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Solo Essentials: Garth Hudson

Hudson's solo output is the thinnest of the four members who released anything under their own name, mostly because he spent his post-Band decades as a session player on other people's records rather than building his own catalog.

Live at the Wolf (2005). Recorded with his own group, a twelve-piece outfit called the Best!, featuring his wife, singer Maud Hudson. The clearest document of Hudson leading a band on his own terms.

Garth Hudson Presents: A Canadian Celebration of the Band (2010). Not a solo album so much as a curated tribute, gathering Canadian artists including Neil Young and Bruce Cockburn to cover the group's own catalog, with Hudson himself involved in the arrangements and performances throughout.

Session work makes up the real bulk of Hudson's post-Band discography: contributions to records by Van Morrison, Leonard Cohen, Emmylou Harris, and Neko Case, among many others, scattered across decades rather than collected anywhere as a single body of work. There's no shortcut here; finding Hudson's best session contributions means going through the credits of the artists he worked with directly.