Questlove Supreme: Bruce Hornsby

Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio.

Ladies and Gentlemen. What's Up?

This is another episode of Court Love Supreme. I'm your host Quest Love Jenkins. We're We're Team Supreme today Shook Steve in the house. Hello, Hello, Quarantine Steve, Quarantine Bill.

Yeah, what's up?

Man?

How you doing?

Holding it down?

Okay it's asterisk or just definitive.

It holding it semi calling down. Everything's good. Uh, working on some music for the street all as well.

Okay, gotta keep the street tapping and h fan take a lot.

I'm good brother, I'm good man, doing the work as well. I can't complain.

Cool, cool, all right.

Bark Yesterday is a Grammy Award winning singer, songwriter, producer, composer.

He has actually come to us in many forms.

Of the past, real real, for real, either as a soloist or fronting one of his many projects sounds like Quesla, either a member of the range the Noisemakers at one point, Ambrosia and Ambrosia.

Yes, not really, but okay.

We'll take it.

We'll take it. You know, wait a minute, you know what, and I often do this. I'm not interrupting my own intro yes or no? All right, I'm a Soul trained collegist. Is that you on Soul Train with she and Easton?

That's hilarious. You've nailed me.

Yes, yes, yobs from Downtown.

No, I didn't even know.

I think like I have all the episodes that I keep them on loop. And like three weeks ago, she was on doing Sugar Walls and.

I was like, wait and that was you? Okay, okay, okay.

Well well, oh yeah, there's a funny story about it.

Look, I played with her for two years and and sure we did Soule Train and I out there looking like a complete clown.

Most likely I haven't seen that for years.

But I'll tell you what, as a as a parent of a Division one basketball player who's now a pro in Germany, I used that to uh.

For a great benefit.

He was.

He played My son, Keith played at LSU, and he was live on national TV his junior year maybe against testas A and l on ESPN one.

And he had a pretty rough game.

And we're back at the hotel, the Cook Hotel on LSU campus and he just bumming. He's really down, And I said, you know what, I'm going to change your mood right now, go to YouTube and look up Sheena Easton Strut and the China Easton sugar Walls featuring me looking like a complete idiot. And so he looked at his dad just sort of undulating around with funglasses on, and it just just fell out and his mood chains

I assure you that exaggerating lazy and gentlemen anyway.

You had say, I forgot we was still on the intro. Yeah, who's on a show?

Hold on, I never want played with CDs, did allot of second.

We don't even talk about his work with U, d J Neet Jack Dsonnet and my high school mate Christa McBride.

Yes Philadelphia schoolmates.

Yes, yeah, not to mention you know your your musicianship, your DNA is all over our favorites by Bonnie Ray Don Henley, so many projects.

This intro is going to be forever.

Y uh.

He played with Squeeze what yep when I don't know?

On Wikipedia, Just to be accurate, I played on one. I played on one of their records. A great record of Walk a Straight Line is a beautiful bet you know that one. No, it's it's a great not a hit, but it's a beautiful song.

Squeezehead.

What album is it on?

It's so called play Okay, early mid nineties and I played Accordion.

Yeah on this right, let.

Me just say the two words so we can start the episode. Bruce Hornsby the Quest Love Supreme. Thanks anyway, Yeah, we often fall in the rabbit holes even before we get the name of the artist.

Who cares. It's fine, Bruce Hornsby, Easton veteran.

So right now you're celebrating the release of your twenty second record.

Correct, Yes, that's true, sir.

So without my knowledge of your your your Deadhead years, can I can I assume that the fact that you have about I believe it is twenty six live albums, that's the less.

And that you learned from playing with the Grateful Dead.

Well, okay.

People always ask me, how did playing with the Dead change your musician, ship, changed your approach, et cetera. I was always an improvising musician. I went to school. I was one of those music school geeks. I started off at Berkeley for two semesters, but then I went to University of Miami. Sun Tan you known to a lot of people for a year paid vacation for rich Nordon kids, Northern white kids. Anyway, I came out with that background, and so the improvisational aspect of the Dead was not

He was a rocket during the Garcia years.

Oh yes, the last spot I played with him, just for twenty months or so. I played about one hundred shows with them from eight from nineteen ninety to ninety two. We'd opened for them before that.

Okay, Oh so you played the ninety two Okay.

Yeah, but then I was sitting with them when they were geographically close to me up through ninety five, up right up to his death.

Okay, so yeah, I went to one Garcia show. I think in Houston when Branford Marcellus was singing with them.

Yes, my guy, Yes, Branford and I played together with it dead quite often. It's his birthday's coming up here pretty soon, Fellas, So maybe you should shout his ass out.

Yeah, are you on without a net the deadline?

No, that's Branford's on that, okay.

To respond to the twenty six live albums to which you're referring, that's albums, I mean they're just available online. There's no CDs made of those. But frankly, we're like a lot of bands. I write the songs, we record the songs, and then we learned how to play the songs. So consequently the live thing expands everything that we started with.

On the original record.

And so so quite often live is the best way to hear us because it's very loose, it's very free. Branford sits in with this quite often because he knows that we're winging it like crazy because I don't know what I'm gonna do. So if I don't know what I'm gonna do with the band, guys definitely don't and it makes it great fun.

Is there a pressure for you to make a memory each and every night knowing that some of these fans will follow you like there. To me is no more loyal fan base than you know, anything associated with the dead.

Yes within it.

So yeah, that's how did that affect your actual the way that you put on shows?

I think I probably started taking a little more out than I had been doing. You know, I was always improvising, but I got a lot freer, much to the chagrin of a lot of my fans. You know, when you come out having these big hit radio songs, you acquire an audience that I call sort of a soft core one, people who are only there to hear the songs. They know, yeah,

Now.

Wait, you're saying that you've gone shows without playing maldern Rain or the way it is.

Or yet, well not many I've been.

I've become a lot more kind about it in my snessence here in my sixties, but there have been shows. But the only only times that I didn't do that was when I felt the audience was so jacked, so responsive, so deeply involved in what we were doing without playing those old war horses, that I could get away with it, and it wasn't a problem. Of course, I still get a couple of nasty letters from people who again are so core fans and they would just come to hear

I apologize to that.

Mat That is actually the g is the first time we've ever heard the word dough decophonic used on questloads and that is amazing, and I'm.

Happy to be a first to give you all a first here.

Yeah, I saw you play one downtown and uh, there was a lot of feedback and it.

Was in the key of F.

So so they played everything in the key of F. And for that it was fucking hilarious because every song was just in F, no matter what in what grange. They took everything into F and so like because they kept out feeding back and so like, so is not to be a total They played everything in f and it was hilarious.

Well, look, if you're a musician of any worth, you should be able to transpose instantly.

You can't. You're not going to play with me, and so, uh, what's that?

We share a guitar player, Doug Doug Derryberry, who used to be a noise maker many years ago, is sesame Streets guitar player.

So well, not that many years ago, Doug.

Doug was with me for fifteen years and I made a change about maybe six five or six years ago. But Doug, it's a great asset, a great utilitarian sort of an orchestral guitar player. It's a it's a great New York guitar player named John Leventhal, most well known for the Sean Colvin Great Records and Levinthal had played on my sixth record, Spirit Trail in ninety eight, and I wanted somebody to give me eleventh alien sound, and so I got Doug and he did a great job

So your musical roots. I know that you started out in Virginia. What city were you born in?

I was born in Richmond, and I grew up in Willisburg, fifteen miles down the road, and I still this is where I am now. I moved back after ten years in la I moved back in nineteen ninety. So I've been here for back here for thirty years and we're in my garls.

Yeah, you can have that shit.

I went there once. They took us on the trip there like third grade one time, and like that was it?

No roots show there our get the Spontine the the one we did like one.

O six in part live.

Oh h yeah, so how did you how did you go over?

How did they.

Our song?

Break you off with nice for about four minutes and then the rest of the show was like.

Okay, they're just they're just out there a little.

They were like, where's mister cheeks? That we're done? So yeah, I can relate.

I've been about what about Colonial Williams Williams, Vergon.

Well, we made it our self appointed job as local townies to pelt tourists and local College of women marry students with water balloons, and so.

We would ride through town and just wear an ass out.

Uh Jesus christ Man.

Yeah, our karma was probably not so good then hopefully improved. But uh we actually got stopped by the cops and take it to the cop the police station our senior year in high school. Uh, some young, well appointed young College of women marry grad students. We just pelted him and he flagged the cops down and we were through. So that's but yeah, that was as exciting as it got in the little last town of Winnsburg, which I love.

Obviously I moved back here, but yes, Williensburg is my town.

Yeah, yeah, Worns. We got Karen, Okay, I'm right down the street.

Yeah, I'm I'm in North North Carolina, born and raised where where I'm in Raleigh? And I saw your son. He went to Ashville, right, he went to Yes, yeah, in the mountains.

Yes, you saw him planc State, yeah, man, Yeah, he put twenty three on Ency State and then they recruited him. Mark Gottfried recruited him, but he picked LSU and it worked out great for him. But yes, Robbie's a good old town. We like playing that museum, the outdoor.

One had art museum out uh huh.

Yeah, it's nice, it's really nice. And you know Branford lives in Durham.

Yeah, man, Bradford.

So Bradford he actually I'm I graduated from North Clina Central and Branford taught there. He was there the artist in residence for years and h he's just super cool dude, man.

Yeah, the best. He's also a fellow prankster with me. So I could talk about that, but I'll I won't do it because he may not approve. We'll see.

What was your first musical memory.

Well, it's not a memory when someone's recorded you at a at age three or four. You know, you don't, at least I don't remember that. But since the tapes around then you feel like you remembered it. There's a tape of me singing hound Dog at age about three and a half or four. Yeah, crock and all the time, you know all that business. Uh and some other songs too, with the Wind and the Rain in her Hair by Pat Boone. Our parents were turning us on to this stuff.

But yeah, siblings or was it just you?

Yes, I'm the emotionally disturbed middle child, and.

So yes, I have an older brother and a younger brother, and uh I it's it's interesting since I was in the middle, I was really close with each of them and they were friendly always, but not like not like relationship that I had with each of them. My older brother was the original deadhead in our family, Bobby Hornsby, and I used in my freshman year of college, I was a little Brucey playing Fender Rose and singing lead in a dead cover band called Bobby High Test and

He wrote songs for several years, but now he's out of it. But yeah, they're I was. I was.

I'm the middle guy, the middle little student. I was a jock as a kid, though I was into music a little bit, but I mostly wanted to hoop.

Yeah, I was gonna say, your your relationship with basketball. I'm a Philadelphian, So yeah, it has been noted how your involvement in the life of Alan Iverson, some could say literally saved his life. At the time, it's too curious, like what was it about him? Because the thing is that I'm not one, I'm not a sports guy, but I'm still trying to understand the mentality of college sports fans and how they see that just as important as

Well, I think addressing first the college versus pro thing. You've got a whole lot of people, for instance, in the southern part of the United States where say, in basketball, they're only maybe they're only outside of Florida, there's only the Atlanta Hawks and the New Orleans Pelicans. So for most of this vast area. College sports is king. That's one reason why the SEC, I think is so huge, because the only game into and the a SEC too, so those are the only games in town.

And that Having said that, what what did you just ask me?

Other than that, what made you personally get involved with Alan iverson situation?

Oh?

Okay, okay?

So well, Chuck as we call him, Bubba Chuck, that was Chuck was his name in locally, at least in the hood of Hampton. When they when he got sent to jail, graffiti all over Hampton said free Chuck. I just got chills thinking of going down and seeing all this because he was a beloved figure. Even as a kid, people just knew he was special. There's an AAU program in our area, legendary program called the Blue Williams League Boo Wiams Summer League, and Chuck was a star in that.

So he was just as good at football as he was in basketball.

Well, it's arguable who can say, he was just fantastic at both. So you know what he is saying, greater, greater, He was just great in both.

What was his position in football?

He was a quarterback Okay.

Yeah, and he was so fast and he had all that juke, all those all those changing directions. You know, he'd go this way and then go there. You just he was crossing people off on the football field. So the story goes that I went to see him played at Fort Eustace. We have a very great military presence, huge military presence in our area. In one of the bases is Fort Ustess. They had a Christmas tournament. Chuck

And uh So.

Then after his junior year where he led his team to the state championship in football and then in basketball, he was in a bowling alley in pecosin Virginia, a little an area of Newport News, Porhampton, I guess, and uh well, a brawl broke out and he and a bunch of others, uh were arrested for brawling in a bowling alley and also maving by mob. So he was He and three or four of his friends were convicted and sent to jail. And I thought it was a travesty,

Doug Wilder.

And he was and he was the governor then, and I had done some work for him, some events for him, so I started lobbying him through his chief of staff as a friend of mine. And I don't know, I was just one of many probably to do this. But but Wilder, around Christmas time of say ninety two, Wilder, Doug Wilder pardoned Allen. Now he should have pardoned everybody.

Oh, that's right.

I had told him earlier about that. Anyway, I forget the exact timeline. But this guy calls me and so I had gotten Spike when when when Chuck was in jail, I said, Spike, you know you know what this kid I told you about when now he's in jail. And Spike said, yes, I've seen it on ESPN know all about it. I said, will you do me a favor and send him just pat Carre package from Spike Lee. It might pick him up when he's at the City Farm in Newport News.

Wow.

Now is there any truth that you Oh no, god, that.

It's not just one game. It was three. But you know, I'm just setting the record straight. I don't need to talk shit. I don't care about living about making that some moment. I never bring it up. I never talk about it, but look, it's out.

Well though, look it just happened.

Maybe I caught him rusty because he had obviously not been playing a whole lot of ball for the past four months. But I had one of those days where I just couldn't miss, you know, I just was just just just netting my ass off, and and we were playing a game. Maybe he was not aware of this game. It's perfect for him.

Really. It helps the smaller guy, and he's a little small shorter than me.

Uh.

It's it's the way the pros play.

You start the top of the key and you can either pick a two dribble or three dribble maximum, which basically means the big guy can't just back in, back in, back into the bracket, throws up a little last land to a pitiful land hook and and do that all the time. So you've got to make a move, you gotta you know, you've got to commit and shoot the ball.

So that's that's what we played.

Of course, he dunked on my head about five times. I mean, you know, he's a freak. He was a freaky athlete. Anyway, there are lots of witnesses and I could name them all for you, so including including his high school cook. But you know, what, the hell with it, I don't care. I love I love Chuck and uh, you know, maybe maybe he let me.

You'd have to ask him.

Okay, Yeah, there's there's Uh there's a friend of Pharrell's who I guess went to high school with with Alan, and like one night they were at a party for the Neptunes, and you know it's like they're in the nightclub and you know, the guy was trying to bring up like old high school times and you know Alan was like, oh yeah, way back in the day, like really not trying to talk basketball when you're in a nightclub situation.

Well, this guy like insists, like whatever high school.

Game they played, like oh boy, he had walked or something, or like he did some violations. I don't know what happened. But the next thing I know, Farrell told me, tells me that this guy grabs his basketball and he's outside in the parking lot and it's pouring down rain and he's playing against Alan Iverson's roll's voice, like he's just in front of the rolls voice, like trying to cross as if that roll's voice is Alan Iverson, Like for no reason at all.

Just oh, he was out there alone, playing out there.

Alone, just like playing a car trying to cross the roles voice like it was parked, like Alan was nowhere.

You know. It was just that is one of those moments that's sad. Really, yeah, it was so for you.

What was your what was the moment that really drew you into your music career right now?

Like, well, what what was the moment that made.

Me say, I mean as younger.

Yeah, exactly, there made me say, okay, the hell with the standard routine, I'm casting my lot with the muse. Tho's that moment you're you're asking about. Okay, Well, I went to one year of real college. I was a bit of a school hopper. I went to three colleges, University of Richmond the one sort of lost year that made and then Berkeley and Miami.

So that was a year that made me.

Realize, Okay, this, this is what I need to do. But I was such a late starter because I had been a jock as a kid and that's what I cared about. But I started playing piano in eleventh grade, and so kind of late stage seven.

Seven started playing piano in eleventh grade.

Yeah, yeah, I had a lot of catching up to do, and yes started How that's just freaking well okay, so how uhause?

I mean you're really good. So I just think that.

You can't have started that late. Yeah that's crazy.

Well, look, it's all about it's all about putting in the time, as anyone knows. As you know, I when I once I got into it, I got deeply involved. And when I went to college, I practiced for several years for from five to eight hours every day. So if you're willing to do that every day, Christmas Day, New Year's Day, then you're going.

To catch up a little bit.

All the oh, I do feel like I love classical music, but my technique because I was such a late starter. It's it's commonly said that if you want to be a classical virtuos or a concert pianist, you have to start at age three, four, five, six, you know, no late, no later than that, because the demands are so intense. And I really feel that, to be honest, I always going men, bitch you sorry, as you know, to myself, and so.

So that's that's a regret. But hey, everyone's life path is different.

I was just a guy who like like playing sports first and so got into this later. So yeah, but I got deeply into it and went to music school and and got a lot out of that too. So that so that's my story. Just started started late, but couldn't stop. I just I just had to do it at all times.

Why did you leave Berkeley?

I went Berkeley because I wanted to practice four hours a day and they had a limited number of practice rooms. So if you wanted to practice for today, you had to wait about six and a half hours to do that because they kick you out.

It was a good a line of sign.

Up sheet in the line they kick you out after two hours for you know, for good reason, I guess, because there's got a lot of people waiting.

Yeah, that's right.

So and also since I was late to start, I felt I needed to. I'd amassed all this information, you know, this theoretical knowledge at Berkeley, Heart, take taking, harmony, et cetera, and I thought I needed some time to really really assimilate and deal with this and really ingest it. So I lived in a farmhouse outside of Willnsburg, and that was when I started my eight hours hours day regiment. I played this little cocktail piano bar and at night to make a buck and shed on this old upright.

And then I went to Miami from there.

Were you learning just by ear or were you reading at that time?

Well, I started playing by ear because it came fairly naturally to me. I started because of two guys. My older brother went to New England prep school, and we were just local Virginia hooples who listened to the top fourtyest station in the soul station. We didn't get the underground stuff, you know, the stations where back then you could hear Miles Davis next to Hendricks, next to Joni Mitchell, you know whatever. And so so he turned me on too. I know this sounds crazy, to think that this could

Good, Good.

Gonna Go, all that stuff. You're hearing that in the background where Sam's cooking, the soul Sterriers are singing that killer gospel.

That's where that came.

Yeah, that's the right gospels, that's right gospel quartets. And so between Elton and Leon, I was hooked, and so I was.

I was learning those by ear.

But my mom, see, my grandfather was a musician for a living in Richmond, and he was the supervisor of music in the public schools, the pubic schools system, and then uh he uh was also the uh the theater organists at the local mosque. If you went to the state jc's convention, you you'd be the guy over in the corner playing Las Turkey in the star some old pretty convincedrul ship. But uh so anyway, uh, she my mom look at me, and she's my hands just looked terrible.

Cetera, all the color tones and all that. So that my mom was good for me.

And so that's how that happened.

Real quick, What year were you at Berkeley and were there any other notable students that were there at the time that was in the year that you went.

Yeah, Well, I've always heard it's a it's a badge of dishonor to actually graduate from Berkeley, because I've.

Heard it too. You only go for a little bit. Yeah, yeah, I mean, you ain't getting a gege, Yeah.

You don't have a gig. That's right.

That means you're saying yeah, you know, so okay. I went for summer and fall of seventy four, but I was in the accelerated program. So I crammed two years into two semesters and let me see anybody who was there who really emerged. Pat Metheene was there, but he had come from Miami. He had been a student at Miami, but he was so bad he became a teacher like instantly.

You could go. I would go.

I had enough money to go see hearsay Bill Evans or Horrace Silver one of the week nights. But I would go and listen through the wall on Boylston Avenue, Boyston Street, just to hear more So it was amazing to be able to hear all these people, all these legend Cannonball added Lee Miles, on and on and on.

Was it? How heavy was the competition there?

Because I know, especially now, like if we're anywhere near that campus in Boston, like or at least the musicians I see now looking on YouTube or whatever, I feel like there's such a not a cut through, but a need to out floss each other into in terms of like you know, overplay and yeah, everything is that the story of Berkeley, just like, yeah, try to.

I really wasn't good enough to be perfectly honest with you. I really wasn't good enough to really emerge into the scene where I was hearing the great guys. I was fairly mid level and uh so I don't remember, and I also don't remember anyone emerging to have a great career.

Now.

When I went to Miami, that's different.

Okay, When I was at Miami, it was sort of the letter stages of the golden era of University.

Of Miami right when I hit.

When I got there, Pat Pat had been there, Jocko had been teaching near Jocko Obastorius.

Uh oh he held a job.

Wow, Yeah, I didn't know, well it.

Was personally it was private lessons.

I'm sure it was loose hair, can't I can't make it today listen to you know that that kind of thing. But the Dixie Drags, you guys know, those guys were Steve Morse sort of like I don't know, like virtuosic rock and roll, bluegrass or something that Steve Morris was crazy that the virtuosity level was high.

Uh.

But then uh, Carmen Lundy, Rob Watson but known as Bobby Watson now uh and uh and and Carmen's little brother, Kurt Lundy. I played in Carmen's band. That was sort of a rite of patches. If you were emerging as one of the better players in the hierarchy of the school, you got to play in Carmen Lundy's band. You guys know Carmen, right, you guys know I. Yeah, okay, so she's had a nice career as a jazz singer, and uh yeah, Bobby Watson, Carmen pat pat Metheenie of course.

Uh.

And you're looking at it more serious jazz sort of road or just you're going for the whatever it took you.

Well, I was just going with the inspiration, but it was pretty tall tale at that time. I would go to the record store and I'd buy an Ornette Coleman record and a Joni Mitchell record, and I'd always find myself listening to the Joni Mitchell record more. You know, I get a ROBERTA. Flack record and a Hubert Laws record, say and the flute.

Player, yeah and so on record.

Yeah, yeah, it's it's fantastic and so but I always I thought to myself, well, I think I really like this jazz music. It's a it's a great intellectual pursuit. But I I think my heart was in in in songs and songs with words. And so when I got out of Miami, we put together a band up in Virginia and started down the long road. Eight years later, I got signed to our Sia Records at age thirty.

So it was wow, over, let's back that up. Six years eighty two, you and you joined Ambrosia.

No, but I didn't.

That's a that's a fallacy on Wikipedia whatever.

Oh so you had nothing to do with No.

No, they were great friends of mine.

Okay, I was discovered the aforementioned band we put together in Virginia after Miami. After I graduated, we were playing around the local area and we where we're playing bars and lounges where you're you know, you expected to play shake your booty and brick house and all that stuff. So we actually acquired an audience who would come to

So we walked in.

My drummer and I were both sort of big guys. I'm big, bony ask guy, but my drummer is a big, strong guy. And we walk in and found Mike McDonald in the lobby. We went up to him and said, hey, Mike with the baddest motherfuckers in his town, and we're playing right.

Over here and you should come here.

So he says, well, I will if I can. I'm going to the movies. But so sure enough he came.

Everyone could do a.

Mike McDonald opression.

We've had him on the show. We actually had him.

He was doing a depression of himself.

Well he's a beautiful guy, as you know, he's just the sweetest person, so self a face humbled. Anyway, he came and we were just raging at it, and he invited us over to the long story short, he kind of he sort of discovered us and helped us meet some people in LA and that's what got me out to LA.

About a year and a half later, a lot of us moved to California.

Did you ever end up working with Michael McDonald after that on projects or anything.

No, But our claim to fame was that Mike McDonald and whether the Doobie Brothers were playing some PBS special and live thing and he was wearing a Bruce Hornsby band T shirt and so that was of course, that was a huge thing for us. We thought that was beautiful.

But to no avail again. Years later I got signed.

Oh but yeah, right, this is from moving to LA. What year did you move to LA?

Nineteen eighty Yeah, okay, graduated seventy seven from UM and then two and a half years around the local scene from Virginia Beach to Richmond with Willisburg in the middle, and then moved, uh to LA.

Well, obviously I know what prompted to move to La. Oh oh, but you know.

You got we got onto this because you asked me about Ambrosia.

So yes, okay.

So the opening act for the Dewey Brothers and on that tour was Ambrosia, and so they came to the gig too, and we became friends with them.

And when we moved we went to LA.

Later that summer we slept on some of those guys floors, and so they became friends with us. And then about eighty three eighty two, eighty three eighty four, they had made a record called Rhode Island and very venturous, sort of prog rock record because a lot of everyone knows the hits make a wish baby, how much I feel yet, but really their their heart lay in in the uh the more progressive.

You know that that kind of thing, and I liked that too.

So they made a record called Rhode Island, and uh, I wasn't on it, but I wasn't doing much then, and they said, hey, why don't you come be in a video?

So now I'm outing myself again.

I know that I know what you're up to here, because now you're making me admit to another laughable performance on a video that is unfortunately out in the world.

But you know what, do I care? I look hilarious again, So if you want extra I see now.

I started off as a video pitiful and so that's all I did with him.

I was just in that video. The Rhode Island.

Record didn't really do much commercially, and so they kind of broke up the band, and uh, but right around that time, I was starting to get my own thing going, and soon enough I finally got my chance.

So what was what was pounding the pavement like in Los Angeles between nineteen eighty and eighty six when you finally got your deal? Well you have what was what was the steps of not the steps of heartbreak?

But I mean, what was it like back then?

Well, you'll have you'll I'll have to set the scene by remembering the pop music trend of the time.

The early eighties were just chock a block with new wave music.

Guys in skinny ties and the kind of haircut buzz whatever they had groups.

Like you, well, I didn't have. I didn't have any of that.

I looked just like some Schmendrick who you know, sold sold coffee somewhere.

I mean, I I just was totally not this. The pictures of me are pretty funny. Well if I just pictures of me now are probably pretty funny too.

But anyway, that so I was really I'm trying to take the picture that I was really a fish out of water stylistically, you know, for that I was wrong for the times. But then maybe I kind of caught a wave in this way. Maybe that's why I got signed.

But you laugh, Okay, I get it.

This kind of sorry, it's kind of interesting that Paul Atkinson signed. You have he's from The Zombies, which was a keyboard centric band.

Yeah, Rod Argent, exactly.

Yeah, so he might have had a taste for that, an.

Affinity for a keyboard or dominated pop yet. So anyway, that's what happened, and then we met our first record and it was a total fluke. The Way It Is was thought to be a B side. There's lots of stories like this, This is not rare. Rod Stewart's Maggie May, for instance, one of the iconics that was thought to be a B side as well.

So you're saying the Way It Is was kind of an afterthought.

Like here, Well was the title I titled the record that the record our first record was called The Way It Is? But again, a song about racism with two, not one, but two improvised piano solos is not this formula for pop radio, you know, and so at all. But it broke on the BBC BBC Radio one broken England, then throughout Europe, then throughout the rest of the world, and then here and so I was really lucky, man.

And so yeah, I was good. It's a I call it a wonderful accident, a great fluke.

I want to ask you before we even get to the actual crafting of the way it is. I just got to know, how did you avoid, like eighty six would have been a very tempting year patch wise for you to fall into Yamaha d X seven itis with those like fake.

Road sounds and whatnot. Yeah, I did, and I hate no one is such a strong piano player, Like, how did you avoid falling into that?

Because literally every other hit was just peppered with the DX seven fake Rhodes bell sound.

How did you avoid that?

I thought it was the horror. I thought it was horrible.

I was not.

I just I didn't want to make that sound. And look, it's what I do, it's what I did. And so again I made this tape with no regard to that. That's why I said, it's the least commercial attempted tape that I ever that I made. And uh so so it was again it was it was honest, and it was maybe fresh, and so it's easy to Monday Morning quarterback to me was just a wonderful accident.

Yeah, that was a record, man, the way it is, and I don't know, you know, you said it was a B side and it was kind of a thing

What do you think you know? And and and it just always resonated with me. And I think even the.

Mirrors one about you know, the d X seven, that kind of plastic keyboard kind of sound that was hot at the time.

One of the things that always took out to me that you were actually playing a real piano.

And I mean I was, I mean got I was probably like seven eight whatever when it came, but but I remember it vividly, and that was just always one of my favorite songs. And you know, all the times it's sampled and everything. I mean, it was just I just always thought that was just a gorgeous song.

Well, how about a fast car like Tracy Chapman. Did you like that when?

Yeah, of course yeah, But do you do you think growing up in Richmond sort of prompted you to craft the song and the way that you did, because again, I mean, people really weren't especially with uh, I meant barely with with hip hop.

I mean hip hop really.

Wouldn't wasn't starting to get in your face for real, for real until eighty seven eighty eight. Right, Yeah, so I meant to even bring up something as topical or whatnot.

Do you think that's just experience experiences in Richmond, Virginia, or or like what prompted that?

Well, I think it's just growing up in a small town. Yes, Williamsburg, which is fifty miles for Richmond. So I have small more of a small town feeling in Williamsburg. And look, it's just it's just based on my upbringing. I was the only white dude on the basketball team in high school and that was just the best experience for me. My old teammates are still my hanging pals in town.

Here. We go out and talk shit and have a laugh and get some beat all for years now.

It's just beautiful and so I'll shout out Lawrence Jones, Keith Drewett, Pebe Martin, Alonzo Dandridge Algae.

I could keep naming them.

So those are my guys. Uh And so it was a very intense time. I came in just after integration, just after the first couple of years. But it was it was still sort of a fraud scene. It was was definitely attention in the air. And uh, but I don't know, I embraced it. They embraced me, My teammates, They my teammates embraced me, and uh and and spin ever thus so uh so I I just wrote that song based on my my upbringing in Williamsburg.

I was curious to know what was it like working with Huey Lewis as a producer, Like, what was I mean, we knew him as an artist, but what was he like kind of behind the boards and in working in that capacity?

Well, he he produced three songs on the record, one of which I changed completely after the record. The original version of the record has a band version of this song, the River Runs Lot. I just thought it wasn't doing the song justice, so I stripped it all down and it made it a keyboard vocal record. Hughuey is one of the great guys, and he was He was a big cheerleader for me, kind of like Mike McDonald had been.

Then RCA asked me to just be Bruce Hornsby.

So I compromised on Bruce Hornsby and the Range. But it didn't help us. We didn't get signed by Epic. But that just shows you Hughey's real intense feeling for what I was doing. And as a producer, we just had a great time in the studio and we did a song about this old horror this old horrorouse in the countryside in Willisburg.

He called down the road tonight and he he produced. He produced that song. He should have cuted himself. He'd have had a hit with it.

I think, yeah, I could imagine hue Lewis sing about whole houses that.

Better than I.

Yes, I think you're right more better suited with with with the shock of or you know, I don't know if it shocks you to have your first single totally come out the out the box as across the board hit pressure wise, what was that like?

Uh?

To be like, how did your life change as far as the results and you know, of having that hit single and then suddenly being ubiquitous because it's.

Not like you had a hit single.

I mean this song is you know, it's lasting.

Yet when you said shock, I thought you were gonna ask me about my Shaka song.

I didn't get there yet. Yeah, I didn't get there yet. About to be there everything.

Every time I come to and play with you, guys you're keyboard player, somebody in your bend says, can we play love me still?

So I'll get with you, which I love.

Yeah.

I have a good, a good story about you and that song on Fallin. But that's that's about about nine years later. So obviously this is a full dose of pop stardom. That's you know, smacking me in the head. And to be honest, I was pretty bad at it, mostly because when you're when you're making when you're having success at top forty, at least in America. Oh and absolutely in Europe. It's sometimes even sillier over there, with all the lip syncing shows you have to be on.

So here I am, and.

Next to me is Tiffany, and next to me is Debbie Gibson on the other side, and then there's new kids, kids on the block, and I'm going, man, what's wrong with this picture?

It's me?

And so it just didn't fit. I just I didn't know how to handle it. I should have just taken the piss out of it, as the Brits would say, and just made it into a big joke.

But then people that have got mad at me, and I'd be.

Drawing stupid things signing different names. I started.

I just did that everyone.

Yeah, well I did that for a little while.

But I got tired of suffering the slings and arrows of disgruntled fans. Who would go, oh, come on, man, take it seriously. We really like you, you know, And so then you go, you know what, I'm the dick here, and so sorry, you're right, you're right. But but basically it was I was not a good fit for that thing. And so the second record we made was very much

Just just wait.

And so then I started taking it out and my third record, I had Wayne Shorter on the record and Bayla Fleck and Oh Charlie Hayden Nig say wow, way to go uh, And so then the letters really started cutting. Uh. But but I so I just never looked back because I never I never trusted hit radio anyway.

I knew was sort of ephemeral and not going to be around for me.

Because I again, they hit off the second record was the song this aforementioned song.

Valley Road. I'm really blowing.

I'm playing like McCoy tyner chordal harmony in the left hand seven egg. I got the come, you know, just emphatic, demonstrative stuff, and it's on the radio. My my musician friends could not believe what I was getting away with. And I didn't get away with it for long, just those two times and kind and then that was it.

It's kind of weird for me because all right, so I'm slightly older than Fante.

So like in my mind though, I think, even to this day, if.

I asked myself, I still consider Henley's end of the Innocent mm hmm kind of like your fourth single.

Yeah, well it's filing drumming that you know all over again.

Yeah, Like I still feel like it's it's I never consider that a Don Henley song, Like to me, that's like your song.

And it's your and you're not DNA print.

Yeah yet.

I don't want to sound like a suit like the suit by on the an R Guy.

But you know, you could have you could have just served them of like you could have served at least nineteen of them like hotcakes, like why did you I okay breaks on it like.

Well, you asked me if I felt pressure to come up with hits or something like that us and I didn't really answer it.

But I can do it now.

Because I had this big hit with a song that no one thought was anything. I really felt that no one at the record company felt they knew what a Bruce Hornsby hit was supposed to sound like. So I took that as total license to be free and and and write songs about interracial romances and the girl who got pregnant, on and on so uh so and and then I never got pressured from RCA. They were really

But it was okay.

So back back in the eighties, when the myth of winning the Best New Artists was an actual that's the curse, Yes.

How did you feel when your name was called?

I frankly was so clueless at the time that I didn't start hearing about that curse until after we'd won it.

And so, so how did I feel?

I've thought that, well, this is great, but you know, I'm a three time winner, but I'm a ten time loser. Just so you just set the record straight, it's a pretty it's a pretty sorry batting average three for thirteen.

But yeah, how did I feel? I didn't know about it.

When I've heard about it later, I thought, well, whatever happens, I'm certainly it seems to me looking back on my career that I had this success and then I've been trying to rid myself of that audience ever since, because well.

I'll ask this question, then, is your best new artist? Is it on the mantel piece or is it a doorstopper.

It's neither.

It's down the bottom shelf of a little a little little case that that that houses old scrap books.

And the three Grammys. You know, they they grew with the through the years.

You know.

My second win was the Best Bluegrass Record, and the third win was with Branford the song we did for the Olympics Barcelona, Mona back then. And uh, I think people just voted for us because Kenny g had won for a hundred years and they wanted somebody.

Else to wow.

Bruce Horse the problems.

I love it exactly, exactly, not a problem.

Just you talk about working also with U with Bonnie Ray as well, because that's your.

Yeah. Look, she's my big sister in music. Uh we we became tight. She was a big fan of my early records and subsequent records.

Uh and uh so.

She I would see her at parties in La after I had hits. Of course, not I'm invited to these slickster parties, which was yeah, fun, it was fun. She's a lovely person. She sent me a fan letter one time and it was so sweet. So I'm all.

For Debbie Gibson she's a talented person too, so that's fantastic. Yeah.

So anyway, Bonnie Uh asked me to play on her record her I guess it was second record she made with Don was and Uh producing, and all of a sudden, I for a little little time there, I was sort of Don was his boy. I played on a Segur record, and a Bob Dylan record, and a Body Rate record, all in the all w just a few months period when I was still living in LA my latter days in l A. But that record was just one of

Then they have you have you over dubbed the piano.

And he told me later he kept trying to dress it up, maybe strings, I don't know, maybe a little hornted, And finally he just he realized he took all the faders down in the mix and just put on those original four elements drums, bass, election, piano, accousia, piano, and vocal, and it just resonated, So it was very We.

Might have cut two or three tracks so fast.

And look, I consider that to be Bonnie's iconic hit record and the one that will be around forever.

So look, how could I not be proud of being a part of that.

It was just and and she's the greatest anyway, she's She's sent me some crazy lude uh to Twitter thing today, you know, so we're she's She's a hilarious, great, just beautiful woman.

Do you think there was something with you guys kind of understand each other because or I guess kind of the creative kinship that you guys had, because Bonnie was also someone that didn't really hit paydirt in her career until much later, you know, even later than me. Yes, yeah, you know what I mean. Do you think that kind of played a role with you guys understand each other?

Yeah, it could.

I think basically we have similar musical interests and she's one of the great singers, one of the great soulful singers, and I like soul music. I'm not one of the great soul singers, but I love it and so so look, I think we just connect personally.

She likes to have a laugh and I do too. But anyway, it's just like I said, she's my big sister. That's is it all to me?

Bruce?

How does how does your mindset change when you're going from like side manning Bonnie Ray to like playing your own shit? Or is it just the same approach, because like, I can't make you love me. It's like a fairly simple harmonic situation. At the end of the d I change, I changed.

I'm sure you did that song, so I almost feel like you produced it even though you did.

I'd love to hear it before you sat down to play it, but I heard. I'm sure. That's a whole other situation.

But the chords were more standard. You know, I'm a Bill Evans fanatic. You know, I love all that. I love that French impressionism, harmony, reveil whatever, and uh so I'm always interested in maybe finding a place for that I called I had to find a fine figure out a fascial way to describe my style because people are always asking me. They always say, well, we can always tell it's you, and why do you think that is? And I say, well, I think it's a sort of

So I don't know.

That's I don't know if I answered your question.

That makes total sense because even when I hear something you you play something like I really love your take on Nola's thing for She's got to have it, and just the way you play it, it's like, oh my god, it is.

It's gorgeous.

Man.

So I love it sounds like hearing you say that, because yeah, right, you know that's my thing. If you're gonna do that, do a cover. And in that case, Spike's Dad's great original theme Bill Lee, and I wanted to, you know, make it my own.

That's what.

Why why do a cover if you're not going to try to spin it and do it and not replicate what's come before? What what's the point of that? So yeah, thanks, man, I was proud of the and I did it pretty fast. I gave him three takes and and Spike used the right one to me, he's the one I liked the most, and so yeah, that's good. That's but we've seen since we seem to be going chronologically. Then we can go back to to ninety five where we were talking about Papathenas.

Wait a minute, is one more thing, one more important part you missed? Okay, you just banded the group? Everyone went grateful Dead. So how how was that? Like, hey guys, I'm going over here, you guys take care of Like what was.

The Well, it wasn't exactly like that.

I joined the Dead in nineteen ninety and the Range was split apart in ninety two, but so probably by joining the Dead played a part of that. But mostly I wanted to move on the first record without that band.

Ah, it sounds like high school life was easier than I think.

They just exalted if they ever just hit the ball, made contact, you know. So I had my training with them, so I knew a lot of dead music, and so we played a dead song, well, an old traditional song.

In the dead manner called I Know You Ryde or in our gigs. I don't know.

Maybe they heard about that or they were just fans of the first record, and we got a call to open for them in Monterey, Californias.

We did that.

Twice two days in eighty seven eighty eight. They asked us again eighty nine some more, ninety some more. Every year they'd asked us to play a couple of times, and then sadly, their keyboard player, Brent Midland, died of an overdose in the summer of nineteen ninety, right after

It was And how happy was the RCA with you doing this?

Look, as I said before, these were really nice that they allowed me major latitude, major leeway, you know, they gave me long rope with which to hang myself on a career level, you know. But again, it wasn't about career. I wasn't trying to build this. I was just trying to to be moved by music and and just it just sounded like great fun, and it really was. I mean, where else can you play one song for an hour?

I was gonna say, what was the longest What was the longest show you did?

Longest show is probably four four and a half hours, But there's an asterisk asterisk there because there's some long ass breaks. You know, maybe maybe you take an hour between the first set set and the second set. Sometimes it was very loose. I couldn't believe it. They have the most amazing audience anywhere, you know this twenty fifteen fairly well concerts they could have played, they had a million over a million.

Takes almost Okay, I almost went. I had a gig that night, the one in San Francisco I wanted to go to.

Yeah, I just want to study them from a just from.

Out sociological sociological level.

Yeah, yeah, I've been getting into them, and I'll say, during this Corona break, there's some video out I think uh Lee Oscar of War sitting in uh with them, and also uh Slide the Family Stones drummer greg Or Rico.

I didn't realize how many of like my favorite you know all like.

I'm a studio musician, junkie, so I didn't realize how many like luminaries that they pull into the fold, and and how they adapt.

You know, and then how they just just instantly.

Yet right in Ornett sat in with them a few times and which was always amazing.

So opening for the dead is it?

Is it a little bit different than like, have you ever met an audience that you didn't vibe with right away, like opening the dead how was that?

Well, it could be rough because the dead Heads can be fairly biopic, fairly tunnel vision, you know. They they're really not.

There to hear you, and so so jammy version of the way it is or.

Sure, but we were kind of doing that anyway. But so, yeah, it was tough.

It was really tough when I would we probably opened for them eight times or so eight nine times, and probably only twice did we ever really garner a crowd and have them really be interested in what they were doing and when.

So, when I started playing in the band, I ad made it.

I was self appointed sort of psychologist to these poor opening acts who would go out there and just be roundly ignored.

You know.

Dwight Yoakum came out there and he's there playing away, and man, I mean he's a beautifull guy.

I just said to him. Then I feel you. I've been there, you know, So so it can be real tough.

Now, some acts like Traffic, Steve Winwood or Dylan or Little Feet, you know, the Dead fans just really embrace certain groups, maybe some reggae groups. If Ziggy Marley was playing, they probably love that sort of related musical styles.

I guess I have a question, Bruce. Sorry Fante.

Uh So, since we're on the Dead and that they asked you to join did And I'm not trying to be funny, morbid or disrespectful here, but the three previous keyboard and piano players keyboard died.

And I don't know if you did that cross your mind, like, uh no, no.

I I left the Dead because I came home in the middle of a one of their spring tours. They'd have the spring, the summer, and the fall tours around the US. I came home in the middle of the March tour in ninety two. I just my wife and I had just had our twin sons, Russell and Keith, named for Keith Jarrett and Leon Russell, and so I came home and they didn't know me, and I went, you know what, I don't like this. I need to get off the freaking road at least most of the

He was doing a great job by then. He was doing solid the whole time.

But he really seemed to be getting in the groove with it and so knowledgeable about the music.

So that was my swan song.

Although I would sit in with them when they were geographically close to me. When he was really struggling in his last year, they would actually call me up and say, Hey, we're in Charlotte, would you would you come down here? Will fly you down here to play because he was having such a hard time it was. It was so listless on stage, so low energy, and they thought I could maybe prod and give a little cattle prod and

Damn Yeah.

I kind of had like a kind of a two part question along along those lines of just your family and your you know, your kids and everything at this point of your career. When we first got on the show, you were saying, you know, you're in the studio working on something. Do you think of yourself more primarily as a player or a singer or a producer, and like kind of what is the hierarchy you know when you sit down to create.

Well, well, I said down to create. It's all about the song. So it's all about being a songwriters.

The songwriter first.

Yeah, and what Frank, my last two records that are receiving such great I don't know, sort of acclaim around the world.

It's amazing.

It's some of the more adventurous, strange music I've ever made. And all of a sudden, I'm being embraced by all these these vaunted venues. Uh. I've been taking I've been writing music to some Spike Lee cues.

Uh.

And because I thought through the years Spike hired me, I'd always do a little bit little things for him here and there.

In fact, no, I love that song.

Well, I was just gonna say, because question love you. Your first acting gig was bamboozled.

Right, Yes, so.

And Oscar worthy of performance?

Is that your Sheena Easton moment?

Yeah, No, it isn't, because you know, I knew that it was a sattire. It's just yeah, the way that Spike often does these these social experiments.

So I'll say that the only part that was like hard to do about that movie was the fact that he purposely will put our trailer.

Five blocks five city blocks away from where we were shooting. Why because he wanted us He at the end, I was like, you you did a school days on us.

You purposely wanted to feel the shame of wanted us to.

Walk through the streets of New York and its closed and in black faith like five blocks wow. Yeah, And it was yeah, like we knew it that this was and you know, at the time in two thousand, I was like, yo, you know, you don't think that's going to get it. Now it's like we're past it, Like you know, it's more like a documentary than it's like it's like idiocracy.

Yeah, it is, it is. It is.

So yeah, well that sounds cool, but it sounds like it has a real purpose what he made, y'all do.

Total I know it had an absolute purpose in doing it.

Yeah, yeah, I enjoyed it.

Yeah, So what was it? How did you do? Was this your where do you did Clockers? First? Correct?

Okay, my my Spike, I guess the resume goes like this, we made this video. Uh, we prand for it in New York City. I trove in New York cap Then in ninety five he called messy if I would to write an end title song for his great movie Clockers. I think it's one of his great ones. And you have so many, and I just had. Shaka Khan had called me right around the same time and said said, hey,

So she came and we had the best time.

We wrote this the song Love Me Still, and then Spike, right around the time we were writing it, he calls me and said, hey, uh, I'd like I'd like an entitle I need an entitle song. What do you got? I said, well, Jock and I are writing the song and we'll get and said, okay, well I claim it, and so that's as simple as that.

Without even having heard the song, he was just like that, Well.

I guess I claimed first write a refusal.

Oh okay, okay, you know I guess.

Oh wait, were you initially trying to put that on her? On another album of hers, or it.

Was just we're just writing a song. It was it was for her though, it was for it was she, she was writing the words, she was going to sing it. Uh so, and she's done it. Great, She's on her greatest hits record. And then six years later he asked me again for Bamboozled, and this time though he wanted it to be specific to the the script to the story.

So I think this was my audition.

So that was my first one, and that was two thousand and eight, came out in nine, I believe, and then all the way up through last year with this She's Got to Have It Part two, the second season, I did a bunch of stuff, probably six or seven

He's cinematic.

And that became my record absolute zero, and then I can't follow it up with you know, just last week came out non Secure Connection also uh chock full of of score of music that became songs.

Yeah, Scott, Yeah, And do you you know you talk about your songwriting process.

I was curious to know do you think of yourself as a singer or is it just kind of your voice is just the I guess, the vehicle to kind of get it out.

Like if someone came to you and was like, Yo, I have a song I wrote for you. Is that something that you have explored.

For oh, people writing songs for me to do?

Yeah?

Yeah, specifically as a sing Yeah, No, I don't.

People excuse me, don't do that much. But I had that look if there was ever a book written about me, you should be called slow learner. And I feel like as a vocalist, what I do now is far, far exceeds what I did then, just on a soulful level, an expressive level, and so.

So yeah, I'm just deep.

People ask me, well, do you have any interest in doing this and scoring films blah blah blah and or doing this and that.

I say, Look, I'm just really trying to do what I do better and better.

And I also tell them that I'm like Tom Hagen and The Godfather who has one client as a lawyer Don Corleoni, I'm as a film composer, I'm the same. I have one client, Spike Lee. I'm not interested in doing this for other people. We have a special relationship.

And so that's now y'all have a synergy. Man, it definitely is.

It's just, you know, when you were just describing your your style kind of like the Bill Evans meets the him kind of thing.

Yes, it fits his.

I mean it fits the tone of his movies, like the thing you guys have. It works man, Yeah, Well he just likes what I do.

He called me up last week about something and said look, just I'm gonna keep calling.

You because I like what you do. So so that's not I love him. I'll tell you what.

I'll tell you one great Spike story. Speaking of the the Bill Lee the Uh the.

Uh, we were.

Recording that with Leslie Odom Junior singing uh from Hamilton and he's he's he was in Harriet Tubman lately he's had a great post Hamilton career. Anyway, we're doing recording in Brooklyn, recording Leslie and uh with a great jazz group backing us up.

And uh.

So I said, hey, Spike, I need a ride to my hotel. Somewhere in the middle middle of the session. He said, yeah, no problem, we'll get it. So the session ends and he says, hey, let's it's a nice day. Let's just walk to your hotel. So we go out in the street, just the two of us, and man, it was like walking with I don't know, I mean, well, I just I was just I just love people are hanging out of cars, hanging out of an apartment.

Go spy, Go spy, it was.

I said to him, is it always like this? Yeah, pretty much. But then later on, you know, Spike, Spike, Spike he looks at me, so, well, maybe today is a little more intense than you, but it was. We had the best time. It was a beautiful November afternoon in Brooklyn and we just walked and walked and walked, and it's just it's one of my great Spike Lee Mogoks is walking with him while he's just getting the love from you know, he was just getting his King.

Of Boklyn exactly right.

It's just fantastic.

So let me ask you, so with where we are now today and Corona and the world slowed down, I know for a lot of musicians, this is the time period in which the portals of a lot of ideas are opening up. And you know, again you've done blue grass work with Ricky Skaggs, and you know, jazz working all the other things.

Like what have you what have you been trying to cook up as of late?

Like how have you how have you spent the last well as of this recording six seven months?

Yeah, Well, in early mid March when the quarantine shut down era began, obviously, like everyone else, I wasn't going to go go anywhere. But I have this great facility, this great studio, so I just decided Okay, well, I'm going to try to take the deep dive and and try to really take it to another level. So I wrote six songs in six weeks from mid March to the end of April. Then I had to go do a few other things, some music for other records, et cetera.

House and so I did that.

And I was just in l A last week working with with ton Burr, who says, hi to you, questlove. Tony Berg has a studio in Brentwood on Kent, and he said, you work there with a woman named Susan Rodgers and engineer.

Okay, wow, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's right.

So he says, hello, Tony Brooks a great, great producer. He produces It produced Fiona Apples of her great records. He produces young girl Phoebe Bridges, who's sort of all the rage in that world, very very strong. So that's what I've been doing, just uh, just working on new stuff.

And that's I'm lucky, just like I guess all of us.

We get to do what we love to do for a living. And so I'm just continuing to try to be creative at this point in my career. Sometimes I'm trying to make a sound that I've never heard before.

So it takes me far.

Afield into again dough decophonic stylings.

Wow, there you.

Were, you were coming up?

Were your kids?

Like?

Were they aware that you know their dad was Bruce Hornsby? Like how did you navigate being a musician and a parent?

And I think I think they gradually it just as you grew up as a kid, you you sort of gradually become awake, you know, you wake up every year a little bit more. And so they they knew about it. Say when they were seven or eight, where they'd go see we did a tour. And when they were six, Bonnie Ray Jackson, Brown, Sean Colvin and I and David Linley did a tour. The boys came around on this tour and you know, they're red rocks and seeing a big crowd of nine thousand going crazy for their grizzled

I do and so that's really really nice.

Really.

Oh okay, before we let you go, I do have one question.

So obviously you got a long, long mile out of the way it is via Tupac, But did you ever foresee or think that there will be a time in which, even twenty years after Tupac, that the way it is would come back again?

Another pology?

Polo g wishing for a hero.

Many wish for a hero. So I love it.

I really love what Polog did.

We got out of the blue and maybe February of this year, we got reached out to by his people saying, Polog, you would like to fly to Virginia to ask your permission.

I said, we'll just send me the thing. And I heard it. I went mad, save your dats to do that.

Well, they fly out and asked for miss an input person, and wait, that's that's really a thing.

Well it was.

It wasn't this case.

It wasn't this case. So I said, hey, save your time money. I love what you did.

It's called wishing for a hero. And and yes you may work together at some point. Yeah, the odd couple kind of like Spike and Bruce, another odd cop.

It works though, Man, it works well, look, I.

Just uh, I love what. I love what Tupac did. It's a positive message and same with Polo g.

The the video is beautiful.

This record has this great gospel choir coming in sort of halfway through and taking you home when it it's I love it. So I'm I'm proud and grateful to these great young artists for for their interest in my music, at least that song.

Anyway.

No, that's that, you know, that's the I always wondered if if that myth is really real? Like on on television and movies, you always hear this thing about like it just takes one song to change your life, and then you know that. I guess I think Carl Douglas, creator of what is now the unplayable Kung Fu Fight Fight.

Once Fantasy, said that you know, just that one.

Song can you know, can change your life and you don't have to work another day again.

You got this one song to fall back on.

But maybe I'm gonna try to get to those cats as fast as lightning. Maybe I'm gonna try to get the lyrics there you go. I'm sorry I cut you off.

What you say?

Man, No, no, no, no, I was no I was saying that, well, you confirmed it then, but I mean I also know that you're not in the game just to monetarily, you know, kick off of you know, burn one hundred dollars bills with.

The cigar or burn cigars with one hundred dollar bills.

So you should see that.

I'll go to the whole house with Huey Lewis, that's.

He was there.

Maybe I'll start burning hundreds.

No, I don't think so, I'll leave that to uh the Wolf of Wall Street guy, you know, Aprio.

And then good, that's good. Well, we thank you very much Bruce for being on the show today. And and yes we are still.

I listened to our version of love Me Still from the tonight show.

Well, I'm so glad you brought it up. Can I just end with my quest love story?

So yes, yes, yes please.

We're in that little, that little rehearsal room. It's tiny, right, and uh so you're piano player. He says, hey, can we play Lovely Still? So I said sure. So we're playing it in the normal way, and all of a sudden, I guess you had this great idea to play it as a slow shuffle, so we can we try it this way.

So we start playing.

We're playing a little bit, and I guess so you you made the greatest sort of producer sort of request. You said, hey, play it like you're drunk, which was which was great because because what I really felt was, I was when I think you really meant truly you meant was, hey, man, you're a little on top, we're laying back.

Always.

You just need to get back with us. So I started really sitting on it, and what a feel. The next time I came back, we had to do it again. And now my band plays Love Me still, the Quest Love version.

Wow, okay, question, I was going to have to cover that version before you recover and govern your version.

Whatever you want.

Yeah, well we got to do it.

We gotta do it now.

Sounds great.

That room was going crazy that day.

Yeah, that's that's probably one of our movements. That's that's the top ten moment inside that room. Well, it was you and we're now playing accordion with us. Yes, that I put that up there, definitely, definitely, Well.

I'll take it up.

I'll be lumped in with weird Al anytime.

He's a bad.

Go man, this Quest Love.

Thank you very much, Bruce Sorensby for joining us and we'll see you on the next go round of Quest Love Supremo.

It's been a real pleasure. Thank you so much.

No, thank you for your time. Thanks thanks for the music. Thank you.

Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.