “Does any of this really matter,” he asks in
“Our DNA” a song to his young son. Digging Up The Scars is a passing down of all that Neilson Hubbard believes in -
fierce allegiance to honor.