Dan Hughes is a dynamic UK based musician, songwriter guitarist and producer. Dan has played guitar from a young age having growing up in a musical environment playing with and learning from local session and professional guitarist’s playing pubs and clubs and partys in his home town.
At the age of 16 Dan auditioned for the highly regarded Music Institute ‘BIMM’ where he held his audition in front of ‘Kenwin House’ guitarist and songwriter for Reef. He gained a place to study there for 2 years and in that time he played in bands covering a variety of genres also writing songs for projects. In this time he was lucky enough to be taught by such great guitarist such as ‘Toby Pittman'(Air Studios) and Guthrie Govan(Asia and Dizzy Rascal) He had Master Classes with top guitarists and songwriters ‘Mark Knopfler, Tommy Emmanuel and Kelly Joe Phelps’s.
After his studies Dan spent a while playing in a band based in Sheffield and recorded an EP in the same studio Indie Rockers ‘Artic Monkeys’ recorded their first EP. Dan spent time gigging in the north but eventually returned to his midlands home playing solo acoustic gigs and starting up his own project Three piece band ‘DHT. During this time he began writing and performing around 200 gigs a year playing bars, pubs, clubs and private function’s. He did some busking all over midlands even playing guitar in Europe.
Having rejected several independent deals. In 2014 Dan started recording demo’s for ‘DHT’ album ‘Neil’ with long-time collaborators Bob Dawbrowski and Paul Wilson. During the making of the album good interest was shown from people coming to solo and band gigs and international fans also gaining strong comment from industry professionals. In 2015 along side independent journalist and music lover ‘Rajesh Panda’ Dan formed Digital Music Label ‘Panda Records.’
The year 2016 saw the realise of ‘DHT’ ‘Neil’ released on ‘I tunes’ and ‘Amazon’ and Physical CD form, selling at gigs and indie record stores, The album has a strong rootsy blues sound mixed with contempary rock and pop hooks. Later in 2016 Dan took a trip to Asia where he ended up playing and gaining great reviews from press and TV.
What does the future hold for Dan? ‘Continue writing and performing make music and playing to anyone that will listen’. Dan is currently working on a new set of songs with long term drummer ‘Paul Wilson.’ If you are someone who love’s music written and performed with honesty and passion then this guy is well worth having listen to.
Dan Hughes Music 