John Hughes's show to mark new album on theme of murder

Making an album about murder and how it’s portrayed in the media is not something you expect from your average songwriter. But Jon Hughes is far from average. The Galway-based American singer launches his third album Dead Weight in Busker Browne’s, on Wednesday, July 13.

Dead Weight is informed by Jon’s taste in literature, as much as his taste in music. He explains why he went for a more narrative approach, as opposed to a personal one, on this album. 

“There are probably a few characters – it’s not so much myself on this one,” he says. “I wanted to do something where I’m putting my ideas into it but I’m not actually experiencing it directly.

“It’s an album about murder looked through different kinds of media,” he adds. “I wanted to compare and contrast narratives from books to media we get nowadays, like 30 second blasts on YouTube. I find it troubling sometimes, in a way that I want to write about it.”

Does Jon feel that the 24-hour reporting of an often violent world has desensitised people?

“I think that’d be a fair thing to say,” he says. “Desensitised and I guess we’re becoming accustomed to not really using our imaginations. We expect things to get fed to us.”

One of the standout moments on the album is the stark but arresting Gretta’s Body. A combination of fiction and real life brought the song about.

“I was reading a book and it started with an image of a character standing on a bridge,” says Jon. “He looks across and he sees a window with a light that is sort of red. In the book, he doesn’t follow this image but I decided to see what would happen if he actually did.

“Part of it as a little bit personal as well because the character that [the man in the song] meets is a guy that I used to work with, years ago, in a kitchen. I remember meeting him and he had this look in his eyes – I don’t know exactly what was wrong with him – it was like he was pleased to meet me but he wanted to kill me as well. It stuck with me.

“I sort of like to write songs that are journeys through hell!” Jon laughs. “It keeps coming up.”

Yet it’s not all heavy-going. The music on Dead Weight adds some light to the dark tones of the lyrics. Bizarrely enough, it’s often a pleasant listen.

“These are things that I think about but I don’t think the music should reflect that,” says Jon. “The music has sort of a positive feel. It sounds funny, I don’t know why that happens. I guess I don’t feel any anger, so I can see why that would be reflected in the music.

“It’s a common thing when I write songs. The content might be a bit dark but the music is not. I’m not sure why that is really.”

Jon arrived in Galway in 2005, taking some time out of American city life. Like many people who come to Galway, he didn’t intend to stay but became enamoured with the place.

“It sounds so clichéd, but I was just travelling through Ireland,” he recalls. “I’d been working at a job for a long time, in a kitchen, and living in Madison city in Wisconsin. I just wanted to go somewhere different; it just came up by chance really.

“I decided to come to Ireland and I ended up in Galway. I wanted to relax for a while and plant myself somewhere. I found a job and a place to live immediately and I’ve been here for five or six years.”Tackling the kind of ideas that run through Dead Weight sounds fairly demanding. Did Jon have to set aside a block of time for the writing of the album?

“I just write all the time – I feel like I have to,” he says. “I sometimes feel like I do a little more than I should, and I should be actually putting my stuff out there. But the whole music industry is changing, so sometimes I wonder if staying in my room writing albums and not worrying so much about the other stuff is a maybe a better way.”

For more, read this week's Connacht Tribune.