Hudson Westbrook may be in the early stages of his career, but his sheer passion and raw talent make it hard to believe he’s only just begun.
Growing up in the small town of Stephenville, Texas, the River House Artists talent always had a love for music, but never thought it would turn out to be his future career. In 2020, he picked up a guitar and taught himself to play and eventually tacked songwriting onto his new list of skills while attending school at Texas Tech.
The rising star made his debut earlier this year with “Take It Slow,” one of his first official writes that was recorded locally for just $400 and nearly six months later, he’s touring and has surpassed 14 million streams.
“It was weird because everyone that I was around was like, ‘do you realize what that song is doing?’ And I was like, ‘no, I really don’t.’ Everyone in my label with my development deal at River House was saying that they’ve never seen these numbers before, but I had never done it, so I was like, I don’t know what’s good or what’s bad. And they’re like, ‘well dude, this is pretty good. You’re doing just fine.’ And now we’re streaming so much that it doesn’t even seem real,” Westbrook told Country Now.
He followed the soulful, heart-pounding tune was followed by his self-titled seven-song EP featuring previously released singles “5 to 9,” “Dopamine” and his first No. 1 on Texas radio, “Two Way Drive.” The project dropped on November 15 and debuted in the top 10 on the iTunes Country Chart as well as in the top 10 on Spotify’s Top Debut Albums USA chart.
Westbrook is currently holding down his Lonestar state roots by residing in Lubbock, Texas and making frequent writing trips to Nashville. He has no plans to move anytime soon but wants listeners to know that he’s also not afraid to go beyond the Texas scene and stretch the bounds of his creativity.
“Texas is who made me who I am, but the goal is to get outside of Texas,” he admitted. “I’ll probably stay there for a while. I think Nashville’s great, but I love bottling up all my writing ideas and excitement and then going there and unleashing it rather than unleashing it every day.”
The emerging act has already delivered his first live performances and racked up over 52 million global career streams in the process, indicating that he has a bright future ahead. Fans can expect more music and more shows from Westbrook in 2025, as he recently announced a spring headlining tour in addition to supporting dates with Ian Munsick, Parker McCollum and a slew of festival appearances.
We recently caught up with Hudson Westbrook to discuss the whirlwind of a journey he’s experienced thus far, his first-ever project, finding his sound and more. Continue reading to learn all about Westbrook in this exclusive Q&A below.
What are some of your first memories of falling in love with music?
As a kid I grew up always working. At the same time, I think you listen to music every day, and me and my family, I guess me and my mom, always loved to listen to music, but true interest was going to concerts like Flatland Cavalry early in the day and watching them play in my hometown. And then as Covid rolled around, I ended up learning how to play guitar because a lot of kids were playing video games. I did my fair share of that, but I also was like, I might as well learn to do something. So I learned how to play guitar. That was, I don’t know, sophomore year of high school and then I ended up writing my first song in my freshman year of college. I was writing a little bit before that too though. I was writing in June, July of 2023 and then ended up putting out a song. So it all honestly just came out of nowhere. It was really odd. No one in my family really ever did music and we were a big sports family and outdoors family.
What motivated you to pick up the guitar in 2020 and start teaching yourself how to play?
It was kind of like the Zach Bryan era of that all and TikTok was becoming big…I think what really made me want to start playing music was listening to “The Limestone Kid” by Parker McCollum and Koe Wetzel and all that. Those were my biggest inspirations. And I mean, I saw an app that said, “you want to learn guitar?” And my mom knew a family… they were like, let’s do a guitar lesson. And then after that I was like, I’m done. I’m never doing this again. I was so frustrated I couldn’t play anything. And then I came back six months later, got a $400 guitar, thought I owned the world, and then ended up learning how to actually play from just repetition.
What career were you pursuing in college before switching gears to music?
My whole family does oil and gas in west Texas, and so I wanted to be a landman. Basically, when you buy a piece of land, there’s chemical rights and so I wanted to negotiate chemical rights for landowners and do oil and gas. And now I am out of college and I’m touring. It only took five months.
Can you talk about the inspiration behind your first-ever release, “Take It Slow”?
Whenever I was going to college, I was in a relationship back home and I guess I started writing it at work, actually. I was working at a show Calf-Cow operation where we halter broke bulls and then we sold ’em to people to show. And so I was at work one day and I just started writing poems, and that’s how it really all started was writing poems in my notes. I was like, well, what if I just added chords to all this stuff I’ve ever written? And that came up and then I sent it to my guitar player and he added a lead line to it, and I was like, “dude, that is the most catchy thing I’ve ever heard.” Lucky enough, everyone else thought it was catchy. We went in the garage in Lubbock and honestly crafted the song how we wanted it to sound. I drove to this small town right outside of Lubbock, Texas, and we recorded that song for $400, I think. It was ridiculous. And my fiddle player was like, “Hey, dude, let me take videos.” And I was like, “no, man, that’s really odd. I don’t want you to video me. Don’t put the camera on me.” And then once he had taken the video, I literally walked out of the studio and I was like, “you know what? I’m going to post this video and see how it does.” I woke up the next morning and it had 1.5 million views and it never slowed down. It was really weird, but I think a lot of things lined up at the perfect timing for that to ever happen.
This release was followed by your debut self-titled EP. Take us through your process for selecting the songs for this track list.
To be honest with you, I’ve written 35 songs and we’ve cut nine out of the 35, and they’ve done as well as they have. So I’m very lucky. Most people write every day for two years to drop an EP of nine songs or eight songs. I wrote, “Take Your Time” in June, I wrote, “Pray Your Name” in August. I wrote “House Again” in June, and then I wrote “Dopamine” in June. So most of ’em were written at the beginning of the summer…They were all written towards a project, but never intentional of being like, “okay, I need this amount of songs for this project.” It was just kind of how we were going to do it. So if we had five songs ready, we were going to put five out or if we had eight. And we also wanted to build monthly listeners and build a fan base before you drop a project like that.
Since this was your first experience recording a project, what would you say was the most challenging part of the process?
I would say just the pressure of getting a project done is hard on any artist. I think in my particular situation, I was touring while I was writing, while I was learning all the new stuff, while I was trusting new people while I was using a brand-new producer and it was just a lot of different obstacles in the way of the project. And I guess I kind of thought when you do a project, you get all the songs ready and you go in, you camp out and you record it all together. But no, I would fly to Nashville, record for a day, fly back, play a show, fly back for a week, record a little bit more, then fly back, take the videos for it, and then the video shoots. I think that was probably the hardest part, was collecting all the songs and figuring out which ones I wanted to cut, and then making sure that sonically, I reached the sound that I wanted to reach. While I’m still finding my sound, you still have to have the same sound throughout many songs…I also figured out what people prefer over other things, which helps a lot.
Congratulations on “Two Way Drive” landing at No. 1 on Texas Radio. What was your reaction to learning the recent news?
I got done with the show in Abilene (Texas) and then figured out right after it. I think that was four or five days ago. So it was crazy. I honestly did not think that would happen. And we got lucky and had a good song. It’s really nice to see that people believe in me ‘cause that’s what radio is.
How has your first year of touring been and seeing fans sing your songs live?
It’s awesome. I mean, you see the numbers on social media and you see the views, but then to see in person is insane. That was the weirdest thing for me in the beginning too. And even signing shirts and hats is really odd to me now. It’s awesome, but I never expected it. “Take Your Time” hadn’t even come out yet or “House Again” hadn’t even come out yet and people were screaming it. And I think that’s the coolest part is seeing that and then meeting the fans and hearing their relation to the songs. That’s probably my favorite part, especially when you go to Las Vegas to play a show and people are singing your music, it’s pretty cool.
When was your first-ever performance? Were you nervous at all about being on stage?
My first performance was in July with Josh Abbott, and it was a support slot, and I remember going to Oklahoma and I’d say there were 15 people there that knew who I was. And then we just went and played in Oklahoma, and we sold 1,500 tickets. So that shows me that what we’re doing is working and it’s paying off. But the first show was scary because I didn’t know what a tour manager was, I didn’t know what a stage plot was, I didn’t know how any of it worked. I mean, it was doing something that you’ve never done before, that everyone already kind of loves. It was weird. I was learning as people were learning about me, and I was learning how to have stage presence, and I’m still learning that today. It was just odd, but it was really fun. I was like, I want to do this a thousand times over again.
What are some of your biggest goals looking ahead to 2025?
I think in 2025, I want to drop an album for sure. I would love to drop an album towards May, June, July, August area and drop singles on the way up to that. On streaming side of things, I’d love to have 5 million monthly listeners by the time I drop my album and if that’s possible, that would be great. But what I think now wasn’t possible at all has become a reality…And then for shows… we just got a Parker (McCollum) date at Red Rocks and two other venues, so that’s already happened. I don’t know what else to do for that dream. And then I really just want to dial back and take my time on the project and make sure that I give everything that I possibly can to the project and not rush it. I think my dream is to be able to sit in the studio for two weeks and just focus on that.
Fans can keep up with Hudson Westbrook on Instagram.
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