HUGH SIMMONS acoustic and electric guitar

Hugh was born close to his mother in 1961. He grew up in Syracuse, New York, Chapel Hill, North Carolina and Fairfax, Virginia. He was the first of his siblings allowed to place a record on his parents’ stereo and turn up the volume. The hits of his pre-teen life were “Mad Madam Mim” and “Last Train to Clarksville”.

In high school Hugh was a devotee of the 1970s version of WHFS, a free-form radio station in Washington, D.C. that introduced him to The Specials, The Talking Heads, Fred Frith, Brian Eno, Ian Dury and much more. After graduating last in his high school class Hugh cooked for a year before getting into a, then, fairly fly-by-night college called Emerson College in Boston, where he majored in creative writing. There he met James O’Connell and fell in musical love. Hugh learned to play guitar while writing pop songs with Jim, who sang and played keyboards and drums. At the time they recorded guitar and drums (a bucket usually) onto one boom box and then sang and played guitar onto a second boom box as the first boom box played. They did anything they could think of to structure and arrange a song.

After graduating college Hugh joined the Peace Corps and taught English in Kenya for two years, where he became a fan of African pop artists such as Tabu Ley, Syran Mbenza, Franco, Mbilia Bel and many more. Upon returning from Kenya Hugh moved to New York City. Hugh and Jim reconnected there and produced nearly one hundred 4-track pop songs over a three-year period, digging deep into the new technology to develop their compositional style. They formed a band called Johnny One Note and met the intensely musical Rob Speck while auditioning drummers. Jonathan Doyle played bass. more >>