Hush Money

Hush Money is a Georgia rock and roll band that has been playing together in some form for fifteen years.

They ended up on the SALTYmf GOAT Podcast because of a t-shirt. Brad was walking past a music store above Ellijay with his wife and saw a shirt hanging outside with the words Hush Money on it. He went in to buy it, and Cindy behind the counter at Big Frog Music Company asked whether he knew the band. He did not. She put their record on while he was in the shop, and about three chords in he wrote his number down and told her to have them call him.

Seth grew up between two radios. His mother's truck had KZ106 out of Chattanooga, classic rock, Sabbath through Skynyrd. His father held that there were two kinds of music, country and western. Both came out on Industry Standard, which carries gospel style harmonies on some songs and blues riffs on others. Caleb resists the southern rock label and quotes Greg Allman on it being like saying rock rock. They call what they do American music. Songs start with Seth bringing lyrics to the table and end up somewhere else, through what Caleb calls the hush money meat grinder. Caleb writes the other direction. He woke out of a dead sleep once convinced he was on his couch watching a comedy scene of a man backing an eighteen wheeler down a mountain until the brakes went, and there was a song under it, and he grabbed his own neck and told himself to wake up and write down the chord progressions. He started guitar at thirteen and used to fall asleep holding it.

COVID took the year in pieces. The calls came daily, one venue after another wiping its calendar with no idea when it would be back, until the whole booked year was gone and they were building from the ground floor again. Caleb kept it moving by playing outdoor rooms that would only take an acoustic duo. What wore on them longer was the parade of men promising to put them on the map, the guy whose buddy played guitar next to Hank Williams Jr.'s third cousin back in 1986, enough of them over enough years that a stranger offering help now gets a long look. That is why Greg spent the first phone calls with Brad working out whether a man who bought a t-shirt was for real.

Cindy is what they call their unofficial fifth member. She has heard everything they have ever recorded before it was released, and if she calls a song bubblegum bullshit it does not go out. When they first brought her an EP and asked whether she would sell it for five dollars, she said she would sell it for six and keep one. She is also the one who introduced them to their manager, Lucy Piller. Greg says his goal has been to build community, and that when you are not keeping your head on a swivel worrying about who is undercutting you, you are free to make better choices. Their new album drops July 4.