Jes Hudak: Shy Voice, Big Dreams

Jes Hudak sat on the edge of the stage at an empty Caffe Lena one afternoon three years ago. The 20-year-old was excited about the release of her second full-length album, “Tiny Dream.”

The legendary café, home to many storied songwriters, was the scene of Hudak’s first staged performance, during one of the cafe’s open mic nights.
“I love performing on stage. I thrive on it,” she says. “The only time I get nervous is
when I’m not on stage.”

Hudak has been performing her own material since she was 13. She already was a diligent
piano student, taking lessons - finally, she says - when she was in the second grade.
"I couldn’t wait for the daythat I was tall enough to play the piano.”

On this day, a Yamaha acoustic guitar lies across her lap, an instrument that is a relatively
new toy in her musical arsenal.
“I recently started writing on the guitar,” says Hudak, explaining the enjoyment of novice simplicity, while idly strumming away on newly discovered chord progressions.

She dreamed of being a singer since the time she was a kid, growing up on the New Jersey side of the Delaware River. As a teen, Hudak moved to Saratoga Springs, attending classes at the local high school before going on to study at Skidmore. Her focus of study has always been on music.
“Playing is what I really want to do and my parents have always been very supportive of me. My father reminds me to be positive and to stay positive. He comes to all my shows,” she laughs, “he’s my roadie, my chauffeur and my video tape-er.”
Despite her age, it is a mature songwriter with a rich voice who comes through on her second CD, “Tiny Dream,” - so much so - that it’s a little disconcerting to many when they come face-to-face with the skinny kid with the shy mannerisms.

“When people hear the songs their reaction is usually ‘That’s not you,’ and I have to remind them that ‘Yeah, it really is,’ “ she says.

“How did I catch the rain and hold on?” she sings on “Two Bodies,” one of 13 tracks on “Tiny Dream.”
The songs are a time capsule of her life, she explains, marked by “interpersonal relationships” and viewed by introspection. The CD is a document concerned with the themes running through everybody’s life: love, loneliness and a longing desire to make the human connection.

Pieced together in a linear fashion, “Tiny Dream” is a running narrative of a great human drama - one whose characters are blessed with strength, yet grapple with constant insecurity:
“Now I have to put my head down, look at the ground and wish I could tell you everything,”
she sings.

Most dramatic is the music itself.
“Tiny Dream” is a portrait of a singer and a piano, alone in a vast and holy cathedral
illuminated only by candlelight. When morning breaks over the dark horizon, the light
prisms flooding the room through stained glass bring the promise of a new day, and with it, another chance to fix all that went awry in the night.

It is Hudak’s inner psyche that is offered up for public consumption on the CD as well as on stage, and is a sparseness that works, mostly because the quality of her song writing is high,
as is the level of sincerity and compassion she brings to the performance.

By Thomas Dimopoulos / The Saratogian