Basically a bluesman, Hugh Gaskins covers other musical styles as well. His tendency is to a diversity of genres, an “American fusion” of sorts.
On his influences and impressions: “My earliest memory is of singing ‘Just a Little Talk with Jesus’ in the front of the congregation of the Faith Tabernacle, a little church on what was then a country highway in New Bern, North Carolina. I remember being in a pew with my grandma, a mother of 14 — who is almost one hundred years old today — clapping and singing these gospel tunes.”
“Now throw in Elvis on a black-and-white TV, an uncle or two singing somethin’ about ‘big-legged woman, big-legged woman put your dress tail down’ or ‘a wreck on the highway,’ my mom and dad singing behind the glass in some little radio station in the sticks, and these are some of the earliest musical impressions that come to me right off.”
In 2008, they were featured on KPRI-FM's Homegrown Hour and their CD Big Legged Woman received a nomination for Best Blues Album at the San Diego Music Awards. A 2012 full-length, Workin’ At The Booby Trap, was nominated Best Blues Album at that year’s SDMAs. A Gaskins solo album, Motel Angels, also received an SDMA nom.