By DAVID T. MILLER
Contributing Writer

Dr. Kevin Holm-Hudson is a professor of music theory at the University of Kentucky College of Music but also a very active songwriter, recording artist and performer, both as a solo artist and with his band The Adjuncts. Undermain’s David T. Miller caught up with him between his teaching and performing commitments.

DM: You’re a professor of music, but also an active songwriter and performer. How do those two worlds inform each other?

KH: Before becoming a professor, I was a performer. I began piano lessons when I was seven, and when I went to college at Syracuse University I majored in piano performance. Teaching music theory definitely impacts my songwriting, usually in the revision stage once I’ve written down the basics of the melody. One of my songs, “Last of the Local Legends,” is actually in a rondo form (ABACA), a musical structure that was popular during the Classical era. I intentionally wrote that song to fit the form so I could use it as an example in my teaching. It’s one thing to talk about or play a recording of a piece that’s in a musical structure, but it’s much more vivid to play for students live and explain what’s happening as you’re doing it.

DM: What do you get from performing that you don’t get from teaching or writing?

KH: I’ve always believed there’s a performative dimension to teaching. Good teachers are always good “performers” of their subject. Writing and performing my own music helps me realize and carry out what I now consider to be a calling to express myself in music.

DM: You’re classically trained, but you’ve long argued that pop and rock music deserve serious academic attention. Where does that conviction come from?

KH: I remember an offhand comment my theory professor made during my first year in college. Explaining harmonic progression, he commented that a IV chord would commonly go to V, but V would not go to IV — “You find that in Chuck Berry. You don’t find it in Bach." "Why not?” I wondered. That’s what got me started. I also grew up on a musical diet of progressive rock, among other things — the classically influenced ambitions of Yes, Emerson Lake & Palmer, and so on fired my imagination.

DM: Is it true you wrote your first song at age eight — and even wrote out the notation? Then took a break for a few decades?

KH: It is true, and I have the hard copy (not only in notation but with an imaginary copyright statement!). It was published in our school’s literary magazine, the one musical example alongside poems, art and stories. I didn’t exactly “take a break” after that, though, I wrote music all the way through high school. Most of it wasn’t very good and I didn’t think of myself as a “songwriter” back then. I turned to writing songs as a discipline back in 2009-2010 or so.

DM: Have you always thought of yourself as a songwriter, or did that identity grow alongside your academic life?

KH: I would say that grew as a facet of my academic life. There’s so much more: teaching, performing, writing and publishing, presenting research at conferences. Songwriting emerged as the “applied” area of my academic work, once I became a full professor. After reaching that title, what do you do? I didn’t want to rest on my laurels, so I embarked on a new chapter.

DM: You’ve literally written the book on the progressive rock band Genesis with “Genesis and The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway” and you edited the book “Progressive Rock Reconsidered.” What draws you to progressive music, both as a scholar and a listener?

KH: As I mentioned, I grew up with progressive rock. I was 10 when I first heard Emerson, Lake and Palmer’s song “Lucky Man” and I was transfixed by Keith Emerson’s iconic synthesizer solo at the end — I’d never heard anything like that! Their album “Trilogy” was one of the first records I purchased. In high school I was listening to lots of styles, from Jefferson Airplane to Neil Young to Supertramp, so I wasn’t exclusively into prog back then, but it was a big part of my musical experience. What inspires me now is the notion that young musicians were making bold, aspirational, even utopian musical statements, and record companies were investing huge sums of money in supporting and promoting this music. People were buying the albums and filling arenas to listen to it, at a time that was marked by economic uncertainty, energy scarcity and war. The music was a flickering of utopia in a dystopian time. I’m also interested in the ways progressive rock emulated classical influences but ultimately fell short — the distance between “classical” and “not-quite-classical-but-bless-their-hearts.” There are also many stories about this music still to be explored and told!

DM: In both the Genesis book and your music theory book you situate music within its historical moment — socially, politically, even economically. Why does that matter? And how does that awareness shape your own songwriting?

KH: The musicologist Jean Molino devised a three-part model of musical analysis. The first is the poietic stage, or when and how the music is conceived (a sketchbook or a demo, such as the many demos that went into solidifying John Lennon’s “Strawberry Fields Forever”). The second stage is the neutral, the “trace,” the finished product (a score, a recording). The third stage is the esthesic, the reception of the finished work by critics and fans. So, the social, economic and political background of a song affects all of these things. With my own work, I do sometimes write political songs. I have to, I cannot ignore what’s happening around me. But I also write about other things I experience — nature, travel, friends, love. I don’t worry about whether my music will be financially successful; the music industry is dying anyway, and it has its own idea of what it wants to promote to the public and I’m not it. I’m 63 and have no illusions about being the next big Nashville star. I do write to express an inner need or longing.

DM: You seem drawn to progressive thought. How does that way of seeing the world shape your music today?

KH: It’s easy to mythologize the past — but I miss the utopian spirit of the 1960s (or at least what I’ve heard about the 1960s, since I was only eight years old when the Beatles broke up and John Lennon sang “the dream is over”). There was a palpable feeling then that music, and other aspects of culture, could change the world. We’ve lost that, and we’re losing democracy, community and respect for the human spirit. At some level you have to respond. And I also keep trying to reach back, to bring back those times when things were better, people were nicer and change was in our grasp. I realize this is all naïve sugar-coating of a time that was also marked by violence (the war in Vietnam, the assassinations of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King,  Kent State shootings). But I try to hold on to idealism, with like-minded friends.

DM: “Travelers Rest” reunites you with The Adjuncts after your solo album “Milkweed.” How do you decide which songs are for the band and which are solo pieces?

KH: My first album “Message from the Margins” was definitely an Adjuncts project in that the band actually suggested songs to include, and we had played most of the songs live. The same is true of the second album, “The Trembling Air.” But “Milkweed” was more of a studio creation and included more “outside instruments” such as oboe, cello and contrabass. It also shaped up as being more of a concept album. So it came out as a solo release even though The Adjuncts do play on a few cuts, in the same way I think of “Pet Sounds” as a “Brian Wilson album,” even though it was credited to The Beach Boys. And then it was back to work with The Adjuncts for the next album, “Travelers Rest.” “Milkweed” is a much more introspective, reflective and acoustic album, which I associate more with my own solo performing. Once you bring in The Adjuncts, it’s more upbeat and electric because that’s more of what a festival audience would want.

DM: When you write, do you think about whether a song can be performed live?

KH: I don’t think about that, the recording process is the main thing. But sometimes a song is finished with a much different mood compared to how it started. A good example is “Light of Peace” from “Travelers Rest.” That started out as an upbeat folk anthem and that’s how I play live, but the studio version is more subdued, all a cappella, with 16 tracks of vocals for a quasi-choral feel. Some of my songs are “guitar songs” and some are “keyboard songs,” and I find if I’m not able to play a song live on the guitar, I can usually do it instead on keyboard.

DM: Dr. Jim Gleason of the Johnson Brothers and many, many other projects has contributed to most of your albums as producer and guitarist. What’s the creative chemistry like between you two?

KH: Jim is a godsend — a phenomenal musician, a perceptive, supportive and patient producer and a great friend. We met when we were both working on the Pink Floyd project “Battersea Station: Lexington Musicians Play the Music of Pink Floyd,” which we’ll be presenting again January 24. We then worked together on three albums of post-rock ambient instrumentals with musical pal Scott Whiddon during the pandemic as the trio “Archipelago.” We worked remotely and only got together face-to-face for the final mixdown, after months of working virtually. We sent all proceeds from the releases to support the Central Music Academy. After that, it was Jim’s idea to begin working together on my first album, “Message from the Margins,” and I leapt at the chance. Jim is fearless, always willing to experiment and try new things. We don’t think about commercial potential or anything like that. Serving the song and following the muse is more important.

DM: You’ve talked about double-tracking your vocals instead of using studio effects like flanging. What’s behind that choice? Isn’t it time-consuming?

KH: Not just double-tracking but as much as four-tracking, four tracks for each of four parts to create a choir of 16 voices. John Lennon loved double-tracking because it compensated for what he thought was his thin vocal quality. I find that once you go into three- or four-tracking, the phasing in the voices makes the sound “blossom.” It’s not the same as flanging, because that can give you a “jet-engine” whooshing effect. As for time-consuming? No, not really. It takes as long as, say, adding another guitar track.

DM: You’ve said track order matters to you. Is that a holdover from the days of two-sided vinyl records or is it about taking the listener on a particular journey?

KH: Absolutely, and both! I do hope listeners would listen to the entire album, because I am intentional about track order — using things like key relationships to smooth the transitions from one song to the next.

DM: Your solo album “Milkweed” was subtitled “Thirteen Songs about Time, Nature, The Seasons, God, and Mortality.” That’s a lot! Were those themes deliberate when you were writing or did they reveal themselves as the album took shape?

KH: Some of the songs on “Milkweed,” like my other albums, go back several years before they made it to an album. COVID-19 played a part in making that album because although I was spared getting the disease I started thinking about my own mortality and the fragility of my body. Several spiritual experiences and journeys also played a part in writing the songs and in developing the project. It’s my most personal album and my personal favorite.

DM: Some of your songs include found sounds and unusual textures, like birdsong, Jim Gleason’s guitar track played backward, even the bark of your dog Bodhi. What draws you to those kinds of sonic experiments?

KH: Predecessors, of course. Jim’s backward Rickenbacker guitar on “If I Could Tell You” is a tribute to the Beatles as well as the Byrds, especially their song “5D (Fifth Dimension).” Pink Floyd used barking dog samples on their album “Animals.”