May 5, 2026 • 56 mins
The magic of Bruce Hornsby isn't just that he's one of American music's great piano stylists — or that he wrote one of the most unlikely pop hits of the 1980s, a song about racism with two improvised solos that nobody at his label thought should be the single. It's how relentlessly he's kept moving, long after he had any commercial reason to.
Hornsby grew up in Williamsburg, Virginia, and got discovered playing a steak and ale joint across from the Hampton Coliseum by Mike McDonald. He scored his first big hit in 1986 with "The Way It Is. What followed was a long, restless second act: teaching himself two-handed independence by scheduling benefit concerts just to give himself a hard deadline, making jazz records with Jack DeJohnette and Christian McBride, bluegrass records with Ricky Skaggs, and going deep into Shostakovich fugues that now shape everything he writes.
On today’s episode Bruce Headlam sat down with Bruce Hornsby at the piano to talk about all of it. But they started somewhere unexpected: a steak and ale restaurant in Hampton, Virginia, in the fall of 1978.
You can hear a playlist of some of our favorite songs from Bruce Hornsby HERE.
Time-coded chapters:
(01:26) Discovering Musical Influences
(09:24) Success of “The Way It Is”
(15:51) Crafting Unique Sounds and Styles
(20:30) Collaborations and Songwriting Process
(26:40) Exploring New Directions in Music
(33:20) The Challenge of Musical Growth
(39:10) Jazz and Bluegrass Fusion
(44:47) The Art of Improvisation and Composition
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
The magic of Bruce Hornsby isn't just that he's one
of American music's great piano stylists, or that he wrote
one of the most unlikely pop hits of the eighties,
a song about racism with two improvised solos that nobody
at his label thought should be the single. It's how
he relentlessly has kept moving long after he had any
commercial reason to. Hornsby grew up in Williamsburg, Virginia, got
discovered a playing a stake, and ale joined across the
(00:41):
street from the Hampton Coliseum by Mike MacDonald the Doobie Brothers,
grinded for years as a staff songwriter at twentieth Century
Fox before finally getting signed. Then The Way It Is
blows up in England, and suddenly he's lip syncing on
top of the pops and getting bare hugged backstage by
Elton John and a Tina Turner Wig. What followed was
(01:02):
a long, restless second act, teaching himself two handed independence
by scheduling benefit concerts just to give himself a hard
dead line, making jazz records with Jack Dee, Jeannette and
Christian McBride, bluegrass records with Ricky Skaggs and going deep
into Shastakovich fugues that now shape everything, he writes. On
today's episode, Bruce Hedlam sat down with Bruce Hornsby at
(01:23):
the piano to talk about all of it. But they
started somewhere unexpected, the Steak and Ale restaurant in Hampton, Virginia,
in the fall of seventy eight. This is broken record,
real musicians, real conversations. Here's Bruce Headlam with Bruce Hornsby.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
We were discovered. I we with the band. We were
discovered by Mike McDonald, the Dewie Bruthers, beautiful, beautiful soul,
great person, credible talent. We were big fans. We were
playing the uh the Steak and Ale, the Jolly Oks
restaurant across from the Hampton Coliseum. The Doobie Brothers were
(02:10):
playing the Colisseum. We were doing our gig, so we
decided that we'd go. We knew where they were staying,
the Sheraton Coliseum. So my drummer, John Molo, and I
two big guys. He's a big, strong guy. He's just
a big bony ass, but still tall. We went to
the Sharraton Colisseum and we walked in looking for Mike,
(02:31):
and he's standing right there in the lobby. So we
go up to him and we're sort of towering over him.
We said, hey, Mike, we're the baddest motherfuckers in this
town and we're playing at the stake and ale over there.
Of course, those two statements don't go together, really, So
sure enough he did come. It was their night off,
and the next night they were playing at the Hampton Coliseum,
(02:52):
and we'd saved all our what we called the originals,
my songs that we had played. We'd actually pulled off
a pretty difficult trick as lounge entertainers. We were starting
to we'd started maybe six y eight months before this.
Two slipped songs of mine in between brick House and
Shake Your Booty, and we acquired an audience gradually who
(03:16):
wanted us to wanted to just hear those songs and
not the top forty dance material. So that was great,
it was good. That was hard. It's hard to do.
So he so we saved originals. He came in, he
brought a couple of his roady friends and the crew
and and we just wore it out. And he came
(03:40):
up and was a little blown by it. He said, Hey,
that was really something. Come over and join me at
the Share It and let's just hang out. So we did,
and then we're sort of sitting around whatever bar in
the coliseum.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
And then and while we're hanging he says, hey, coming
up to my room where we got our new record
coming out tomorrow, I'd like to play it for It's
called Minute by Minute. It's okay, Sure. So we go
up there and he's playing What a Fool Believes in
a Minute by Minute and it's fantastic. We're just kind
of blown away by the whole experience, and he started
(04:23):
talking about turning us on to his producer, Ted Templeman,
and I drove home just going, oh my god, is
this it? Is this the big thing? Next night he
came back after the gig, he sat in with the
place was packed. If we worred have gotten out, he
sat in with us on a song, and a couple
of nights later we sat in with them at the
Richmond Coliseum and we're going, Wow, is this the big break?
(04:49):
So that was say December one, nineteen seventy eight, and
I got signed in April of nineteen eighty five, so
no such luck. We went out and slept on his
floor for ten nights in February of seventy nine, Molo
and I and he was at that point he was
(05:09):
singing on every record under the sun in La. So
many great moments of Mike being a background singer on
great records. He would take our tape, which was pretty
bad alas it was not great. He would take our
little reel to reel and give it to producers. From that,
(05:34):
we got some producer interests from that tape got me
a songwriter deal, and a year and a half later,
I moved to La as a staff songwriter for twenty
seventury Fox in nineteen eighty and was grinding away again
five years after that, which was a year and a
half after Mike. After we met Mike, I got my
record deal and so that wasn't luck. It took me
(05:57):
a while to find my own voice, something that was
unique to me in some way. Before that, I guess
I probably sounded kind of like Abie Brothers copy or
Steely Danish copy. Uh. But finally I I assimulated a
bunch of different influences that were always influencers that I loved.
(06:20):
But I featured some more sort of Americano with more
folk or Appalachian instruments. We got the great David Mansfield
playing fiddle mandolin, so the range I was playing accordion.
That was the range was sort of our version of
of the band, and we were going for that kind
(06:41):
of feeling. Uh uh so uh then but the but
then we didn't get signed with that. I was frustrated
with the way my song sounded with this with the band,
so I went in with a drum machine and a
piano and made about four demos and that's the tape
that didn't get passed on. And the former rhythm guitar
(07:03):
player of the Zombies, who was the head of R, C, A,
A and R beautiful man named Paul Atkinson, he came,
he came forth and offered us. And so then there
was another company, big company Epic, that came in as well.
But we were feeling Paul signed with him and then okay,
(07:23):
then the record comes out and this is the luck
part everyone several most people in powerful positions thought that
the way it is was a B side, for it
makes sense. It's a song about racism with not one
but two improvised piano Soulos that's hardly the formula for
(07:43):
pop success. So that's what they thought. They released another song,
Every Little Kiss. It got up to seventy two with
an anchor on the Billboard one hundred, and then plummeted
away the poor uh embattled and embittered. Our BMG promo
(08:04):
rep in London went to his friend who was a
disc jockey had radio on BBC, said mickey, me, boy,
we got this record. We don't know what to do it.
We really like it. It's kind of country, kind of jazz.
We don't know what to do with it. Would you
give it a listen? So this guy, Nick del Koitch
is his name, put it over the weekend, played the record,
(08:25):
picked this one song, put it on the radio Monday,
blew up and throughout the UK and there we were.
So that's the that's the luck part could have easily
as not happened.
Speaker 4 (08:38):
Has happened the good old days when one DJ in
one city.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
If it happens to happen that kind of effect, yes,
it has to really make a mark. And so the
way it is did and we were over there quickly
making a video in London and lip syncing on top
of the pops and the Terry Wogan Show, which was
the Johnny Carson of the time. That's where I went
and met Elton John. He was on the Wogan Show
(09:04):
when I when We Fledglings were also on, and I
hear I'm getting made up before I learned how to
say no to such things. I'm in there getting makeup
put on, and I hear this undistakable voice, Wes Bruce holmespeed.
Wesbruce fucking Holmes speed. Where is he? I'm thinking, well,
(09:26):
I think that's Elton John because I'd heard he's on
the show. He walks in with a Tina Turner wig on,
which is how he appeared on the show, and just
threw his arms around me. He's the most beautiful person.
And he was a supporter then and all the way
through until now. So yeah, great, beautiful moments like that
continue to happen.
Speaker 4 (09:47):
And he was a big early influence on you. You
didn't really start piano seriously until no, quite No.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
I was a hooper. I was a jock. So right,
elp what is it, Amarna? My brother played it for
me from the Tumblewee Connection record. We're riding down the
(10:16):
Colonial Parkway from Willisburg Virginia to Yorktown, Virginia and he
puts on this eight track and it just blew me. U.
I just moved me so deeply. I got the record
and every song was amazing. Burned down the mission, you know, anyway,
(10:48):
so great?
Speaker 5 (10:49):
Now what do you are?
Speaker 4 (10:50):
There are there parts of his playing that showed up?
Speaker 6 (10:53):
Then?
Speaker 5 (10:54):
Not really?
Speaker 1 (10:55):
No, not really And then and my other influence was, uh,
it was Leon Russell and uh I never wrote anything
that sounded like that's the uh you know, I didn't do. Subsequently,
(11:19):
I've been in influenced by Leon. I have a song
called Country Doctor that goes like this, Yeah, that's necessarily lyon,
(11:47):
but that's that's my stuff. That's something I developed later's
too handed independence.
Speaker 4 (12:03):
Think what was it about Leon Russell?
Speaker 1 (12:05):
Then that? Well, Leon Russell? What I was just playing
the letter and I loved it, and so I thought
I'd really grocked it. Really sort of ingested all the
Leon until I started working with him in the early nineties.
Then I saw at the foot of the Master, Oh yeah, no,
I don't have it. But then I was able to
(12:27):
learn it from just standing here watching.
Speaker 4 (12:30):
That You have relative pitch, Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
If I hear. I can hear basic pop harmony. If
it gets too chromatic, then I'm kind of probably out
of it, probably probably done, but yeah, definitely not so
I can sit in with the band. I went in
off the street with no rehearsal and started winging it
with the Grateful Dead at Madison Square Garden. So that
(12:56):
sort of relative pitch allowed me to I didn't play
too many chords on one because I didn't not the song,
but I could go okay, yeah, okay, I think of
the song. Yeah, So as I considered.
Speaker 7 (13:15):
Playing on the day when I was born and he
went down, so.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
I would I know that. I knew that when I'm
just it's just something that came into my head, so
that if I didn't know it, they know on the
day when I was okay, I got Daddy went down
and hid.
Speaker 4 (13:51):
So yeah, when you say things like I love the
tents in the in this hand, I love these kinds
of chords, how did that develop? Were you just at
a piano all the time, Well, I.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Guess so more than more than most. I guess it's
just uh exploration and going with what moves you with
with My favorite my favorite people were people who gave
me chills or on a groove level, like Leon Russell,
(14:22):
just sat so deeply in this thing that I wanted
to try to replicate that. I'm a short not sure
I did or do, but that's the intent. So I
guess I'm just following, uh, following the goosebump, following the chills.
And if I play something now, I kind of know
(14:43):
what gives me chills, and they're the chors like this.
H I have a song on a record three or
four albums ago called My Resolve, and the chorus goes.
Speaker 8 (14:59):
In my resolve, I move rock, maybe fall down.
Speaker 9 (15:07):
Try I indepted to stares me down in this face
high come. I tried to stand up both the free
stand up par not by yet.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
I'll move on up.
Speaker 8 (15:25):
Above the hill to maybe fully five hour.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
Our flower. And I just like, I just love that sound.
And so that's that's what gets me going. Homember. One
of the things that.
Speaker 5 (15:43):
And were you did you know theory back then?
Speaker 4 (15:46):
Did you could you say, oh, I'm about to play
you know?
Speaker 1 (15:49):
I was learning it quickly, I was. I was totally
involved in it, totally immersed in knowing the harm the
theoretical aspect of harmonic movement chords.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
We'll be back with more from Bruce Hornsby.
Speaker 4 (16:08):
So I'm talking about earlier in your career, when you,
for example, went in. We were talking earlier about the
song you did with Bonnie Ray. You've done many songs
with her, but the most famous.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
Yes, I changed that, Okay, I changed So when.
Speaker 4 (16:25):
You given all these influences, you had, all these people
you had heard when you went in, you heard the song.
Speaker 5 (16:30):
I don't know were you given chet music?
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Were you given they gave me a cassette? Okay, I
was staying at some hotel in Hollywood. It's a big one,
right on Melrose. It's changed names.
Speaker 4 (16:43):
By the way, we should say the name of the song,
which is I Can't Make You Love Me?
Speaker 1 (16:47):
Yes, yeah, fantastic Mike Reid and Alan Shamblin. Right, the
two guys reloaded hats off, sitting oh for them. So right,
I heard this. They gave you this cassette. Was it
a bare bones I guess barre bones enough. I guess
from my memory it has it being played on an
(17:07):
electric piano. But I could have that wrong, so.
Speaker 10 (17:11):
Right, uh I uh, I think it was basically uh.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
So I changed it to.
Speaker 4 (17:44):
So that that chord that you substituted in that first
what did you turn it into from what that's.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
What I turned it into is Yeah, yeah, so.
Speaker 4 (17:53):
It was it was just it was just straight, yeah,
very churchy.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Yeah. And when I first played, I played the electric
piano the intro and I played him like that, so
have some place to go, and I came in four
bars later, so I was I was pretty faithful to
the original for the first four bars when I'm playing
some sort of electric keyboard.
Speaker 4 (18:19):
Okay, so now tell me what tell me what sound
you wanted when you started in on the piano just then, not.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
Really Bill evan Z, but sort of h lush in
a stark way rather than you know, that's very Klaus
Ogerman or Ravel issued it, and I like that, but
(18:53):
I like the other more that moves me more so.
I'm just I'm just always looking to to feel something
emotional and all this thing, everything that I'm doing for you,
whether it's that or the tenth, it's all something that
(19:17):
has something deep to me, a deep souls what I'm
going for.
Speaker 4 (19:23):
That version of the song also has a wonderful surprising
chord at the end.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
Yeah, well, I think that was there. I think that
was there. I don't remember remember.
Speaker 4 (19:33):
Precisely, but the uh, it's the uh measure of that.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Domind said, they have the sharp Yeah, yes, uh yeah,
h m hmm. Yeah, that's exact thing.
Speaker 4 (20:03):
Yeah, which is wonderful because that is so that is
such a beautiful song. It deserves to fade out and
then just as it's fading, you hear this.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Oh is that right? It fades out like it fades.
Speaker 4 (20:12):
A little bit, but then you hear that beautiful chord
in the end. It's got such such a it's got
such such power at the end of that.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Well, it's very nice you to say. I wouldn't give
myself too much credit for that. I think the vote.
I think the song is so great and her vocal
is so great. That's what really to me makes it.
But I don't know.
Speaker 4 (20:30):
But to me, what's interesting for me is you do
have these influences, and you probably have other influences we
haven't talked about, but they all informed somehow.
Speaker 5 (20:40):
Yeah, sure, how you came to to that piece?
Speaker 4 (20:43):
Were there are there different influences on your song writing.
Speaker 5 (20:49):
Back then?
Speaker 1 (20:51):
I'm sure there there were, depends on what record you're
talking about. I've gradually moved on. Each record was a
little different from the previous.
Speaker 5 (21:00):
I'd say you're early.
Speaker 4 (21:01):
You know, if I think of End of the Innocence
or Valley Road, you you love your suspended chords?
Speaker 1 (21:09):
Yeah, okay, right, I don't think, say into the Niss
Value Road have a lot harmonically in common. One's just
a straight.
Speaker 11 (21:16):
Ahead there's not a chord, that's the chord, and then
the NIS is just is a leg.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
You know, there's nothing that's uh. So they're very different.
You know, one's just kind of a groove thing, sort
of a Steve Miller ish idea value.
Speaker 4 (21:51):
But they both have the I guess, particularly some suspensions.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Yeah, yeah, they have. Right, that same chord that I
was singing my so on my resolve over that's that's
in Valet Road. That's kind of the first, the first
little harmonic trick. I guess.
Speaker 4 (22:06):
You know we've talked about, uh and you don't love it.
What people say is the Bruce Hornsby sound sound style.
I can't switch to.
Speaker 5 (22:16):
Everybody's saying I got to play like you now then
you completely changed your style.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
They might people might not know what you're referring to.
You're referring to a story I told you about running
into Nashville piano players who would come up to me,
running into them at airports or wherever, and they'd come
up to me and say, Man, all day long, people
are asking me, hey, can you give me he played
a little more like Bruce hornsby, And I would always say, Man,
(22:42):
I'm sorry, Yeah, I'm not. Really, I'm not. You're probably
not a fan of it either, because you get asked
to do it, and I'm not really either. It's too
bright for me. It's just something that happened.
Speaker 4 (22:55):
But as I told you before we were you should
probably tell them. Yeah, my record company says the same
thing to me. What do you mean, well, your record
company would like you to play more like the Bruce
horns Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Well, but see he is an interesting uh story, But
that that was lucky for me. Uh So. Paul Atkinson,
the ex Zombies rhythm guitar player who signed me at RCA,
he and a lot of others thought that way it
is was a b side. They said it because of
the unexpected massive success of that record. The big shots said, well,
(23:35):
we we don't know what to do with this. We
we didn't predict this, we predicted the opposite. Uh, so
they left me alone. They they did not, they did
not pressure me in that way, because again the song
that really blew up was a completely unexpected, uh piece
(23:57):
of music. So the next record, the Scenes from the
South Side, we had this. You mentioned Valley Road, and
uh that was also unlikely. It's a song about you
city girls, society girl who gets involved with the young
country boy and he puts her in the family way
and they send her away to the school for unwood mothers,
which is an old notion. I don't think that exists anymore,
(24:19):
but uh it may. But uh, it's again hardly it's
it's it's sort of hardly standard pop fare lyrically, and
again I'm soloing like crazy on that when I'm playing
McCoy tyner.
Speaker 12 (24:37):
You know, uh, what's it called chordal harmony?
Speaker 1 (24:54):
You know that sort of thing.
Speaker 4 (24:55):
Can you give us just a quick definition chordal harmony
chords and force?
Speaker 1 (24:59):
Yes, yeah, the uh the interval of the fourth for
so there's a.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
Extended wow that sounds like my song lawn Talk clup one.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
So that's a different one. So right, So that it
was chordal harmony on the radio. What the hell? So
I got away with this sort of thing twice way
it is Vali Road. And then I guess it was
kind of I think of those records in a certain
way as novelty records because because they were in the
(25:49):
best sense novelty, because they were so different sounding, and
it was a sound that was not off putting. It
was not incredibly it wasn't like it wasn't like that. Uh,
And but that was it. That was that was all
I was going to get out of the out of
(26:10):
the morning zoo crowd.
Speaker 4 (26:14):
Then later with I think Hothouse, Yeah, Spirit Trail. Right,
you're changing takes, You're playing takes a very different.
Speaker 5 (26:24):
That's right direction.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
Yes, I was. I turned forty years old in the
late fall of nineteen ninety four, and I thought to myself, Okay,
what are you going to do? You're going to rest
on your laurels like most of your pop star friends,
(26:46):
or they're just kind of not really deeply involved in
moving forward as a player as a creator, kind of
riding along with the same stuff that you've been doing.
Am I going to do that? Or am I going
to push to a new place? Well? I took the
second road back to Keith Charrett. He was incredible. He
(27:10):
had an incredible gift or skilled development that I call
two handed independence, and he could play something in the
left hand and then play something very rhythmically opposed to
that sounded like two people playing this sort of thing.
(27:34):
And I'd always opened that door to a piano technique
and go too hard close it up. For this time,
I decided to try to deal with it in my
own bone headed way, and so I did that, and
I would get I would. I had a song on
(27:54):
a spiritual record. So that's what I'm That's that's the thing,
(28:19):
that independence. I'm playing very rhythmically freely in the right
hand while hopefully keeping this left hand Austinado real solid.
That took a long time.
Speaker 5 (28:30):
How did you go about that? Was it by writing
the songs?
Speaker 1 (28:33):
Or was it? But it made me write songs like
that I wrote. I think that song is called Sneaking
Up on Boo Radley And you know the song. You
know that you're not going to believe it.
Speaker 5 (28:44):
But what do I have written right there? Sneaking Up
on bud?
Speaker 1 (28:46):
So what made you write it down?
Speaker 5 (28:48):
I love the song?
Speaker 4 (28:49):
Okay, I I heard the kind of Keith Jarrett left hand.
Speaker 5 (28:54):
I didn't know. Yeah, well, I didn't know it came
out of this exercise.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
Well, but you you were right on the track. It's
a song about growing up in a small town with
a metal hospital in which a lot of the patients
were allowed to just walk around town. And when we
were little nine ten year old dumbasses. Oh, we thought
they were just hilarious with their crazy walks, and so
(29:18):
we made fun of them. And it's very much like
to Kill a mocking Bird with Robert Duval's character and
the way the kids were alternately scared and freaked out
by him and also made fun of him. So I wrote,
I wanted to write this song because this was part
of my upbringing, part of my past in Willisboro, Virginia,
(29:39):
Eastern State Hospital. I would say I would get this
in watching me screw it up here. You got to
crawl before you can walk, before you can rude. Now
(30:18):
what I did in that fifty seconds, it took me
many many months to go from the whole note to
free playing like that, probably about seven eight months of
dealing with it, doing it intensely. My wife said to me,
(30:41):
I'd been doing this for about a week and a half.
She said, man, what are you doing out there meeting
in the studio. You spend enough time out there as
it is, and now you're spending three or four hours more.
I said, okay, I understand. Here's what I'm asking of you,
Kathy Hornsby, I said, okay, I did it. First of
(31:04):
the year came and I called the Virginia Special Olympics
and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, two great philanthropic concerns, and
I said, Hi, this is Bruce Hornsby. I'm just calling
you because I like to do a benefit for you,
and i'd like to do it in early May. Can
we can we schedule one for May fifth and one
(31:25):
for May seventh, and so they said, yeah, okay, fine,
we'll take we'll take the money, we'll do that. I
wanted to to schedule that to give me something to
shoot for a signpost down the road that would make
me really deal with this because I wanted it was
a solo concert. I hadn't done that much at all
because I wasn't ready. I couldn't do it. I said
(31:48):
to my wife, Okay, I've scheduled these two things, these
two concerts. Give me this four months and then after
the first one, just come back and we'll talk about this.
So I did the first concert for Special Olympics in Richmond.
It was a two setter. I did one set. She
(32:09):
came back with tears in her eyes and went, oh
my god, I'm so happy you did this. This is
so beautiful, so great. So so she's a very musical person,
and so this uh, she she she got it, she
understood and was moved by it. So that's what that
was my That's how I that's what made me deal
(32:31):
with it. It's always good to have some public forum
where you are charged with really having something together that
you have never dealt with. So that's so that's so
that's what I've been doing for years. Yeah, but spirit
Trail was the first one. He's so good, good, good
for you for understanding that King of the Hills, you know,
(33:20):
that sort of thing. So not doing it very well,
but that but that's another version of it. Spiritualist is
chocolate blot with two added independence.
Speaker 4 (33:31):
When we started and I said, is it all just
good luck or good fortune? I think we're seeing some
insight into how you navigate these things. You like throwing
yourselves against these yourself hard and me against these challenges.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
Well, I was just, for instance, in this case, I
just was always blown away. But when I would hear
someone do something like this in an improvisitory forum, and
so I wanted to be able to do violent version
of it. And as simple as that. Look, what all
this work that I put in With that, it leads
(34:04):
you to a place that guards against popularity, because this
stuff is not what the average person wants to hear
in the popular forum. People want to hear a good
song somewhell with a nice, great production. Hopefully this isn't
that at all. This is something completely obscure and obtuse
(34:28):
and off putting to the average listeners. So I know
that i've what all this time I put in. It
wasn't about becoming a bigger deal, but playing arenas. This
sort of thing doesn't work in arenas. It's kind of
like jazz music. By the very nature of the way
(34:48):
the drums play, it's hard for that to translate in
a large space. Nobody's going They're just going boom boom.
So you know, it's very free, it's very open, and
if you're sick yards away, it's hard to feel that.
(35:12):
So so yeah, it didn't help me in that way.
But it's not what it's ever been about. This is
about a singular pursuit.
Speaker 4 (35:22):
But you've also you do play songs like that in
your concert.
Speaker 5 (35:26):
You've been able to bring your crowd.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
Oh, I do well. Yes, and no, I've lost a
lot of people who who want to have a nostalgic
night out. I understand it too, I get it completely.
I'm like anybody else. If I go to a concert,
I'm probably going to that concert, well if it's a
pop concert or rock concert, because I love more than
a few of their songs, so I guess I'm hoping
(35:50):
to hear that there's songs. I'm maybe more open than
the average person to to something else because because it's
what I do, you know, it's easy for me to
want that. But but most people do go to a
concert for that nostalgic that stroll down memory lane. And
I get it. I don't dismiss it one bit. It's
(36:12):
just a It just can be a bit of a
creative prison to feel like you're in a situation where
you say to your band, here's the set list for
the year, you know, because that's what a lot of
a lot of people do at the hotel. Yeah, right,
it's it's just basically you're hoping you're not phoning it in.
(36:33):
There are people who are just great at doing that
same set and they mean it every night, and that's beautiful.
It would be kind of hard for me, I think.
Speaker 4 (36:43):
You know, the other thing you did during that period.
I think starting with Harbor Lights is you really you
brought in really challenging players to play with.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
Well, you're right, and people that's the popular notion, but actually,
if you look at it, it really started with the
Third Range record, where I had went shorter who I'd
gotten to play at the end of the Innocence. That's
how I know it knew him. Charlie Hate and Bayla
Fleck Garcia on that It's the Night of the Town.
It's a good record. I love several of the songs
(37:16):
on it. Barren Ground is great, also using that same chords. Yes,
I'm repeating myself.
Speaker 5 (37:26):
Yeah, they're going to come up and say everybody wants
that chord.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
Yeah, that's that's that a over duh. So that's where
it really started, where I really started stretching out. Sean
Colvin it's on that record.
Speaker 9 (37:39):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
I think I'm named five or six and so. But
but yes, the next time somehow made more of a
mark with the guests. I don't know why. Pat Metheeny
was a huge guest on that Harbor Lights record played
so fantastic. In fact, I love that. When I got
to know the great Justin Vernon from Boney Vere, I
learned that he, at age s thirteen, had transcribed the
(38:03):
entire Pat Metheny Harbor Lights guitar solo, some of it
playing over these crazy He's playing over that. It's hard
(38:28):
to do. He just nailed it because he's a freak
of nature and I love him. And then I can't.
Speaker 5 (38:34):
Remember the record.
Speaker 4 (38:35):
It's on White Wheeled Limousine has has him trading with
Bayla with a Bayla Fleck who we've had here, bay Yes, yeah,
which is a kind of it's just an amazing section
of that of that record.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
I love it. Yes, they both are just just killing it.
The cover of that record was a depiction of Bruce's Dream,
which had dol Monroe and Charlie Parker. Of course, yeah,
so and so Bayla Fleck and Pat Metheny are were
(39:09):
modern archetypes of each guy.
Speaker 4 (39:12):
And that's also two guys who like you just keep
pushing it like Bailaflex, new stuff just keeps going.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
Yeah, yeah, right, absolutely, So the Kindred Spirits did you.
Speaker 5 (39:22):
Learn from playing with those guys? Did it change your playing?
Speaker 1 (39:28):
I was on this other thing. We're sort of not applicable. Yeah,
the two hand independence thing is not something that they're
dealing with. They're dealing with their own difficult issues when
they're pushing the envelope. So I wouldn't really say that's true.
I don't think anything. I think I was just in
(39:49):
my own on world with this.
Speaker 4 (39:52):
Yeah, two thousand and seven, and I had to I
kept staring at this, thinking is this real that you
did two albums that year?
Speaker 1 (40:01):
It's very disparate.
Speaker 4 (40:02):
One with the great Ricky Skaggs, who I think plays
every instrument but the piano. How did you adapt I'm
not sure if you adapted the piano to bluegrass or
bluegrass to the piano. It's not it's not considered a
piano is not a bluegrass instrument.
Speaker 1 (40:23):
No, it's not. But it can be made to sound
very banjo esque. Sometimes the piano doing something it feels
like it sounds can sound like banjo. So it fit
in pretty well. Oh, it was so challenging because the
tempos are insane, you know, just ding ding ding do
(40:50):
and and these guys Ricky's bands have always been freaky great.
He gets the killer pickers of Nashville. When I was
playing with him, he had these guys Andy Leftwich and
Cody Kilby and Jimmy Mills on banjo. So I was
just hanging on for dear life. Every time I've had
a skin Ex Orangeby tour coming, I would take the
(41:12):
metron on that and put it on ding ding ding
ding ding ding. Jew I'm not gonna even gonna try
it now because I'm I'm totally out of practice with that.
But but if I did it, and I would do it.
I loved my time doing all that. We made two
records two thousand and seven, the studio record in twenty thirteen,
this crazy jam and live record, so right.
Speaker 5 (41:35):
And what's he like to play with? What's he? What
kind of a well?
Speaker 1 (41:37):
He's a joyous, joyous soul, a beautiful soul, and this
warm person, funny, too ready for a ready for a laugh.
Some of that country humor, it's nothing to quite like it.
Often a little blue, but great, very fun. So yeah,
(42:00):
but just a consummate player, a musician, one of the
great singers, and also, like Garcia in his own way,
a true walking encyclopedia of that music of old time.
I probably mentioned this before we went on the air.
He turned me onto Doc Box and Roscoe hulkm and
(42:22):
Clarence Ashley. Then again the Harry Smith Anthology of Folk Music.
It's such a deep well. So I learned so much
from him in that way. He was very open. One time,
in the middle of a gem in Medford, Oregon, in
about two thousand and two one or two, We're in
(42:43):
a sort of a minor key spacey thing, this kind
of chords, and all of a sudden this came to
me fully formed. I went.
Speaker 7 (43:25):
And the song came ban on it like the times
that we spent hiding out.
Speaker 1 (43:33):
From the rain under the CARNIVALTI laughed and she smiled
with a less for you don't know what You've got
to lose it all again.
Speaker 6 (43:52):
Listen to the Manlin Rain, Listen to them music point.
Speaker 1 (43:59):
Listen to My Hardbreak every time she runs away.
Speaker 6 (44:06):
Listen to the Mangol. It a sad song, drifting. Listen
to the tears roll down.
Speaker 1 (44:16):
My face as she turns to go. So I played
(44:39):
that for him and he went the son we have
to record that, and because it was just something about
it has that sort of deep mountain sol with the
with the with that too, you know, it's sort of
a combo thing that I would do.
Speaker 2 (44:58):
We're coming right back with more of Bruce Hornsby.
Speaker 4 (45:05):
To me, it's interesting because so much of what you're
doing with jazz and a lot of dissonance is the
sort of thing that you have to really be careful
in bluegrass music. It doesn't you know, Western swing can
do a lot of that stuff, but bluegrass did you
find it was not confining?
Speaker 1 (45:23):
But no, not confining. I just I feel like there
are just some people coming to these skys wants to
be concerts who who wish I was not there. But
I'm not doing it for them. I'm doing it for
the groove Ricky and the guys, and they've responded so
deeply to that, and so we recorded and it's a
(45:43):
very beautiful version of that. So that was and then
then there's the other one two thousand and seven, same year.
Speaker 4 (45:51):
Yeah, you did your jazz trio, Yes Camp meeting.
Speaker 1 (45:58):
Christian Christian McBride, Jack d Jeanette Djenete, Yeah, what was outside?
So this is the origin story. I would run run
into those guys. I would go hear the Keith chain
at trio at Carnegie Hall with Gary Peacock on bass
and Jack playing drums, and I'd run into Jack backstage
and he would say, okay man, when's the hit. I say, well,
(46:23):
I'll let you know.
Speaker 13 (46:26):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (46:26):
Run into Christian around somewhere, and he'd say, okay man,
when's the hit. It as if they'd conspired, so I'd
said to them. To christ I would say to Christian, well,
when I figure out a way to do this to
make a jazz piano trio record, that is not just
(46:50):
me doing my Bill Evans or Chick career, or just
feeling the names red Garland Win and Kelly whatever, Bud Powell.
It's not me just doing my replication. Then I'll let
then then yeah, I'll call you then then then the
hit will happen. We'll schedule the hit. So it was
(47:10):
a bit of a project, a back burner project that
I would gradually work on over a three or four
year period and come up with certain certain things. It
felt felt fresh, felt original, and that's the word okay.
So I when I I came to them, I called
them both up and said, at a certain point in
(47:32):
two thousand and six or maybe late two thousand and five, hey,
I think I've got an idea I'm gonna And they said, okay,
please send us stuff. And so I did send them,
send them both the recording of me playing these seven
or eight non songs. Some were originals, some were reworkings
(47:55):
of old jazz chestnuts. And it took them a good
month to get back to me. It's a long it's
a loud silence, loud silent month. Some i'thing, Okay, they
don't like it. It's fine. Well they called me up
but together and they said, man, we really like this.
(48:16):
It's very fresh. It sounds original. It sounds like an
original take on this music. I said, well, okay, thanks
a lot. That's great. But they said, you're not making that.
You're not making on our playing level, and so so
(48:39):
there's that. I said, okay, I humbly replied, I got you.
We've got five months between the time from between now
and the time we're slated to do this down at
my house in Virginia. So give me those five months
and come on down there and if you if you
still feel the same way about my lack of ability,
(49:03):
then we'll just shake hands and call it, call it
a day. So I dealt with it. Luckily I didn't
have a ton going on, and they came down and
we started hitting, and they went, Okay, you've done You've
done the work.
Speaker 5 (49:20):
You got to back up. What was the work?
Speaker 1 (49:22):
Oh, the work was just learning how to okay, to
to to play. Well, here's a perfect example. So I
we played Giant Steps, which is one of the insane.
Speaker 13 (49:33):
Hallmarks of the of the literature.
Speaker 1 (49:57):
So I'm reharmonizing it in my own way, almost him like, okay,
(51:00):
so what I was just sold I was just slowing
over those my reharmonized semi re harmonization, and I had
to learn how to do that, but do it well now,
this is I haven't done that in years. So but
so I tried to keep it real simple so I
wouldn't just completely blow it. But so that was okay,
it wasn't great, but but so yeah, I said, if
(51:23):
I was going to make a record of doing that,
I need to do that times fifty and really get it.
So it's very because if it's you have to ingest it.
And because of the if you that's a slow tempo,
we went, you know like that, Yeah, that's I'm just
(51:59):
not on my under my fingers, you know so so
so that's what I had to do. I had to
I had to get to a point where it was
so free, play so freely and nail nail it.
Speaker 5 (52:13):
I should have asked you this earlier. Do you practice
every day?
Speaker 1 (52:15):
Oh?
Speaker 14 (52:16):
Hell?
Speaker 1 (52:16):
Yeah?
Speaker 14 (52:17):
How long?
Speaker 1 (52:17):
Hell? I practice? I probably do about two or three hours.
So for instance, right now, I'm working on music from
my new record, and I'll play you a little bit
of it. This is a song called Silhouette Shadows. I
(52:39):
was I love a Shastakovich piece for one of his
fugues and his Preludes and Fugues collection that he that
he produced beautiful. I have a Keith Charot record of
Keith playing the Shastakovich Preludes and fugues. So I love
the one in F sharp is number thirteen. I think,
(52:59):
I just I just love it. It's so beautiful. And
after fooling around with it for a while, I thought, well,
I would like to do my own version of this
of a semi fugue. So I did this when I
was scoring films for Spike Lee. I threw this in
there as he never picked it, which is okay. Then
(53:21):
a couple two or three years later, I started writing
for this record, and this thing had been lying around
for a little while, and I thought, let me try
to write a song with words to this music. So
I did, and it's on the record and it goes
like this.
Speaker 14 (53:41):
I'll try to play it.
Speaker 1 (54:02):
On TV.
Speaker 8 (54:03):
Watching from Boston Street into Southn's window as Nick's resides.
Speaker 1 (54:10):
Good, good thing. I'm tall, going back to my third
floor walk up.
Speaker 8 (54:19):
Sounds in the air, the numb couple beating each other
and dreaming of that summer.
Speaker 1 (54:25):
Sight above in my room, beating each other and screaming
that summer right above my tr watching morning sitcom shows
(54:46):
every day, and the Chief's housemen.
Speaker 7 (54:48):
I knew they were away, making sure they never noticed
that I had been there.
Speaker 1 (54:57):
Couldn't believe I was doing this was a needed a
break from the music school.
Speaker 8 (55:04):
Crime Let's set shadows ancient scenes and cryptic dreams, so
Lisen shadows a.
Speaker 1 (55:24):
Sort of remember in the general, like in the show
how Line of Harborn Good out shaded recollection One Life
in Reflection, I thing goes on from there, So that's
what I'm working on.
Speaker 4 (55:43):
Thank you so much for coming in.
Speaker 2 (55:46):
In the episode description, you'll find a link to a
playlist of our favorite Bruce Hornsby songs. Be sure to
check out YouTube dot com slash Broken Record Podcast to
see all of our video interviews, and be sure to
follow us on Instagram at the Broken Record pot. Broken
Record is produced and edited by Leah Rhodes, with marketing
help from Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer is
Ben Holladay. Broken Record is product of Pushkin Industries. If
(56:10):
you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing
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And if you like this show, please remember to share, rate,
and review us on your podcast app. Our theme music's
by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond.
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
The magic of Bruce Hornsby isn't just that he's one
of American music's great piano stylists, or that he wrote
one of the most unlikely pop hits of the eighties,
a song about racism with two improvised solos that nobody
at his label thought should be the single. It's how
he relentlessly has kept moving long after he had any
commercial reason to. Hornsby grew up in Williamsburg, Virginia, got
discovered a playing a stake, and ale joined across the
(00:41):
street from the Hampton Coliseum by Mike MacDonald the Doobie Brothers,
grinded for years as a staff songwriter at twentieth Century
Fox before finally getting signed. Then The Way It Is
blows up in England, and suddenly he's lip syncing on
top of the pops and getting bare hugged backstage by
Elton John and a Tina Turner Wig. What followed was
(01:02):
a long, restless second act, teaching himself two handed independence
by scheduling benefit concerts just to give himself a hard
dead line, making jazz records with Jack Dee, Jeannette and
Christian McBride, bluegrass records with Ricky Skaggs and going deep
into Shastakovich fugues that now shape everything, he writes. On
today's episode, Bruce Hedlam sat down with Bruce Hornsby at
(01:23):
the piano to talk about all of it. But they
started somewhere unexpected, the Steak and Ale restaurant in Hampton, Virginia,
in the fall of seventy eight. This is broken record,
real musicians, real conversations. Here's Bruce Headlam with Bruce Hornsby.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
We were discovered. I we with the band. We were
discovered by Mike McDonald, the Dewie Bruthers, beautiful, beautiful soul,
great person, credible talent. We were big fans. We were
playing the uh the Steak and Ale, the Jolly Oks
restaurant across from the Hampton Coliseum. The Doobie Brothers were
(02:10):
playing the Colisseum. We were doing our gig, so we
decided that we'd go. We knew where they were staying,
the Sheraton Coliseum. So my drummer, John Molo, and I
two big guys. He's a big, strong guy. He's just
a big bony ass, but still tall. We went to
the Sharraton Colisseum and we walked in looking for Mike,
(02:31):
and he's standing right there in the lobby. So we
go up to him and we're sort of towering over him.
We said, hey, Mike, we're the baddest motherfuckers in this
town and we're playing at the stake and ale over there.
Of course, those two statements don't go together, really, So
sure enough he did come. It was their night off,
and the next night they were playing at the Hampton Coliseum,
(02:52):
and we'd saved all our what we called the originals,
my songs that we had played. We'd actually pulled off
a pretty difficult trick as lounge entertainers. We were starting
to we'd started maybe six y eight months before this.
Two slipped songs of mine in between brick House and
Shake Your Booty, and we acquired an audience gradually who
(03:16):
wanted us to wanted to just hear those songs and
not the top forty dance material. So that was great,
it was good. That was hard. It's hard to do.
So he so we saved originals. He came in, he
brought a couple of his roady friends and the crew
and and we just wore it out. And he came
(03:40):
up and was a little blown by it. He said, Hey,
that was really something. Come over and join me at
the Share It and let's just hang out. So we did,
and then we're sort of sitting around whatever bar in
the coliseum.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
And then and while we're hanging he says, hey, coming
up to my room where we got our new record
coming out tomorrow, I'd like to play it for It's
called Minute by Minute. It's okay, Sure. So we go
up there and he's playing What a Fool Believes in
a Minute by Minute and it's fantastic. We're just kind
of blown away by the whole experience, and he started
(04:23):
talking about turning us on to his producer, Ted Templeman,
and I drove home just going, oh my god, is
this it? Is this the big thing? Next night he
came back after the gig, he sat in with the
place was packed. If we worred have gotten out, he
sat in with us on a song, and a couple
of nights later we sat in with them at the
Richmond Coliseum and we're going, Wow, is this the big break?
(04:49):
So that was say December one, nineteen seventy eight, and
I got signed in April of nineteen eighty five, so
no such luck. We went out and slept on his
floor for ten nights in February of seventy nine, Molo
and I and he was at that point he was
(05:09):
singing on every record under the sun in La. So
many great moments of Mike being a background singer on
great records. He would take our tape, which was pretty
bad alas it was not great. He would take our
little reel to reel and give it to producers. From that,
(05:34):
we got some producer interests from that tape got me
a songwriter deal, and a year and a half later,
I moved to La as a staff songwriter for twenty
seventury Fox in nineteen eighty and was grinding away again
five years after that, which was a year and a
half after Mike. After we met Mike, I got my
record deal and so that wasn't luck. It took me
(05:57):
a while to find my own voice, something that was
unique to me in some way. Before that, I guess
I probably sounded kind of like Abie Brothers copy or
Steely Danish copy. Uh. But finally I I assimulated a
bunch of different influences that were always influencers that I loved.
(06:20):
But I featured some more sort of Americano with more
folk or Appalachian instruments. We got the great David Mansfield
playing fiddle mandolin, so the range I was playing accordion.
That was the range was sort of our version of
of the band, and we were going for that kind
(06:41):
of feeling. Uh uh so uh then but the but
then we didn't get signed with that. I was frustrated
with the way my song sounded with this with the band,
so I went in with a drum machine and a
piano and made about four demos and that's the tape
that didn't get passed on. And the former rhythm guitar
(07:03):
player of the Zombies, who was the head of R, C, A,
A and R beautiful man named Paul Atkinson, he came,
he came forth and offered us. And so then there
was another company, big company Epic, that came in as well.
But we were feeling Paul signed with him and then okay,
(07:23):
then the record comes out and this is the luck
part everyone several most people in powerful positions thought that
the way it is was a B side, for it
makes sense. It's a song about racism with not one
but two improvised piano Soulos that's hardly the formula for
(07:43):
pop success. So that's what they thought. They released another song,
Every Little Kiss. It got up to seventy two with
an anchor on the Billboard one hundred, and then plummeted
away the poor uh embattled and embittered. Our BMG promo
(08:04):
rep in London went to his friend who was a
disc jockey had radio on BBC, said mickey, me, boy,
we got this record. We don't know what to do it.
We really like it. It's kind of country, kind of jazz.
We don't know what to do with it. Would you
give it a listen? So this guy, Nick del Koitch
is his name, put it over the weekend, played the record,
(08:25):
picked this one song, put it on the radio Monday,
blew up and throughout the UK and there we were.
So that's the that's the luck part could have easily
as not happened.
Speaker 4 (08:38):
Has happened the good old days when one DJ in
one city.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
If it happens to happen that kind of effect, yes,
it has to really make a mark. And so the
way it is did and we were over there quickly
making a video in London and lip syncing on top
of the pops and the Terry Wogan Show, which was
the Johnny Carson of the time. That's where I went
and met Elton John. He was on the Wogan Show
(09:04):
when I when We Fledglings were also on, and I
hear I'm getting made up before I learned how to
say no to such things. I'm in there getting makeup
put on, and I hear this undistakable voice, Wes Bruce holmespeed.
Wesbruce fucking Holmes speed. Where is he? I'm thinking, well,
(09:26):
I think that's Elton John because I'd heard he's on
the show. He walks in with a Tina Turner wig on,
which is how he appeared on the show, and just
threw his arms around me. He's the most beautiful person.
And he was a supporter then and all the way
through until now. So yeah, great, beautiful moments like that
continue to happen.
Speaker 4 (09:47):
And he was a big early influence on you. You
didn't really start piano seriously until no, quite No.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
I was a hooper. I was a jock. So right,
elp what is it, Amarna? My brother played it for
me from the Tumblewee Connection record. We're riding down the
(10:16):
Colonial Parkway from Willisburg Virginia to Yorktown, Virginia and he
puts on this eight track and it just blew me. U.
I just moved me so deeply. I got the record
and every song was amazing. Burned down the mission, you know, anyway,
(10:48):
so great?
Speaker 5 (10:49):
Now what do you are?
Speaker 4 (10:50):
There are there parts of his playing that showed up?
Speaker 6 (10:53):
Then?
Speaker 5 (10:54):
Not really?
Speaker 1 (10:55):
No, not really And then and my other influence was, uh,
it was Leon Russell and uh I never wrote anything
that sounded like that's the uh you know, I didn't do. Subsequently,
(11:19):
I've been in influenced by Leon. I have a song
called Country Doctor that goes like this, Yeah, that's necessarily lyon,
(11:47):
but that's that's my stuff. That's something I developed later's
too handed independence.
Speaker 4 (12:03):
Think what was it about Leon Russell?
Speaker 1 (12:05):
Then that? Well, Leon Russell? What I was just playing
the letter and I loved it, and so I thought
I'd really grocked it. Really sort of ingested all the
Leon until I started working with him in the early nineties.
Then I saw at the foot of the Master, Oh yeah, no,
I don't have it. But then I was able to
(12:27):
learn it from just standing here watching.
Speaker 4 (12:30):
That You have relative pitch, Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
If I hear. I can hear basic pop harmony. If
it gets too chromatic, then I'm kind of probably out
of it, probably probably done, but yeah, definitely not so
I can sit in with the band. I went in
off the street with no rehearsal and started winging it
with the Grateful Dead at Madison Square Garden. So that
(12:56):
sort of relative pitch allowed me to I didn't play
too many chords on one because I didn't not the song,
but I could go okay, yeah, okay, I think of
the song. Yeah, So as I considered.
Speaker 7 (13:15):
Playing on the day when I was born and he
went down, so.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
I would I know that. I knew that when I'm
just it's just something that came into my head, so
that if I didn't know it, they know on the
day when I was okay, I got Daddy went down
and hid.
Speaker 4 (13:51):
So yeah, when you say things like I love the
tents in the in this hand, I love these kinds
of chords, how did that develop? Were you just at
a piano all the time, Well, I.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Guess so more than more than most. I guess it's
just uh exploration and going with what moves you with
with My favorite my favorite people were people who gave
me chills or on a groove level, like Leon Russell,
(14:22):
just sat so deeply in this thing that I wanted
to try to replicate that. I'm a short not sure
I did or do, but that's the intent. So I
guess I'm just following, uh, following the goosebump, following the chills.
And if I play something now, I kind of know
(14:43):
what gives me chills, and they're the chors like this.
H I have a song on a record three or
four albums ago called My Resolve, and the chorus goes.
Speaker 8 (14:59):
In my resolve, I move rock, maybe fall down.
Speaker 9 (15:07):
Try I indepted to stares me down in this face
high come. I tried to stand up both the free
stand up par not by yet.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
I'll move on up.
Speaker 8 (15:25):
Above the hill to maybe fully five hour.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
Our flower. And I just like, I just love that sound.
And so that's that's what gets me going. Homember. One
of the things that.
Speaker 5 (15:43):
And were you did you know theory back then?
Speaker 4 (15:46):
Did you could you say, oh, I'm about to play
you know?
Speaker 1 (15:49):
I was learning it quickly, I was. I was totally
involved in it, totally immersed in knowing the harm the
theoretical aspect of harmonic movement chords.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
We'll be back with more from Bruce Hornsby.
Speaker 4 (16:08):
So I'm talking about earlier in your career, when you,
for example, went in. We were talking earlier about the
song you did with Bonnie Ray. You've done many songs
with her, but the most famous.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
Yes, I changed that, Okay, I changed So when.
Speaker 4 (16:25):
You given all these influences, you had, all these people
you had heard when you went in, you heard the song.
Speaker 5 (16:30):
I don't know were you given chet music?
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Were you given they gave me a cassette? Okay, I
was staying at some hotel in Hollywood. It's a big one,
right on Melrose. It's changed names.
Speaker 4 (16:43):
By the way, we should say the name of the song,
which is I Can't Make You Love Me?
Speaker 1 (16:47):
Yes, yeah, fantastic Mike Reid and Alan Shamblin. Right, the
two guys reloaded hats off, sitting oh for them. So right,
I heard this. They gave you this cassette. Was it
a bare bones I guess barre bones enough. I guess
from my memory it has it being played on an
(17:07):
electric piano. But I could have that wrong, so.
Speaker 10 (17:11):
Right, uh I uh, I think it was basically uh.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
So I changed it to.
Speaker 4 (17:44):
So that that chord that you substituted in that first
what did you turn it into from what that's.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
What I turned it into is Yeah, yeah, so.
Speaker 4 (17:53):
It was it was just it was just straight, yeah,
very churchy.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Yeah. And when I first played, I played the electric
piano the intro and I played him like that, so
have some place to go, and I came in four
bars later, so I was I was pretty faithful to
the original for the first four bars when I'm playing
some sort of electric keyboard.
Speaker 4 (18:19):
Okay, so now tell me what tell me what sound
you wanted when you started in on the piano just then, not.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
Really Bill evan Z, but sort of h lush in
a stark way rather than you know, that's very Klaus
Ogerman or Ravel issued it, and I like that, but
(18:53):
I like the other more that moves me more so.
I'm just I'm just always looking to to feel something
emotional and all this thing, everything that I'm doing for you,
whether it's that or the tenth, it's all something that
(19:17):
has something deep to me, a deep souls what I'm
going for.
Speaker 4 (19:23):
That version of the song also has a wonderful surprising
chord at the end.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
Yeah, well, I think that was there. I think that
was there. I don't remember remember.
Speaker 4 (19:33):
Precisely, but the uh, it's the uh measure of that.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Domind said, they have the sharp Yeah, yes, uh yeah,
h m hmm. Yeah, that's exact thing.
Speaker 4 (20:03):
Yeah, which is wonderful because that is so that is
such a beautiful song. It deserves to fade out and
then just as it's fading, you hear this.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Oh is that right? It fades out like it fades.
Speaker 4 (20:12):
A little bit, but then you hear that beautiful chord
in the end. It's got such such a it's got
such such power at the end of that.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Well, it's very nice you to say. I wouldn't give
myself too much credit for that. I think the vote.
I think the song is so great and her vocal
is so great. That's what really to me makes it.
But I don't know.
Speaker 4 (20:30):
But to me, what's interesting for me is you do
have these influences, and you probably have other influences we
haven't talked about, but they all informed somehow.
Speaker 5 (20:40):
Yeah, sure, how you came to to that piece?
Speaker 4 (20:43):
Were there are there different influences on your song writing.
Speaker 5 (20:49):
Back then?
Speaker 1 (20:51):
I'm sure there there were, depends on what record you're
talking about. I've gradually moved on. Each record was a
little different from the previous.
Speaker 5 (21:00):
I'd say you're early.
Speaker 4 (21:01):
You know, if I think of End of the Innocence
or Valley Road, you you love your suspended chords?
Speaker 1 (21:09):
Yeah, okay, right, I don't think, say into the Niss
Value Road have a lot harmonically in common. One's just
a straight.
Speaker 11 (21:16):
Ahead there's not a chord, that's the chord, and then
the NIS is just is a leg.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
You know, there's nothing that's uh. So they're very different.
You know, one's just kind of a groove thing, sort
of a Steve Miller ish idea value.
Speaker 4 (21:51):
But they both have the I guess, particularly some suspensions.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Yeah, yeah, they have. Right, that same chord that I
was singing my so on my resolve over that's that's
in Valet Road. That's kind of the first, the first
little harmonic trick. I guess.
Speaker 4 (22:06):
You know we've talked about, uh and you don't love it.
What people say is the Bruce Hornsby sound sound style.
I can't switch to.
Speaker 5 (22:16):
Everybody's saying I got to play like you now then
you completely changed your style.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
They might people might not know what you're referring to.
You're referring to a story I told you about running
into Nashville piano players who would come up to me,
running into them at airports or wherever, and they'd come
up to me and say, Man, all day long, people
are asking me, hey, can you give me he played
a little more like Bruce hornsby, And I would always say, Man,
(22:42):
I'm sorry, Yeah, I'm not. Really, I'm not. You're probably
not a fan of it either, because you get asked
to do it, and I'm not really either. It's too
bright for me. It's just something that happened.
Speaker 4 (22:55):
But as I told you before we were you should
probably tell them. Yeah, my record company says the same
thing to me. What do you mean, well, your record
company would like you to play more like the Bruce
horns Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Well, but see he is an interesting uh story, But
that that was lucky for me. Uh So. Paul Atkinson,
the ex Zombies rhythm guitar player who signed me at RCA,
he and a lot of others thought that way it
is was a b side. They said it because of
the unexpected massive success of that record. The big shots said, well,
(23:35):
we we don't know what to do with this. We
we didn't predict this, we predicted the opposite. Uh, so
they left me alone. They they did not, they did
not pressure me in that way, because again the song
that really blew up was a completely unexpected, uh piece
(23:57):
of music. So the next record, the Scenes from the
South Side, we had this. You mentioned Valley Road, and
uh that was also unlikely. It's a song about you
city girls, society girl who gets involved with the young
country boy and he puts her in the family way
and they send her away to the school for unwood mothers,
which is an old notion. I don't think that exists anymore,
(24:19):
but uh it may. But uh, it's again hardly it's
it's it's sort of hardly standard pop fare lyrically, and
again I'm soloing like crazy on that when I'm playing
McCoy tyner.
Speaker 12 (24:37):
You know, uh, what's it called chordal harmony?
Speaker 1 (24:54):
You know that sort of thing.
Speaker 4 (24:55):
Can you give us just a quick definition chordal harmony
chords and force?
Speaker 1 (24:59):
Yes, yeah, the uh the interval of the fourth for
so there's a.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
Extended wow that sounds like my song lawn Talk clup one.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
So that's a different one. So right, So that it
was chordal harmony on the radio. What the hell? So
I got away with this sort of thing twice way
it is Vali Road. And then I guess it was
kind of I think of those records in a certain
way as novelty records because because they were in the
(25:49):
best sense novelty, because they were so different sounding, and
it was a sound that was not off putting. It
was not incredibly it wasn't like it wasn't like that. Uh,
And but that was it. That was that was all
I was going to get out of the out of
(26:10):
the morning zoo crowd.
Speaker 4 (26:14):
Then later with I think Hothouse, Yeah, Spirit Trail. Right,
you're changing takes, You're playing takes a very different.
Speaker 5 (26:24):
That's right direction.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
Yes, I was. I turned forty years old in the
late fall of nineteen ninety four, and I thought to myself, Okay,
what are you going to do? You're going to rest
on your laurels like most of your pop star friends,
(26:46):
or they're just kind of not really deeply involved in
moving forward as a player as a creator, kind of
riding along with the same stuff that you've been doing.
Am I going to do that? Or am I going
to push to a new place? Well? I took the
second road back to Keith Charrett. He was incredible. He
(27:10):
had an incredible gift or skilled development that I call
two handed independence, and he could play something in the
left hand and then play something very rhythmically opposed to
that sounded like two people playing this sort of thing.
(27:34):
And I'd always opened that door to a piano technique
and go too hard close it up. For this time,
I decided to try to deal with it in my
own bone headed way, and so I did that, and
I would get I would. I had a song on
(27:54):
a spiritual record. So that's what I'm That's that's the thing,
(28:19):
that independence. I'm playing very rhythmically freely in the right
hand while hopefully keeping this left hand Austinado real solid.
That took a long time.
Speaker 5 (28:30):
How did you go about that? Was it by writing
the songs?
Speaker 1 (28:33):
Or was it? But it made me write songs like
that I wrote. I think that song is called Sneaking
Up on Boo Radley And you know the song. You
know that you're not going to believe it.
Speaker 5 (28:44):
But what do I have written right there? Sneaking Up
on bud?
Speaker 1 (28:46):
So what made you write it down?
Speaker 5 (28:48):
I love the song?
Speaker 4 (28:49):
Okay, I I heard the kind of Keith Jarrett left hand.
Speaker 5 (28:54):
I didn't know. Yeah, well, I didn't know it came
out of this exercise.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
Well, but you you were right on the track. It's
a song about growing up in a small town with
a metal hospital in which a lot of the patients
were allowed to just walk around town. And when we
were little nine ten year old dumbasses. Oh, we thought
they were just hilarious with their crazy walks, and so
(29:18):
we made fun of them. And it's very much like
to Kill a mocking Bird with Robert Duval's character and
the way the kids were alternately scared and freaked out
by him and also made fun of him. So I wrote,
I wanted to write this song because this was part
of my upbringing, part of my past in Willisboro, Virginia,
(29:39):
Eastern State Hospital. I would say I would get this
in watching me screw it up here. You got to
crawl before you can walk, before you can rude. Now
(30:18):
what I did in that fifty seconds, it took me
many many months to go from the whole note to
free playing like that, probably about seven eight months of
dealing with it, doing it intensely. My wife said to me,
(30:41):
I'd been doing this for about a week and a half.
She said, man, what are you doing out there meeting
in the studio. You spend enough time out there as
it is, and now you're spending three or four hours more.
I said, okay, I understand. Here's what I'm asking of you,
Kathy Hornsby, I said, okay, I did it. First of
(31:04):
the year came and I called the Virginia Special Olympics
and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, two great philanthropic concerns, and
I said, Hi, this is Bruce Hornsby. I'm just calling
you because I like to do a benefit for you,
and i'd like to do it in early May. Can
we can we schedule one for May fifth and one
(31:25):
for May seventh, and so they said, yeah, okay, fine,
we'll take we'll take the money, we'll do that. I
wanted to to schedule that to give me something to
shoot for a signpost down the road that would make
me really deal with this because I wanted it was
a solo concert. I hadn't done that much at all
because I wasn't ready. I couldn't do it. I said
(31:48):
to my wife, Okay, I've scheduled these two things, these
two concerts. Give me this four months and then after
the first one, just come back and we'll talk about this.
So I did the first concert for Special Olympics in Richmond.
It was a two setter. I did one set. She
(32:09):
came back with tears in her eyes and went, oh
my god, I'm so happy you did this. This is
so beautiful, so great. So so she's a very musical person,
and so this uh, she she she got it, she
understood and was moved by it. So that's what that
was my That's how I that's what made me deal
(32:31):
with it. It's always good to have some public forum
where you are charged with really having something together that
you have never dealt with. So that's so that's so
that's what I've been doing for years. Yeah, but spirit
Trail was the first one. He's so good, good, good
for you for understanding that King of the Hills, you know,
(33:20):
that sort of thing. So not doing it very well,
but that but that's another version of it. Spiritualist is
chocolate blot with two added independence.
Speaker 4 (33:31):
When we started and I said, is it all just
good luck or good fortune? I think we're seeing some
insight into how you navigate these things. You like throwing
yourselves against these yourself hard and me against these challenges.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
Well, I was just, for instance, in this case, I
just was always blown away. But when I would hear
someone do something like this in an improvisitory forum, and
so I wanted to be able to do violent version
of it. And as simple as that. Look, what all
this work that I put in With that, it leads
(34:04):
you to a place that guards against popularity, because this
stuff is not what the average person wants to hear
in the popular forum. People want to hear a good
song somewhell with a nice, great production. Hopefully this isn't
that at all. This is something completely obscure and obtuse
(34:28):
and off putting to the average listeners. So I know
that i've what all this time I put in. It
wasn't about becoming a bigger deal, but playing arenas. This
sort of thing doesn't work in arenas. It's kind of
like jazz music. By the very nature of the way
(34:48):
the drums play, it's hard for that to translate in
a large space. Nobody's going They're just going boom boom.
So you know, it's very free, it's very open, and
if you're sick yards away, it's hard to feel that.
(35:12):
So so yeah, it didn't help me in that way.
But it's not what it's ever been about. This is
about a singular pursuit.
Speaker 4 (35:22):
But you've also you do play songs like that in
your concert.
Speaker 5 (35:26):
You've been able to bring your crowd.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
Oh, I do well. Yes, and no, I've lost a
lot of people who who want to have a nostalgic
night out. I understand it too, I get it completely.
I'm like anybody else. If I go to a concert,
I'm probably going to that concert, well if it's a
pop concert or rock concert, because I love more than
a few of their songs, so I guess I'm hoping
(35:50):
to hear that there's songs. I'm maybe more open than
the average person to to something else because because it's
what I do, you know, it's easy for me to
want that. But but most people do go to a
concert for that nostalgic that stroll down memory lane. And
I get it. I don't dismiss it one bit. It's
(36:12):
just a It just can be a bit of a
creative prison to feel like you're in a situation where
you say to your band, here's the set list for
the year, you know, because that's what a lot of
a lot of people do at the hotel. Yeah, right,
it's it's just basically you're hoping you're not phoning it in.
(36:33):
There are people who are just great at doing that
same set and they mean it every night, and that's beautiful.
It would be kind of hard for me, I think.
Speaker 4 (36:43):
You know, the other thing you did during that period.
I think starting with Harbor Lights is you really you
brought in really challenging players to play with.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
Well, you're right, and people that's the popular notion, but actually,
if you look at it, it really started with the
Third Range record, where I had went shorter who I'd
gotten to play at the end of the Innocence. That's
how I know it knew him. Charlie Hate and Bayla
Fleck Garcia on that It's the Night of the Town.
It's a good record. I love several of the songs
(37:16):
on it. Barren Ground is great, also using that same chords. Yes,
I'm repeating myself.
Speaker 5 (37:26):
Yeah, they're going to come up and say everybody wants
that chord.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
Yeah, that's that's that a over duh. So that's where
it really started, where I really started stretching out. Sean
Colvin it's on that record.
Speaker 9 (37:39):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
I think I'm named five or six and so. But
but yes, the next time somehow made more of a
mark with the guests. I don't know why. Pat Metheeny
was a huge guest on that Harbor Lights record played
so fantastic. In fact, I love that. When I got
to know the great Justin Vernon from Boney Vere, I
learned that he, at age s thirteen, had transcribed the
(38:03):
entire Pat Metheny Harbor Lights guitar solo, some of it
playing over these crazy He's playing over that. It's hard
(38:28):
to do. He just nailed it because he's a freak
of nature and I love him. And then I can't.
Speaker 5 (38:34):
Remember the record.
Speaker 4 (38:35):
It's on White Wheeled Limousine has has him trading with
Bayla with a Bayla Fleck who we've had here, bay Yes, yeah,
which is a kind of it's just an amazing section
of that of that record.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
I love it. Yes, they both are just just killing it.
The cover of that record was a depiction of Bruce's Dream,
which had dol Monroe and Charlie Parker. Of course, yeah,
so and so Bayla Fleck and Pat Metheny are were
(39:09):
modern archetypes of each guy.
Speaker 4 (39:12):
And that's also two guys who like you just keep
pushing it like Bailaflex, new stuff just keeps going.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
Yeah, yeah, right, absolutely, So the Kindred Spirits did you.
Speaker 5 (39:22):
Learn from playing with those guys? Did it change your playing?
Speaker 1 (39:28):
I was on this other thing. We're sort of not applicable. Yeah,
the two hand independence thing is not something that they're
dealing with. They're dealing with their own difficult issues when
they're pushing the envelope. So I wouldn't really say that's true.
I don't think anything. I think I was just in
(39:49):
my own on world with this.
Speaker 4 (39:52):
Yeah, two thousand and seven, and I had to I
kept staring at this, thinking is this real that you
did two albums that year?
Speaker 1 (40:01):
It's very disparate.
Speaker 4 (40:02):
One with the great Ricky Skaggs, who I think plays
every instrument but the piano. How did you adapt I'm
not sure if you adapted the piano to bluegrass or
bluegrass to the piano. It's not it's not considered a
piano is not a bluegrass instrument.
Speaker 1 (40:23):
No, it's not. But it can be made to sound
very banjo esque. Sometimes the piano doing something it feels
like it sounds can sound like banjo. So it fit
in pretty well. Oh, it was so challenging because the
tempos are insane, you know, just ding ding ding do
(40:50):
and and these guys Ricky's bands have always been freaky great.
He gets the killer pickers of Nashville. When I was
playing with him, he had these guys Andy Leftwich and
Cody Kilby and Jimmy Mills on banjo. So I was
just hanging on for dear life. Every time I've had
a skin Ex Orangeby tour coming, I would take the
(41:12):
metron on that and put it on ding ding ding
ding ding ding. Jew I'm not gonna even gonna try
it now because I'm I'm totally out of practice with that.
But but if I did it, and I would do it.
I loved my time doing all that. We made two
records two thousand and seven, the studio record in twenty thirteen,
this crazy jam and live record, so right.
Speaker 5 (41:35):
And what's he like to play with? What's he? What
kind of a well?
Speaker 1 (41:37):
He's a joyous, joyous soul, a beautiful soul, and this
warm person, funny, too ready for a ready for a laugh.
Some of that country humor, it's nothing to quite like it.
Often a little blue, but great, very fun. So yeah,
(42:00):
but just a consummate player, a musician, one of the
great singers, and also, like Garcia in his own way,
a true walking encyclopedia of that music of old time.
I probably mentioned this before we went on the air.
He turned me onto Doc Box and Roscoe hulkm and
(42:22):
Clarence Ashley. Then again the Harry Smith Anthology of Folk Music.
It's such a deep well. So I learned so much
from him in that way. He was very open. One time,
in the middle of a gem in Medford, Oregon, in
about two thousand and two one or two, We're in
(42:43):
a sort of a minor key spacey thing, this kind
of chords, and all of a sudden this came to
me fully formed. I went.
Speaker 7 (43:25):
And the song came ban on it like the times
that we spent hiding out.
Speaker 1 (43:33):
From the rain under the CARNIVALTI laughed and she smiled
with a less for you don't know what You've got
to lose it all again.
Speaker 6 (43:52):
Listen to the Manlin Rain, Listen to them music point.
Speaker 1 (43:59):
Listen to My Hardbreak every time she runs away.
Speaker 6 (44:06):
Listen to the Mangol. It a sad song, drifting. Listen
to the tears roll down.
Speaker 1 (44:16):
My face as she turns to go. So I played
(44:39):
that for him and he went the son we have
to record that, and because it was just something about
it has that sort of deep mountain sol with the
with the with that too, you know, it's sort of
a combo thing that I would do.
Speaker 2 (44:58):
We're coming right back with more of Bruce Hornsby.
Speaker 4 (45:05):
To me, it's interesting because so much of what you're
doing with jazz and a lot of dissonance is the
sort of thing that you have to really be careful
in bluegrass music. It doesn't you know, Western swing can
do a lot of that stuff, but bluegrass did you
find it was not confining?
Speaker 1 (45:23):
But no, not confining. I just I feel like there
are just some people coming to these skys wants to
be concerts who who wish I was not there. But
I'm not doing it for them. I'm doing it for
the groove Ricky and the guys, and they've responded so
deeply to that, and so we recorded and it's a
(45:43):
very beautiful version of that. So that was and then
then there's the other one two thousand and seven, same year.
Speaker 4 (45:51):
Yeah, you did your jazz trio, Yes Camp meeting.
Speaker 1 (45:58):
Christian Christian McBride, Jack d Jeanette Djenete, Yeah, what was outside?
So this is the origin story. I would run run
into those guys. I would go hear the Keith chain
at trio at Carnegie Hall with Gary Peacock on bass
and Jack playing drums, and I'd run into Jack backstage
and he would say, okay man, when's the hit. I say, well,
(46:23):
I'll let you know.
Speaker 13 (46:26):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (46:26):
Run into Christian around somewhere, and he'd say, okay man,
when's the hit. It as if they'd conspired, so I'd
said to them. To christ I would say to Christian, well,
when I figure out a way to do this to
make a jazz piano trio record, that is not just
(46:50):
me doing my Bill Evans or Chick career, or just
feeling the names red Garland Win and Kelly whatever, Bud Powell.
It's not me just doing my replication. Then I'll let
then then yeah, I'll call you then then then the
hit will happen. We'll schedule the hit. So it was
(47:10):
a bit of a project, a back burner project that
I would gradually work on over a three or four
year period and come up with certain certain things. It
felt felt fresh, felt original, and that's the word okay.
So I when I I came to them, I called
them both up and said, at a certain point in
(47:32):
two thousand and six or maybe late two thousand and five, hey,
I think I've got an idea I'm gonna And they said, okay,
please send us stuff. And so I did send them,
send them both the recording of me playing these seven
or eight non songs. Some were originals, some were reworkings
(47:55):
of old jazz chestnuts. And it took them a good
month to get back to me. It's a long it's
a loud silence, loud silent month. Some i'thing, Okay, they
don't like it. It's fine. Well they called me up
but together and they said, man, we really like this.
(48:16):
It's very fresh. It sounds original. It sounds like an
original take on this music. I said, well, okay, thanks
a lot. That's great. But they said, you're not making that.
You're not making on our playing level, and so so
(48:39):
there's that. I said, okay, I humbly replied, I got you.
We've got five months between the time from between now
and the time we're slated to do this down at
my house in Virginia. So give me those five months
and come on down there and if you if you
still feel the same way about my lack of ability,
(49:03):
then we'll just shake hands and call it, call it
a day. So I dealt with it. Luckily I didn't
have a ton going on, and they came down and
we started hitting, and they went, Okay, you've done You've
done the work.
Speaker 5 (49:20):
You got to back up. What was the work?
Speaker 1 (49:22):
Oh, the work was just learning how to okay, to
to to play. Well, here's a perfect example. So I
we played Giant Steps, which is one of the insane.
Speaker 13 (49:33):
Hallmarks of the of the literature.
Speaker 1 (49:57):
So I'm reharmonizing it in my own way, almost him like, okay,
(51:00):
so what I was just sold I was just slowing
over those my reharmonized semi re harmonization, and I had
to learn how to do that, but do it well now,
this is I haven't done that in years. So but
so I tried to keep it real simple so I
wouldn't just completely blow it. But so that was okay,
it wasn't great, but but so yeah, I said, if
(51:23):
I was going to make a record of doing that,
I need to do that times fifty and really get it.
So it's very because if it's you have to ingest it.
And because of the if you that's a slow tempo,
we went, you know like that, Yeah, that's I'm just
(51:59):
not on my under my fingers, you know so so
so that's what I had to do. I had to
I had to get to a point where it was
so free, play so freely and nail nail it.
Speaker 5 (52:13):
I should have asked you this earlier. Do you practice
every day?
Speaker 1 (52:15):
Oh?
Speaker 14 (52:16):
Hell?
Speaker 1 (52:16):
Yeah?
Speaker 14 (52:17):
How long?
Speaker 1 (52:17):
Hell? I practice? I probably do about two or three hours.
So for instance, right now, I'm working on music from
my new record, and I'll play you a little bit
of it. This is a song called Silhouette Shadows. I
(52:39):
was I love a Shastakovich piece for one of his
fugues and his Preludes and Fugues collection that he that
he produced beautiful. I have a Keith Charot record of
Keith playing the Shastakovich Preludes and fugues. So I love
the one in F sharp is number thirteen. I think,
(52:59):
I just I just love it. It's so beautiful. And
after fooling around with it for a while, I thought, well,
I would like to do my own version of this
of a semi fugue. So I did this when I
was scoring films for Spike Lee. I threw this in
there as he never picked it, which is okay. Then
(53:21):
a couple two or three years later, I started writing
for this record, and this thing had been lying around
for a little while, and I thought, let me try
to write a song with words to this music. So
I did, and it's on the record and it goes
like this.
Speaker 14 (53:41):
I'll try to play it.
Speaker 1 (54:02):
On TV.
Speaker 8 (54:03):
Watching from Boston Street into Southn's window as Nick's resides.
Speaker 1 (54:10):
Good, good thing. I'm tall, going back to my third
floor walk up.
Speaker 8 (54:19):
Sounds in the air, the numb couple beating each other
and dreaming of that summer.
Speaker 1 (54:25):
Sight above in my room, beating each other and screaming
that summer right above my tr watching morning sitcom shows
(54:46):
every day, and the Chief's housemen.
Speaker 7 (54:48):
I knew they were away, making sure they never noticed
that I had been there.
Speaker 1 (54:57):
Couldn't believe I was doing this was a needed a
break from the music school.
Speaker 8 (55:04):
Crime Let's set shadows ancient scenes and cryptic dreams, so
Lisen shadows a.
Speaker 1 (55:24):
Sort of remember in the general, like in the show
how Line of Harborn Good out shaded recollection One Life
in Reflection, I thing goes on from there, So that's
what I'm working on.
Speaker 4 (55:43):
Thank you so much for coming in.
Speaker 2 (55:46):
In the episode description, you'll find a link to a
playlist of our favorite Bruce Hornsby songs. Be sure to
check out YouTube dot com slash Broken Record Podcast to
see all of our video interviews, and be sure to
follow us on Instagram at the Broken Record pot. Broken
Record is produced and edited by Leah Rhodes, with marketing
help from Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer is
Ben Holladay. Broken Record is product of Pushkin Industries. If
(56:10):
you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing
to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that
offers bonus content and ad free listening for four ninety
nine a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple podcast subscriptions.
And if you like this show, please remember to share, rate,
and review us on your podcast app. Our theme music's
by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond.
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