by Dean Budnick

Bruce Hornsby is one of the rare performers to emerge relatively unscathed from the tense, enervating realm of top-40 radio. Hornsby came bounding of the box in the summer of 1986 as his major labor release, The Way It Is, yielded a number one single with the title track, en route to triple-platinum album sales. Despite this initial pop success Hornsby worked to maintain a thriving career as a touring musician. In the years to follow, he balanced his own recording career (initially with the Range and then in other musical formations) with studio sessions for such notable players as Bonnie Raitt, Shawn Colvin, Bob Seger and Bela Fleck. In addition, in the wake of Brent Mydland s death, Hornsby, who had previously sat in with the Dead on accordion when opening for the group, joined Vince Welnick for nearly two years as the band s vibrant keyboard tandem.

The fall of 2000 finds Hornsby focused on a number of projects. At present he is out on the road with the second incarnation of the Other Ones, currently touring the east coast with Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers. In addition, on October 24 RCA will issue a double-live record entitled Here Comes The Noisemakers, which collects a number of performances that took place in 1998 and 99, while offering songs that span Hornsby s entire career. The following conversation touched on the arc of that career, beginning with his initial pop success and moving on to his future projects. Updated Information is available through his web site, www.brucehornsby.com as well as www.furthuron.com.

DB- Your new album draws from the full span of your recording career. I d be interested to hear how your initial rather staggering success impacted on the rest of your career, both from a musical and personal perspective.  

BH- I can safely say that the least enjoyable year of my career was that first year because it all happened so fast and so intensely. I had to learn how to do it all really quickly. I couldn t get wet gradually, it was jump in the pool all the way right away. It was a very intense experience and not necessarily a good intense experience.

Here s how it impacts the rest of your career- when you come out of the box as a huge top-40 success, those can be the hits that kill a career. The streets are littered with groups that came out with big hits and never were heard from again. The reason for that is that top-40 radio is a very fickle beast and the people who listen to top-40 radio and buy records because of what they hear on top-40 radio are not what I consider true music fans. They buy your record because they like that one song so that what you do is develop a large group of very soft-core fans, as opposed to coming out as a cult group where you develop a small group of very hard-core fans. The trick for me was to figure out a way to get through this notion of Bruce Hornsby as a top-40 hitmaker because that was a wonderful accident but you can really have a short shelf-life if top 40 radio is all you have going.

So soon enough you saw me follow my instincts which were not the standard instincts of the pop music business consciousness. I started getting asked to play on a number of records, I started opening for the Dead, and I started stretching out musically. Consequently, I went from having a career as a top-40 guy where 5,000 would show up in Chicago and if we played the hits early half the crowd would leave, to a situation now where we go to Chicago and play for 3000, 3500 people and they don t care if we play the hits or not. They re there for the right reasons, to hear what we do. They re there to hear us explore and be adventurous with our music. So what s the most attractive scenario for a musician? Obviously the latter scenario, not the first one. What we have now is way deeper and way more satisfying than what we had at the beginning.

DB- Did your tenure with the Dead lead you in that direction or were you already heading that way?

BH- It was happening already. If you came out to see our shows in 89 or early 90, you d see a very freewheeling outfit doing everything from old Leon Russell songs to taking requests, and changing the way we play our music, although admittedly not as much as we do now. You d see the beginning of my restless musical nature showing. But playing with the Dead certainly was influential.

When I started playing with the Dead there were two very polarized camps. There was a group that didn t understand why I wanted to do it. Then there were all those aficionados, the Dead Heads who probably didn't even know who I was but saw me as this dreaded top-40 guy because there was this prejudice about that. There is a large bigotry about the top-40 game, and it is badge of dishonor to have hit records. I understand that mindset as well, I don t dismiss it&

DB- After what you ve just said, what would happen if say a tune off the new album gets serviced to radio and boom, you re a top-40 hitmaker again.

BH- (laughs) I don t think so. The first time it happened it was a great fluke, a wonderful accident and accidents can still happen so it s always possible. I wouldn t imagine it would come from this record though. There s a very narrow band stylistically that is palatable for hit radio. A lot of it is about production technique. If you have a certain drum sound, a real roomy kind of open drum sound you ve just shut yourself out of any possibility of having hits. It s so narrow, so formatted and so rigid. That pretty much guards against a record like this one which has a lot of improvisation and a lot of spontaneity. Plus there are hardly any songs under eight minutes so I think our approach will guard against any possibility of hit radio (laughs).

DB- Let s talk about Furthur. I saw the show in Hartford the other night and one thing that struck me was the way you carried yourself. You were bounding across the stage during the show to speak with various players. I wonder if you feel things are looser this time out than they were in 98?

BH- It s certainly looser. The Grateful Dead was a very format outfit, very stoic. By formal what I mean is that there wasn t a lot of that loose vibe on stage. Hardly anybody ever looked at anybody. You very rarely saw anybody react personally, mostly the interaction was directed at Steve Parrish and the roadies to come fix something. But that s not my nature. My thing is much looser than that. I would say this year I m being more myself and frankly I think everyone likes that because in the end it s not like they were against any of that, it just wasn t part of their modus operandi and their stage presence. It s definitely looser than two years ago, so I feel more comfortable walking around and doing what I do at my own shows- not quite as much mind you, but a lot more than I did.

DB- I was really struck by the musical and personal rapport you seemed to share with Steve Kimock.

BH- We re the bookends of the stage but we probably look at each other more than anybody else. We re always playing off each other and there s a real close connection that we have. We connect very naturally both on-stage and off- stage. He s on the new record- he plays a beautiful solo on the End of the Innocence

DB- When did that performance originally take place?

BH- Last year I played two weeks at this jazz club outside of Oakland, California, Yoshi s. Kimock just kept coming out and playing with us. I think we were there ten nights and he played five of them. One week I played solo piano and he came out and we played piano and guitar. Then he came out a bunch of nights with the band.

DB- Do you have any plans to work with him in the future?

BH- We re playing with the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra and it looks like Steve is going to come out and play the gig with us. We re playing a gig for the President actually.

DB- Back to the Other Ones, you also seemed to be hooking up with Alphonso Johnson. I really enjoyed that segment out of Drums with yourself, Steve and Alphonso {which culminated in a version of Sonny Rollins "St. Thomas"].

BH- I love Alphonso s playing. He and I hook up quite a bit during the gig to create new sections. He has good ears and I think I do too. He ll play something and I ll play it back. I ll play a chord sequence and he ll hear it and play it with me. That s instant composition. To me there s a whole lot more meat in that content-wise then noodling on one chord.

DB- Let s jump back to what you said about the Grateful Dead and formality of presentation. That segment with Steve and Alphonso reminded me of the fall of 1990. One of the things that really excited people when you began playing with the Dead back then was that you really seemed to help mix things up a bit by spearheading some mini-jams in various formations. But then that abated.

BH- Well they were very set in their ways. I would come to a gig and say to Garcia, "Hey, why don t we start with drums tonight?" And he said "Well& you know&good idea&" and it would never happen. For the first fifteen or twenty years they were the archetype. They wrote the book about spontaneity, true spontaneity and then the last ten or fifteen years it became a little more rote, formulaic. Of course, with the Other Ones and with the Dead as well even at the end, you d still find true musical spontaneity, not just soloing over chord changes. Of course the latter is a good thing too and both bands do that quite well because there is that element of virtuosity which enables it to happen.

DB- That ethos of spontaneity and improvisation also occurs with your own group.

BH- Absolutely, that s what I like about our band, it s completely anything goes. When I had my horn section I d send them out and say, "Why don t you just go out and start playing free. Whatever you want to do." That for me is what it s about. Or now I ll say to a few members of the band, "Hey go out and start playing whatever you want and then just take us into something." That s what I m interested in doing, always find something new to do with the music.

DB- How many of those moments are captured on the new album?

BH- I think there are quite a few of them. It also captures the joyous quality, the exuberant nature of the music. The spark and the intensity of what we do. There are some studio records that we made that I think have a lot of balls and energy to them, but generally I think that this is the one that captures that the best. I think this is the truest representation of what we do musically in that it really showcases the spontaneity of our gig.

DB- Do you feel the live setting is your definitive realm?

BH- Absolutely. There s something that happens when you play before an audience. Plus in the live context it s more about "Here s 3 hours and we have all these songs- let s find a way to make them new again and keep ourselves interested and surprise ourselves and make ourselves laugh and make ourselves get chills." It s a difference in context and what you do musically.

  DB- In addition you keep yourselves on your toes by actively taking requests.

BH- Yeah, that takes us to places that we might not ordinarily go.. Some people will be so specific, they say why don t you take "Rainbow s Cadillac" into "Play that Funky Music White Boy" into "Spider Fingers." That s an interesting map, let me see if I can draw it.

DB- So you honor segue requests as well.

BH- I have when they re especially challenging.

DB- Well I m sure people are already thinking up suggestions. Will you be actively touring in the fall?

BH- Not a full blown tour, just a few weeks.

DB- In addition, you have tracks on new tributes to both Bill Monroe and Keith Jarrett. That s an interesting duo. What do you feel are their contributions to American music and how did they influence you?  

BH- A lot of people think it s odd that the two types of music I m most interested in are jazz and bluegrass music but those have something very much in common. Both are about virtuosity on the instrument, and that s never really been part of the pop music consciousness. There have been some exceptions- there s Mark Knopfler, Stevie Ray Vaughn and Hendrix for instance. But Bill Monroe and Keith Jarrett are two people who were very influential to me. Keith Jarrett especially, from the first time I heard his music at age seventeen. Bill Monroe is a later influence. Ricky Skaggs and I had so much fun doing that one that we re going to do a whole record together- a bluegrass duo record. That s going to be a ball.

DB- Of course prior to then you still have a few weeks with Furthur.

BH- That is a ball. Plus, as we continue and make those connections, I really think that it s only going to get more interesting for myself, for everyone involved and for the audiences as well.