Brad Hudson

He started singing and playing guitar in church as a small child, learning with a few lessons from a local musician, and later took up the banjo and Dobro, playing with bands at events and contests around North Carolina. In high school he worked with the Nashville recording artist Don Cox and with local bluegrass bands, and then at the Crystal Coast Jamboree in Morehead City, where he sang, played in the band and was featured as a soloist and dancer, and where he learned to read charts and the Nashville number system. He went on the road playing bass with the Larkins, a Dollywood act whose work included performing and recording Dolly Parton’s songs with her, and after graduating he sang and played in the house band at her brother Randy Parton’s theater in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina.

As a teenager he had gone to see Lorraine Jordan & Carolina Road whenever he could, and he joined the band in 2009, in time to play Dobro on Carolina Hurricane (Rural Rhythm, 2010). While with the band he was nominated by SPBGMA for Dobro and bass player of the year. After about four years with Carolina Road he moved to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, where he sang and played bass for several seasons at the Country Tonite Theatre, and in September 2014 he went on the road with the gospel singers Jeff & Sheri Easter as a utility musician, also playing Homecoming shows with Bill Gaither and the Gaither family.

When Carolina Road started recording its Country Grass album in 2015, Jordan asked him to play Dobro in the studio, and on it he sang with John Conlee on a bluegrass version of Conlee’s “Common Man.” He was soon touring with the band again, and in May 2016 it announced his full-time return; he was also playing shows with Dolly Parton’s family band at Dollywood. Later in 2016 he moved to Sideline, the band led by the banjo player Steve Dilling, on Dobro and lead and tenor vocals, and in October he signed with Pinecastle Records. On Sideline’s Colors & Crossroads (2016) he plays Dobro and sings lead on “Darlin’ Corey.”

Next New Heartbreak (Pinecastle PRC 1212) came out on 3 November 2017. Recorded at Old Stage Recording Studio in Garner, North Carolina, it has Hudson singing lead and playing Dobro with Skip Cherryholmes on guitar, Dilling on banjo, Aaron Ramsey on mandolin and guitar, Ron Stewart on fiddle and Jason Moore on bass. Parton sings harmony on “Appalachian Memories” and Jeff and Sheri Easter join him on “Beulah Land”; the album also takes in Loretta Lynn’s “World of Forgotten People,” Tom Paxton’s “I Can’t Help But Wonder (Where I’m Bound),” “Smoky Mountain Strong,” which he wrote with Mark “Brink” Brinkman, and his own “My One and Only (Crystal’s Song).” In November 2017 he announced that he would leave Sideline at the end of the year to tour behind the album, and by June 2018 he was out with his own band: Dillon Abney on bass, Logan Hembree on guitar, Andy Stinnett on mandolin and Colin Ray on banjo.