By Matthew Beale

Photo by Brandon Short

And I don’t want to steal your soul / I just wanna play a little rock ’n’ roll” opens Harrison Hudson on the third track of his, let’s call it first, release. It’s not that Hudson has nothing down on tape besides this album, and this isn’t discounting the myriad of short EPs and juvenilea floating around Atlanta, but Angel On One Side...and the Other on the Other... is really the emergence of a new artist. It’s an album made in Atlanta, released in Nashville, from a songwriter and performer just taking on music as a full-time profession. It’s a disc exposing a musician grappling with musical growing pains.

Hudson has been playing the Atlanta scene since he was in high school. It’s only in the last year that he dropped out of college as a graphics design student to dive into music full time. When the Atlanta scene started getting too cramped for a band itching to play every week, Hudson dived back into his photography skills to find shows outside town: “So I started doing this thing ‘shoot for shows’ where I said ‘Hey put me on the bill; when I get there I’ll do a photo shoot for you guys.’“ It was good enough to help Hudson garner a following in Georgia, Mississippi, Florida and Tennessee. The latter is where he chose to move over the summer of this year, with Nashville as the focus.

“People are like ‘Oh you’re new? Yeah let me help.’ They introduce you to people, whatever they can do to help,” says the 21-year old of his Music City experience. Hudson’s album was crafted under the pressure of his Nashville move over the middle and end of June this year. “The last six of those were like 22-hour days, literally,” claims the musician. “When it was all done I just slept for three days.” The heavily produced sound polished in Atlanta helps bring much of the classic pop-style material to life, and Hudson’s first backing vocals help build lush-sounding choruses.

The production process used throughout the album was a new one for Hudson. “It was my first time getting really produced...It was tough for me to give up the control.” Prior projects had been tracked and mixed by friends in dark corners of Atlanta, but Angel on one side...and the Other on the Other... was created with heavy influence from Atlanta producer and engineer Jeremiah Edmund over 18 days. More than just being produced was new; the young artist’s first co-writer and a new drummer are also featured.

The attempt to bring the album material to realization on stage brought Hudson’s keyboard player, Ryan VanKirk, and bass player, Brandon Dees, to town with him. Drummer Micah Tawlks and guitarist Tommy Hans were to follow. VanKirk and Hans are also singing backup vocals, a role filled on the album by guests and friends The Bridges.

“I think the album matures towards the end,” says Hudson. Around the seventh track, the colors in each track’s production begin to show some more modern influence. By the disc’s second to last track, the songwriting and production has moved from an indie drum-kit and jangly guitars to a minor key Coldplay-styled rock tune with scratchy yells and falsetto. The pop writing blends styles of southern and contemporary indie music throughout the album — the southern influence being most notable in Hudson and Hans’s guitar licks.

Hudson’s last track on the new disc starts as a quiet ballad but builds with unified electric guitars for the moments that need the emphasis. It’s a song that starts simple and builds on that base, something Hudson handles well in his songwriting and in his passion for living music. Moving into a bigger pond is never simple, but Hudson seems more than confident in his music and fans — whose numbers should be on the rise in Nashville this winter.

www.harrisonhudson.com