​​​Hudson Bell is a native of Louisiana, who has also lived in Kentucky, Mississippi, and Arkansas. He moved to California in 1998, and resides in San Francisco.

​

Bell started playing guitar at the age of thirteen. At fifteen, using numerous cassette players, he made his first tape, The King's Dreams (1990). Since then, he has sporadically released ten more albums (one technically a compilation), the most recent being Psychic Breaks (2021), which was his first album with no guitars. Taking all of his work up to this point into consideration, Trouser Press ("the bible of alternative rock") wrote that Bell's catalog "varies in style and achievement but has maintained an upward arc that has reached great heights."

​