Jedd Hughes

That's crazy.

You know, I'm standing behind Stuart Duncan and Eddie Dunlap next to Jed Hughes.

Wow.

He's on the other side of Jed as Jimmy Lee Slows.

He was willing to open his, uh, his writing room and all of his worldly knowledge of songwriting and of the world, he opened it up to, uh, young songwriters that he kind of was, uh, he bestowed that gift upon all of us, and there was a few of us.

There was my buddy Jed Hughes, uh, Ashley Monroe wrote with him, um, and Chris Stapleton wrote with him a lot.

And he would just, he would, he was okay with sitting with us, and when we were just kids and knew nothing, and he would listen to our new songs, and he would critique them.

A very, a man of very few words, unless he had a little whiskey in him, and, uh, he told me, he always would say he didn't drink, but he, if you brought any whiskey over, you'd see he could still drink.

And, uh, but he was willing to give us that opportunity, and, um, I just loved it.

You know, he'd sit around.

We actually played a show with Guy, me, Guy, and Jed Hughes.

Uh, Guy was so sweet that we were playing a writer's round in Nashville, and I don't know if you know Jed.

I mean, you know, maybe about half the record, you know, the songs are in regular rotation and in my shows even now and have been, but I just thought it would be a fun excuse to kind of dive back into those songs.

And yeah, And the show in Owensboro is going to be Trio with my good buddy Jed Hughes on guitar and sings.

He's on the record.

And then also my husband, Jeff Picker, is going to be playing bass.

But he texted me that song.

He said, hey, me and Jed Hughes wrote this.

What do you think of it? I listened to it one time and I texted him back and I said, please let me have that song.

It kind of fits with the album.

And he gets like tears in his eyes listening to this song.

Wow.

And he's like... who is that? And I'm like, Randy, it's Jed singing the, Jed Hughes was singing the song on the demo, him and Randy wrote and, uh, or written.

And, uh, and then I said, man, that's, it's, uh, Randy just sent that to me.

And let's see here.

I wrote this with a great Nashville guitarist, songwriter, and all-around awesome guy, Jed Hughes.

He's

been

I wrote that with the great Sarah Buxton, who's one of my favorite writers in town.

I met her a long time ago through my other friend Jed Hughes, who I know is a friend of Carter and just one of my favorite people and guitarists and musicians all around.

Yeah, and Sarah and I had gotten together to write for my last record, Polaroid Lovers.

And, you know, it was kind of coming out of the pandemic and it was just really nice to sit down with someone else and write.

And so especially now being an adult and thinking back to him being you know, I think about when I was 19, it's like, he didn't have to spend his time with a little, you know, like 11 year old or whatever.

And, um, So it just he's got one of the biggest hearts of anyone I've ever met.

And it's very special because, you know, now I would consider him a dear friend and he is just incredible.

I mean, he my my experience is getting to play with him on Live From Here.

And it was the night of my record coming out.

And the guitar player I stand next to on stage, Jed Hughes is his name, another killer session player, singer-songwriter in his own right, and a dear friend.

All the way back to my debut record, my first single, Could It Be, the first instrument you hear,

this