Many years before receiving praise from NPR, ranking on the Billboard charts, or winning prestigious awards, something magical happened; a teenaged Moksha Sommer was reading the lush words of the Persian poet Rumi in her Montreal apartment and wildly decided to join friends for a spur of the moment trip to North Carolina for a Rumi Festival put on by Turkish Sufis. It was there that, from across a room of dancers, Jemal Wade Hines was playing frame drum and heard Sommer’s voice cutting through the crowd and jolting his heart awake. That moment was the beginning of HuDost.
Since then, Sommer and Hines have married as a couple, as musicians, as activists, and as parents; in all of those they are guided by love. They are highly engaged activists, doing advocacy work as Representatives for ONE (a non-profit organization working to end extreme poverty) and joining forces with other non-profit organizations. They have discovered the alchemy and power of the combination of music and activism and how change can be effectively created through those tools. Recently, they partnered with minister/activist William J. Barber II and the Poor People’s Campaign on one of their new songs.
In this interview spotlight, I chat with HuDost about the latest project (Anthems of Home), adapting during lock downs, technology and more.
Full Q&A along with links and music below.
Where are you from and how do You describe your style of music?
JW: I was born in the car on the Knoxville interstate, grew up in Gainesville Florida and currently reside in the backwoods of South Central Kentucky just outside of Nashville. I would describe HuDost’s music as ‘Neo-Folk Retro-Pop Alternative-World Art-Rock Electric-Americana’….we are literally all over the map!
Moksha: I grew up in the mountains of Canada, in southern Quebec to be specific, and lived in Montreal for several years. Jemal Wade is my husband and we love the home we share in the country. His description of our music makes me giggle but is rather appropriate.
How did you get here? As in, what inspired or motivated you to take on this journey through music and the music biz?
JW: I know this sounds cliche but music has always been my lifeblood. Most of the significant dates and memories in my life are all tied to music or the year a particular song or album came out. My earliest conscious memory is being 2 years old and running around my house in Oklahoma listening to Elton John. KISS was the first band I fell in love with at 7 years old and from that point onward I knew what I wanted to do with my life. I’ve been playing in bands since 1987 and from the beginning I was inspired not only by writing but also by sonic exploration with the guitar and in the recording field.
When I met Moksha everything changed. All of a sudden together we were creating next level music and touring and I started getting deeper into recording and production and touring and learning about the music business side of things. We are a DIY partnership at the heart with an amazing team of beautiful people along with us. I am so grateful to be doing this for a living. This is what I do and who I am.
Moksha: My parents were Buddhists, professors, and artists who decided to return to the land and raise me amidst goats, chickens, and fascinating visitors. I learned a great deal from the land and from all of the people who shared different art forms and ways of perceiving reality. I went to public school with farmers and hippies and learned constantly about art and music on the side. I became immersed in theatre and music at an early age; performing with the circus from the age of 6-12 and then doing my first music touring in my teens. I was also and, oddly, normal kid. Healthy exploration was strongly encouraged and I remain deeply grateful for that. I think that, considering my childhood, it is not a shocker. My brother is a lawyer and my sister is in business but they both also have strong art backgrounds. Knowing what that kind of journey is at an early age changes your perspective on what you are capable of and what you want to do with your time and energy. Making art and music are like breathing for me and always have been.
That said, my journey with music started when I was really young and I never questioned my love or commitment to it. It was the business part that I had to slowly learn and grow into over the years.
How does your latest project compare/contrast with your previous release(s)? Were you setting out to accomplish anything specific, follow a specific theme, or explore different styles of creation?
JW: Anthems of Home feels like the most relaxed album we’ve ever made. It really feels natural and really seems to capture so many aspects of what we do in the song-writing and production realm. I mean, we were working on a big interfaith chant project and a multi-disciplinary installation piece and when Covid hit, everything shifted quickly. We just started writing and then recording the songs right away, so production started from the ground up.
Anthems is similar in ways to our last album ‘of Water + Mercy’, but there were some issues completing that one and really making it sound like we wanted. We ended up achieving that ultimately but it was more work. This album just kind of created itself.
A few of the tracks we did as a full band at Gray Matters (Jars of Clay’s studio) in Nashville. Those sessions were super fun as it was the first time we’d been around other humans and creating music in such a long time after the initial Covid isolation. The vibe of those sessions was so good and ego-less. We love working with all of the musicians on this record.
Name the biggest challenge you faced as a creative during these unprecedented? How did you adapt? How have you kept the creative fires burning during all this?
JW: Well we kept the creative fires going by continuing to write and create. Besides this album we also recorded & mixed a 14 song cover song album that was extremely fun to do. That will come out in 2022 sometime. We have a ton of unfinished songs that didn’t make it on the record as well, so there’s a lot of new music in the canon around the corner. I think the next thing we’re going to tackle is finishing up a couple of the interfaith chant songs….that will be a totally different track than this.
In terms of the biggest challenge, we have a beautiful 8 year old boy named Kaleb and the early days of Covid were really tough on him. Home-schooling was rough and he really wanted to have playdates but couldn’t. There was so much uncertainty when Covid first started in terms of not only our careers but life in general. Thankfully we had each other and were eventually able to ‘pod’ with certain friends and family.
The other challenge during this time was growing divide happening in this country. When the Black Lives Matter protests started up, we went to one in our small town and even here we had conflicts and people yelling at each other. Right around that time Dan from Jars of Clay sent us a voice memo of a melody and tune he was working on and asked “Can you guys do anything with this?”. We immediately started working on a protest song called ‘Our Words Will Be Louder’; a song that was attempting to ask questions and unite instead of further divide. Moksha can speak a bit more about it…
Moksha: Yes, the song addresses how inadequate we can feel until we give our voices to a larger purpose. We do a large amount of work with ONE (one.org – a non-profit advocacy organization working to end extreme poverty) and have been their congressional district representatives in KY for almost 6 years. Through advocacy work over the years we have come to know how to be a voice for people who are not being heard. We have been amazed by what can happen from the power of collective voice.
In creating this, I was incredibly moved by the willingness of other artists and activists to be part of our song. I think this says something about the urgency of what we are all feeling and the deep desire to be cultivating positive action.
This song and music video shows directly how powerful we can be as a group. This is a time to, yes, speak up as an individual, but also know what it means to act with compassion and love with the help of others and in support of others. Despite all of the years of advocacy and activism that I have done, in some ways, I feel like I am a child learning what it means to be in service.
JW: Yeah, so we wrote and recorded this song really quickly. It just sort of manifested. At the end of the studio day we were wiped out but Moksha and Christie Lenee, who were doing stacked anthemic harmony vocals together at the time, had another idea for the end tag line chant of the song. By the time they were done it sounded like a huge group of people singing. That led us to the idea of getting a choir on the song which led to the idea of inviting a bunch of people to be a part of the video mosaic. You should check it out. It has Kevin Clash, who’s famous for being Elmo along with a ton of other Muppets with his new protest Muppet, Cy Curnin from The FIXX, Kevin Hearn from Barenaked Ladies, Jai Uttal, The Accidentals, Alana Bridgewater, the guys from Jars of Clay and many more.
The video came together quickly too and we decided to rush release it to coincide with the November 2020 election to encourage early voting. At that point we also got Reverend Barber and the Poor People’s Campaign involved and helped raise some money from it toward their efforts. Reverend Barber added a bit at the end of the video that still moves us to tears every time we see and hear it. It truly contains the Message of what we as an entity try to convey.
What was the last song you listened to?
JW: Literally the last song I listened to was our Holiday song ‘In the Bleak MidWinter’ as I am currently putting the finishing touches on the video. The last albums I listened to recently were the new Brandi Carlile record. Kaleb is really into KISS right now, so that’s fun for me personally as I am getting to turn him on to a lot of the music I grew up with including deep cut records like Killers, The Elder, Unmasked, etc. He’s at the age where I can finally bring him along to concerts. I took him to see Ace Frehley and Alice Cooper a few weeks back in Nashville and we have tickets to both STYX & Tears for Fears early next year. I have to bring him to see as many classic acts as I can while they’re still rocking the paradise!
Which do you prefer? Vinyl? 8-tracks? Cassettes? CDs? MP3s? Streaming platforms?
JW: I am a vinyl guy all the way. I still like hard copies of things. I like to pull a record off the shelf and physically put it on and sit back and look at the art and read the liner notes. Funny you ask about 8-Tracks as I just showed one to Kaleb a couple of days ago and tried to explain to him what it was.
Where is the best place to connect with you and follow your journey?
Moksha: Great question!
https://www.instagram.com/_hudost/
I really appreciate Your time. Anything else before we sign off?
JW: Thanks for asking fun questions. I also want to chime in briefly more about the advocacy work we do. Besides what we spoke about above, Moksha and I are also work with the ONE Campaign and are Kentucky reps for that. ONE is a non-partisan organization that helps fight extreme poverty and HIV/AIDS. They never ask for money but only people’s voices. We do various letter writing and petition actions a few times during the year and we’re the ones who meet with our Kentucky Senators and Congressmen about these issues. Miraculously, our work with ONE has passed some of the only bi-partisan bills in DC.
