¶ Intro / Opening
Pushkin.
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 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 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 the piano to talk about all of it. But they
¶ Discovering Musical Influences
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.
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 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, 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, 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 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 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.
Uh.
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 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? 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 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, 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 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. 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
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 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, 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 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 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, 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.
Has happened the good old days when one DJ in one city.
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 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,
¶ Success of "The Way It Is"
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.
And he was a big early influence on you. You didn't really start piano seriously until no, quite No.
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 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, so great?
Now what do you are?
There are there parts of his playing that showed up?
Then?
Not really?
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, I've been in influenced by Leon. I have a song called Country Doctor that goes like this, Yeah, that's necessarily lyon, but that's that's my stuff. That's something I developed later's too handed independence.
Think what was it about Leon Russell?
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 learn it from just standing here watching.
That You have relative pitch, Yeah, that's right.
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 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.
Playing on the day when I was born and he went down, so.
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.
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.
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, 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 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.
In my resolve, I move rock, maybe fall down.
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.
I'll move on up.
Above the hill to maybe fully five hour.
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.
And were you did you know theory back then?
Did you could you say, oh, I'm about to play you know?
I was learning it quickly, I was. I was totally
¶ Crafting Unique Sounds and Styles
involved in it, totally immersed in knowing the harm the theoretical aspect of harmonic movement chords.
We'll be back with more from Bruce Hornsby.
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.
Yes, I changed that, Okay, I changed So when.
You given all these influences, you had, all these people you had heard when you went in, you heard the song.
I don't know were you given chet music?
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.
By the way, we should say the name of the song, which is I Can't Make You Love Me?
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 electric piano. But I could have that wrong, so.
Right, uh I uh, I think it was basically uh.
So I changed it to.
So that that chord that you substituted in that first what did you turn it into from what that's.
What I turned it into is Yeah, yeah, so.
It was it was just it was just straight, yeah, very churchy.
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.
Okay, so now tell me what tell me what sound you wanted when you started in on the piano just then, not.
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 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 has something deep to me, a deep souls what I'm going for.
That version of the song also has a wonderful surprising chord at the end.
Yeah, well, I think that was there. I think that was there. I don't remember remember.
Precisely, but the uh, it's the uh measure of that.
Domind said, they have the sharp Yeah, yes, uh yeah, h m hmm. Yeah, that's exact thing.
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.
Oh is that right? It fades out like it fades.
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.
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.
¶ Collaborations and Songwriting Process
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.
Yeah, sure, how you came to to that piece?
Were there are there different influences on your song writing.
Back then?
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.
I'd say you're early.
You know, if I think of End of the Innocence or Valley Road, you you love your suspended chords?
Yeah, okay, right, I don't think, say into the Niss Value Road have a lot harmonically in common. One's just a straight.
Ahead there's not a chord, that's the chord, and then the NIS is just is a leg.
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.
But they both have the I guess, particularly some suspensions.
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.
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.
Everybody's saying I got to play like you now then you completely changed your style.
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, 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.
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.
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, 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 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, 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.
You know, uh, what's it called chordal harmony?
You know that sort of thing.
Can you give us just a quick definition chordal harmony chords and force?
Yes, yeah, the uh the interval of the fourth for so there's a.
Extended wow that sounds like my song lawn Talk clup one.
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 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 the morning zoo crowd.
Then later with I think Hothouse, Yeah, Spirit Trail. Right, you're changing takes, You're playing takes a very different.
That's right direction.
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
¶ Exploring New Directions in Music
on your laurels like most of your pop star friends, 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 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. 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 a spiritual record. So that's what I'm That's that's the thing, 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.
How did you go about that? Was it by writing the songs?
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.
But what do I have written right there? Sneaking Up on bud?
So what made you write it down?
I love the song?
Okay, I I heard the kind of Keith Jarrett left hand.
I didn't know. Yeah, well, I didn't know it came out of this exercise.
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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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
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,
¶ The Challenge of Musical Growth
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.
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.
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 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 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 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. 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.
But you've also you do play songs like that in your concert.
You've been able to bring your crowd.
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 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 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.
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.
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.
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 on it. Barren Ground is great, also using that same chords. Yes, I'm repeating myself.
Yeah, they're going to come up and say everybody wants that chord.
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.
Uh.
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 entire Pat Metheny Harbor Lights guitar solo, some of it playing over these crazy He's playing over that. It's hard
to do. He just nailed it because he's a freak of nature and I love him. And then I can't.
Remember the record.
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.
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 modern archetypes of each guy.
¶ Jazz and Bluegrass Fusion
And that's also two guys who like you just keep pushing it like Bailaflex, new stuff just keeps going.
Yeah, yeah, right, absolutely, So the Kindred Spirits did you.
Learn from playing with those guys? Did it change your playing?
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 my own on world with this.
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?
It's very disparate.
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.
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 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 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.
And what's he like to play with? What's he? What kind of a well?
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, 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
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 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.
And the song came ban on it like the times that we spent hiding out.
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.
Listen to the Manlin Rain, Listen to them music point.
Listen to My Hardbreak every time she runs away.
Listen to the Mangol. It a sad song, drifting. Listen to the tears roll down.
My face as she turns to go. So I played that for him and he went the son we have to record that, and because it was just something about
¶ The Art of Improvisation and Composition
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.
We're coming right back with more of Bruce Hornsby.
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?
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 very beautiful version of that. So that was and then then there's the other one two thousand and seven, same year.
Yeah, you did your jazz trio, Yes Camp meeting.
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, I'll let you know.
Uh.
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 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 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 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 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. 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 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, 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.
You got to back up. What was the work?
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.
Hallmarks of the of the literature.
So I'm reharmonizing it in my own way, almost him like, okay, 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 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 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.
I should have asked you this earlier. Do you practice every day?
Oh?
Hell?
Yeah?
How long?
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 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,
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 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.
I'll try to play it.
On TV.
Watching from Boston Street into Southn's window as Nick's resides.
Good, good thing. I'm tall, going back to my third floor walk up.
Sounds in the air, the numb couple beating each other and dreaming of that summer.
Sight above in my room, beating each other and screaming that summer right above my tr watching morning sitcom shows every day, and the Chief's housemen.
I knew they were away, making sure they never noticed that I had been there.
Couldn't believe I was doing this was a needed a break from the music school.
Crime Let's set shadows ancient scenes and cryptic dreams, so Lisen shadows a.
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.
Thank you so much for coming in.
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 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.