Five years in the making, "Save Your Love For Me" is a collection of thirteen songs written by Hugh in a more country style, as well as his arrangement of one of his favorite Hank Williams songs "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry". Grayson has always said "there is a fine line between country and soul music". On this record, the two genres blend seamlessly. Grayson has taken some of his earliest influences - country, bluegrass, Appalachian mountain ballads and rockabilly - and created a unique landscape for his poetic lyrics. For this project, Hugh assembled some of the top names in roots music today. Pete Kennedy (Nanci Griffith, The Kennedys) on guitar, mandolin and banjo; Tony Garnier ( Bob Dylan, Asleep At The Wheel) on acoustic and electric bass; Cindy Cashdollar (5 time Grammy winner, Asleep At The Wheel, Redd Volkaert) on dobro and lap steel guitar; Gary Oleyar ( Loggins & Messina, Kenny Chesney, Bon Jovi) on fiddle and rockabilly guitar; Tyger MacNeal (Freddy Fender, Average White Band, Jose Feliciano) on drums; Polly Messer (Eight To The Bar, Eugene Chrysler, Grayson Hugh & The Wildtones) on harmony vocals. These songs are cinematic. From the joy of seeing Spring explode in a North Carolina pasture, to a screen door slamming in northern Maine; from a heartbroken wanderer haunted by a long lost Summer, to a cowboy camped up in a high Montana mountainside, writing a letter to his true love back home. So sit back and enjoy this ride through the hills and valleys of the human heart. (With your purchase of this digital album, you will receive a bonus pdf file of the 12 page CD booklet. It contains all the lyrics, liner notes, detailed musician and recording credits, high definition original front and back covers as well as four other photos.)

(Excerpt from an iTunes review by Leonard Pitts, Jr. - Miami Herald journalist, author and winner of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary)

"In 2010, an ambitious 14-song set called "An American Record" heralded the return of Grayson Hugh. And now, five years later, comes "Back To The Soul".

"Back To The Soul" is about going through it all, surviving through it all, gathering the skeins of a sometimes-difficult life – the alienation, the loneliness, the brokenness – and weaving them into a song of redemption, a redemption that comes, not despite those things, but because of them.

Grayson sings this explicitly in "Thank You Lord", a stark ballad that sits at the emotional center of the album. It is a searingly-intimate letter to God, a meditation on those lost years, on their blind alleys and degradations and on the amazing grace by which he was delivered and redeemed. “I needed every stumble, drink and failure, every one,” he sings, to deliver him to this blessed new place in his life, to make him the man he has become.

It’s a theme Grayson returns to in "Already In Love With You", a smoldering ballad. “Now, when I look back it all seems so clear,” he sings. “I took every step I needed to get me to here. If I had known what this journey would cost I might just have stayed home never knowing what I had lost. I would have missed out on a miracle.”

None of which is to suggest that "Back To The Soul" is an album of somber pieties. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is the music of a man who’s come through the fire and wants to dance about it.

"We Were Havin’ Fun" is a light-hearted paean to young love, young music and those good old days when “Summer was a feelin’ and there was sunshine all around” fitted me with an Afro I haven’t worn in 40 years, and put me back behind the wheel of that raggedy Pontiac I junked in 1978, going to pick up my baby, with the Commodores blaring on the AM radio. In other words, it took me back. It made me feel good.

The title song and "It’s Got Soul" are cut from similar cloth, affectionate, up-beat homages to the truth, rhythm (and, okay, blues) of that foundational American music. "Back To The Soul" even name checks some of the greatest soul men of the last half century.

Among the other highlights: "We’re Gone Again", a slow-burn of irresistible sexual attraction; "Everybody’s Hangin’ On", which recalls Marvin Gaye’s immortal "What’s Goin’ On", both in the way it opens with a party and, more substantively, in its gentle insistence upon our shared humanity upon a shared planet; "Motorcycle Ridin’", a barroom blues fable about two-wheeled escape down endless highways, the ride more important than the destination.

And don’t miss "Gettin’ On With My Life" - an anthem of a different kind of escape – of the conscious decision to leave behind a stuck place and embrace the promise and the uncertainty of a fresh dawn.

“I’m gettin’ on with my life,” sings Grayson, “now a new day is here. I’m gonna give up my excuses, all my sorrows, sadness and my fear.”

Which feels like a pretty fair summation of the album and, perhaps, of the man who made it.

This is music of and for people who know what it is to be scarred and scared, who have been knocked down hard a time or two and had to find their way back to their feet. It is music of and for people who can appreciate a good horn section or bass groove, who know how to slide on the grease that oozes when the organ hits a lick just right, who are suckers for a rough-sweet voice singing the truth.

Finally, this is music of and for those who have a little life behind them – and a whole lot more ahead. It is both realization and reminder that, for all the changes that life takes you through, if you hang with it and fight through it, it will eventually, inevitably, round the corner and bring you back.

Back to self. Back to joy. Back to love. Back to, well…you know."

• Leonard Pitts, Jr., August 1, 2015

(Excerpt from a review in CMAWorld.com by Bob Doerschuk)

"Hugh's recent personal and artistic achievements inform every track on his new album, 'An American Record'. This overlay of art and heart breathes a gospel air into the irresistibly churchy 'Tell Me How You Feel', paints a stark yet beckoning landscape on 'North Ohio', cranks up the funk in the cocky, horn-stabbed strut and haunting chanted coda of 'Swamp Yankee', hangs a lover’s plea over an elegant and unforgettable chorus hook on 'Give Me One Good Reason'' … Every track tells its story with a mix of passion, craft and impact that’s rare in our time. In flaunting the discipline and knack for accessibility that distinguished his earlier recordings and compositions, An American Record' confirms his return as a commercial as well as artistic force.



From the worst of his times, Hugh emerged with a strength and focus that filters now into his work. “I had to confront a lot of my faults, and that self-reflection has reformed my music,” he explains. “It got simpler because I learned how to let the feeling of a song distill in silence for months. They’re kind of cooking, so that when I actually write, it comes quickly.

”

It also empowered Hugh to find universal meaning in his lyrics, which draw from what he’s witnessed but convey that emotion directly to listeners and their lives. “For instance, ‘North Ohio’ came from my visiting my grandmother’s grave by the banks of the Maumee River in Ohio,” he explains. “But it’s about the emotion, not that specific place and time. Look at Thomas Wolfe: 'Look Homeward, Angel', 'You Can’t Go Home Again' and  'Of Time and the River'. Images of rivers figure prominently in them all. It’s all universal."



That, too, explains the range of 'An American Record', whose embrace is wide enough to encompass working-man’s rock, roadhouse blues, calls to glory answered from the amen corner, a smattering of jazz and more. “It’s a record and it’s American, with all kinds of musical references,” Hugh says. “There’s bluegrass, soul, funk, folk, rock … There’s no single musical theme, but it’s all human.”



It’s all human: In three words, that’s what Grayson Hugh has learned about music and its power to touch and move, inform and inspire. It also explains why he takes it personally when he hears something that fails to achieve these goals, to the point of almost taking it to the world on Facebook.



“I write for myself ultimately because that’s the way I spit out how I see the world,” he says. “It’s a cathartic process. But when a fan writes to me and says, ‘This affects me,’ that’s the payoff.”



With 'An American Record', the payoff is just beginning. To borrow a phrase from another writer of note, Grayson Hugh has been there and is back again. His story – our story – has to be heard."



-Bob Doerschuk, CMAworld.com, April 21, 2010