Donna Hughes

Recording Artist · Active 2001–present · Also a musician
Contemporary Bluegrass

Donna Hughes is a singer, songwriter, guitarist and pianist from Randolph County, North Carolina, who writes most of the songs she records. Alison Krauss & Union Station recorded her “My Poor Old Heart” on Lonely Runs Both Ways (2004), and her two Rounder albums were produced by Tony Rice and J. D. Crowe.

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She issued her first album, Somewhere in Time, on her own Running Dog label in 2001, writing nine of its songs, and followed it in 2003 with Same Old Me, all 21 songs her own, among them “My Poor Old Heart.” Tony Rice heard Same Old Me, called her and offered to produce her next record, which led to a deal with Rounder. Gaining Wisdom (2007), recorded at Hilltop Studios in Nashville, has twelve of her songs, Rice on guitar on much of it, Sam Bush, Rob Ickes, Ron Stewart and Tim Stafford among the pickers, and harmony vocals by Alison Krauss, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Rhonda Vincent, Sonya Isaacs, Alecia Nugent and Carl Jackson.

J. D. Crowe produced her second Rounder album, Hellos, Goodbyes & Butterflies (2010), which had fifteen of her songs and reached number one on SiriusXM Bluegrass Junction’s most-played albums. In April 2014 she recorded two more albums at Hilltop for Running Dog: the bluegrass record From the Heart, with Tim Stafford, Scott Vestal, Rob Ickes and Jenee Fleenor, and the piano album Fly. Other artists who have recorded her songs include the Seldom Scene (“Sad Old Train”), Kati Penn (“Never Gonna Change”), Darren Beachley (“Scattered to the Wind”) and the Snyder Family (“Little Bluebird”).

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