A pair of talented young brothers from Ireland is making a second sojourn across the pond to enliven audiences throughout North America with their unique brand of contemporary folk/pop music, tinged with just enough of the Celtic spirit to warm the cockles of even the rockiest of hearts. Hudson Taylor is comprised of Alfie and Harry Hudson-Taylor and they are touring in support of their most recent EP Feel It Again, released in February of this year. A new album, Bear Creek to Dame Street, will be released on Friday, Sept. 21.
Hudson Taylor is bringing over their full band to North America for the first time ever to open a slew of dates for soul-pop sensation Hozier, as well as play a number of headlining club dates on their own. The North America tour begins at The Olympia in Montreal on Tuesday, Sept. 18, followed by a show at The Rebel Complex in Toronto on Sept. 19, before heading to Chicago Sept. 21, then by four straight shows in New York City (the first three with Hozier, the fourth, a solo band performance.) The tour ends Oct. 22 back up in Canada at The Orpheum in Vancouver, before Hudson Taylor begins a run of shows in Ireland.
“The first time we went over to North America it was probably in 2012 or 2013, and we went over just for a few meetings. It was a bizarre trip because we only went over for two or three days. And since then we have only done a few shows there. We did some showcases in Los Angeles and New York, and earlier this year, for the first time, we went on a tour in February to Canada and the U.S. We started off the tour in Toronto that time. It was a really nice tour. It was amazing to be able to do that. And now here we are six months later going out with Hozier to America and Canada again, which is just incredible. We had a really, really good time when we went out there in February, but I think this time it’s going to be on another level,” said Alfie Hudson-Taylor, who is, at 24, two years younger than brother Harry.
“We were really surprised at the reception. Every gig we have done in Canada has been a great time. I think the audiences there are absolutely brilliant. Even in the States, it went very well, they were really, really respectful and receptive. We do have some quieter songs and the audiences over there were really quiet and just listened. I suppose our sound was a little quieter because it was only an acoustic set last time, whereas this time we’re going out with our full band who we have been playing with for years. We have all been itching to go to North America and do a tour together, so that’s going to be a lot of fun. We will definitely try to get people up dancing.
“And we have our own shows that we’re going to be doing in between dates with Hozier, which we’re really excited about. It’s our first headline tour in the States, and it will be really interesting to see who comes to our shows, what sort of people come and how those crowds respond to our music, because we’ve never done anything like that over there.”
Being from the Emerald Isle, it is almost expected that Hudson Taylor will have leaned heavily on the centuries of traditional Irish music as a foundation for their own style. But while there are some of those elements, the music the brothers create is more contemporary folk or singer/songwriter style, with definite modern pop overtones.
“It doesn’t come across so much in our recorded music, but over the last couple of years we have drawn a lot from those traditional influences. I think more so it’s the bands that have been coming out of Ireland over the last few years, like our labelmate Hozier for example, who have been really inspirational. We do use a fiddle in our recordings and in the live shows one of our members plays the fiddle and mandolin and another plays the tin whistle. So, it can sometimes draw on that more traditional Celtic sound, but I really think our sound is a lot more contemporary,” Alfie said, adding that much like Canada’s maritime provinces, music is an integral part of day to day culture in Ireland and the traditional tunes and instruments are prevalent, but so are influences from England, America and beyond.
“Other than the traditional tunes, we grew up listening to a lot of good music. There was a lot of Beatles played in the house, Simon and Garfunkel, the Everly Brothers. We grew up listening to that. And then our older sister put us on to The White Stripes and Oasis and those sorts of bands. I think that comes into our music as well. I think everything we write has been influenced and inspired by what we listened to growing up and our experiences growing up.”
The Hudson-Taylor lads and their sister were raised by their mom after their parents split when they were young. Mom encouraged the talented boys at every turn and was the one who first suggested they head in from the outskirts of Dublin to the city centre and busk. Both were teenagers at the time, but Alfie and Harry soon developed a following, one that grew exponentially when they started posting videos to YouTube which were soon shared worldwide.
“Our mom had worked in music and television and that kind of thing before a good few years ago and she kind of recognized that we had some opportunities. She told us to go out and busk and to make a bit of pocket money, so we got the idea from her. She was really supportive. If you think of it, I was 16 and Harry was 18 – just kids – going into Dublin on the bus on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. A lot of my friends wouldn’t have been allowed to do that at my age. And that was some of the most formative experiences of our lives. It taught me that I really liked doing music and I think Harry felt the same way too,” he said.
“I remember the meeting at school with my mom coming in. Both my mom and the principal of my school kind of left it up to me. And it was the same with Harry at college, where he was studying computer science. Music was something that we were never going to stop talking about and working on, so it was really nice how it worked out. So, we moved to London and worked our asses off and got to where we are now. We released our first album Singing for Strangers (2015) and toured around the UK. Ireland and Europe. And then we came back and started writing more music and now we’re releasing new music again and starting to tour elsewhere in the world.”
The brothers learned the importance of taking advantage of their opportunities, including the chance to sign with London based managers and agents, and made the decision to leave school and take up music as a full-time vocation. They feel that playing cover songs on the streets of Dublin for so many years held them in good stead when it came to also getting serious about their songwriting.
“We would cover all these other peoples’ hits when we were busking on the streets and people would stop and give us money. Then we would play our own and no one would stop and give us money. So, we began to think about what covers we were playing and what was it that those songs had that ours didn’t. I think maybe it made us think that really learning about other artists’ songs would help us in terms of building our own song structures,” Alfie said.
“But, honestly, none of this was planned; none of this was really well thought out. It was more just learning along the way. We worked with a lot of producers and songwriters and collaborated with each other from day one, and we realized that another person can bring a lot into the room and into the sound. So, everything is really just happening naturally. I think if we’re thinking about writing songs too much, we’re less happy with the song when it’s done. We mostly like to just focus on writing a song that is meaningful to one of us or both of us and try and write it as good as possible to make it something that we would want to listen back to and like.”
Being brothers in the same band, Alfie and Harry inevitably face questions about that dynamic, thanks in large part to a ribald history of inter-band sibling conflicts that have made headlines from the likes of the Gallagher boys in Oasis, the Everly Brothers, Chris and Rich Robinson in the Black Crowes or Ray and Dave Davies in The Kinks. So, of course we also asked that question.
“I am fascinated by the Gallaghers. I think they are bloody hilarious. And also, you look at the Everly Brothers and how they were totally different sorts of people and hated each other. I think just with bands in general there are pro and cons and all the difficulties of touring because you’re surrounded by these people all the time. So, the down side all the time is that we spend a lot of time together and we’ve got to work together and then there are all the other family things that are involved too. We see each other so much,” Alfie said.
“You can’t spend too much time around anybody. You need your own space now and then. The pro side of it is that we’re so honest with each other and we recognize when we may need that space. And we can also look at brothers like the Gallaghers from the corner and laugh and hope it doesn’t happen to us one day.”
Another positive is that the Hudson Taylor brothers tend to be in synch creatively, making for a productive and prolific writing partnership.
“I do lyrics and melodies mostly and Harry is kind of in charge of the choruses and the music backing tracks and is also a very good engineer and producer. He takes the songs and puts harmonies on them, changes the chords if that’s needed and brings that whole side to it that I just can’t really do. And it works really, really well in loads of different ways. My approach at the moment is writing in the bedroom or in a quiet place, or sometimes with loads of people onstage at soundcheck or something like that,” Alfie explained.
“I would be doing the lyrics and melodies and Harry does the music side of things, and that’s the basic formula. But it also depends on who we are with and where we are and what sort of song we’re writing. And we both know it’s going to change and evolve over time. Next year we could be working with some DJ from America for all we know. And I like that. The songs mostly represent where we are at that point in time and we just generally write about what’s going on in our lives.”
For more information about Hudson Taylor and their North American shows, visit https://www.hudsontaylormusic.com. For a link to Bear Creek to Dame Street, visit http://smarturl.it/BearCreekDameStreet.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for a quarter of a century. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he now works as a communications and marketing specialist. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
SHARE THIS POST:
