Photo by Norman Sands
Bruce Hornsby has a new live 2-CD compilation out with his longtime band featuring a sturdy and spirited group of performances culled from gigs played from 2007 to 2009. Bride of the Noisemakers is the result and, other than being a very successful reading of Hornsby and his crack group’s talents and way around some fairly choice material, is the sequel to 2000’s live Here Come the Noisemakers. Hornsby has a full artistic plate as he will detail in our feature. But he also seems wise enough to stop and refocus at times.
Indeed, as the front man/ pianist/accordionist/vocalist sits down with Jambands.com for this warm, insightful and entertaining discussion about all matters Hornsby, one gets the sense that the man, well into his third decade as a versatile artist, is catching his breath before re-imagining not only his body of work, but what he can offer with his band, and all those other configurations he finds himself playing. The Noisemakers serve, push, and enhance Hornsby quite well on the live release, but the band also appears to be an incredibly resourceful well of inspiration for the always probing musician.
RR: We have something in common. I also have twin sons, who are about to turn 5.
BH: Oh, fantastic. My sons are 19, and they are ready to go to college. They’re seniors in high school, now.
RR: Any advice? Stay out of their way?
BH: I would never want to give anyone advice about much of anything, but in this case, one thing I would say is that you can expose them to so much to the broadest array of possibilities of areas of interests for them. Help them find something that they are passionate about, and try to help them get as good as they can at it, I guess. My sons are both jocks now, and they are very committed in that area. They are both going to be divisional and scholarship athletes—quite an achievement in this incredibly competitive age that we live in. I spotted their abilities early on, and helped nurture it like a motherfucker. (laughter)
Try to help them without pushing, which can certainly lead to burn out. You have to have your antennae up for anything like that because, certainly in sports, there’s the trend towards year round specialization—one sport for the year—and it’s very tough. 5 years old? All I know is I wouldn’t trade a minute of it. My boys are great guys, and, in fact, you can see a picture of one of them [Russell Hornsby of Georgetown Prep] in the Washington Post last Sunday. [His team] finished in fourth in the Penn Relays 4×800—they came from 10th to 4th. Really great fun. The other one [Keith Hornsby] plays for Oak Hill Academy, the great basketball power, and he was on ESPN about five times this year. It’s quite something what they are accomplishing. It’s really special.
RR: You touched upon some areas I’d like to explore with you, such as exposure of as many different areas and interests as possible. You’ve done that with your music over the years, transcending many genres to create your own Hornsby sound. Plus, you brought up the concept of burn out. Were you at a point within the last couple of years where you were touring too much, and chose to take some time off?
BH: Are you talking about last year?
RR: Yeah.
BH: Well, yeah, I think so. I felt I needed to take a break, and sort of re-position our band. I just felt like, well, to be perfectly honest, I have four incarnations of my musical trip right now—there’s the band, solo piano concerts, which are very fulfilling, but (laughs) very difficult and very challenging the way I do it, then there’s the Skaggs/Hornsby bluegrass collaboration, my country cousin, Ricky Skaggs and I who play together, and then there’s the whole jazz area with our jazz trio, Jack DeJohnette and Christian McBride. We made that record [2007’s self-titled release].
So, there are four different ways to book what I do. It got to the point, frankly, where my solo concerts were outdrawing our band gigs, and I don’t like that. I love playing with my band. I think we have a lot to offer, but I think it has to do with this odd career that I’ve had where I came out having all these hits over a five-year period—’86 to ’90. And, then, I sort of turned my back on that. I started getting all these great calls from all these musicians to work with and for them. Obviously, the most well-known collaboration is the Grateful Dead, but there were many, many more—Robbie Robertson, I played on Bob Dylan’s record, Bob Seger, Bonnie Raitt, of course, for years, Béla Fleck, a lot in the bluegrass world like the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Ricky Skaggs, and Randy Scruggs.
I started moving in these other directions. I started acquiring an audience made up of factions that didn’t really co-exist very peacefully together. You had people who were there for a nostalgic reason to hear the “good old songs,” quote, unquote, and then you had the people who were there for what I consider to be the right reason, which is they were there to hear us play music in an adventurous manner. That’s really what we do. But for many years, I guess we booked ourselves into these halls, and you’ll have some people sitting down, and the people who want to dance are frustrated, and I don’t blame them a bit. (laughs)
I thought it was time to take a break from this, and try to move it into a different place; hence, Bride of the Noisemakers, our sequel to the Here Comes the Noisemakers record from ten years ago. I thought it was time for there to be a document of what we sound like now because our approach makes it so we attempt to dress the songs up in new clothes quite often. If you heard a version of one of our songs in, say, 2003, and heard it played in 2009, it would be rather different in most cases. In some cases, not; but, in most cases, it would be. And, so, I wanted to show that.
There were lots of reasons why I took the year off, but those were a couple of them.
RR: Bride of the Noisemakers —the very title makes me think of reinvigorated spirit, or bringing life to something that was almost inanimate or staid. What I love about your music is that you have a template, but you are also able to go off in different directions, and make it appear natural. There are no awkward transitions. How important has it been within your live improvisation over the years to have that template, and move the music in any direction you wanted?
BH: Well, it’s of utmost importance. It is all-important because I just could not be that guy who is to be your vehicle for your stroll down memory lane, and playing the songs just the way we recorded them. That’s the way most people play music in the popular rock world. But, I always felt a real strong psychological and philosophical kinship with the Dead because my influence was always that way. I got my degree in jazz music, and improvisation has always been really important to me. It’s just such a creative prison to feel like you have to play the songs that way, so I just could never have done that, if I had had to do that. If somebody said, “You’ve had these hits, and now, every night, you’re going to play that,” I’d have just stopped. I’d rather teach somewhere, than do that.
The approach makes it ever-interesting to me. I’m a lifelong student. I’m always interested in being continually inspired. It leads me to some places where a lot of people wish (laughs) it didn’t lead me, for instance, modern classical music. That’s touched on in several—three or four or five—areas of our new record. There are excerpts from different modern classical pieces, and they’re always the most dissonant part of the night. But, I think dissonance stiffens the spine. (laughs) I think it straightens your posture. It’s like the Army—strong dissonance makes strong men. (laughter)
RR: To me, the most interesting and spectacular moments in your time with the Dead were those sections of dissonance; those sections where, suddenly, you were pushing them in a different direction; sometimes, subtly, sometimes, under the surface, but very apparent. It really made for some lively moments in the early 90s.
BH: What you are saying brings a couple of things to mind here. One, I got into this music in college at Berklee when I was in Boston. I had finished at the University of Miami, and that was sort of the best school for me, but I spent two semesters in Boston at Berzerklee College of Music as we call it, and I found the greatest resource in town was the Boston Public Library. I would go over there and rent out, or borrow albums. You could borrow albums. I went crazy in their classical department, and I got very involved in Charles Ives’ music. It continues to this day. My first single, my first record, “Every Little Kiss,” featured an intro that was an homage to the 3rd movement of the Concord Sonata by Charles Ives called “The Alcotts.” In fact, they threatened to sue me. My response was “Yes, you’re absolutely right, and you can read 1,001 interviews with me giving credit to Charles Ives regarding this.” And they said (laughs), they were so
surprised at my honesty, my candor, that they said, “Forget it.” (laughter)
I’ve been involved in this area for many years. It’s just the last few years that I’ve gotten deeply involved. When I signed with Columbia in 2003—one of the great aspects of signing with Columbia Records is that they have the ‘Catalogue of Life’. You can just raid their vaults for free. It’s just unbelievable. I took their printed catalogue and ordered 180 CDs from them. (laughs) So much of it was…like the Glenn Gould catalogue where he’s playing Schoenberg and Webern and Berg and modern music when he was a real proponent of modern music in 20th century music. Webern, Berg, Elliott Carter—so many people—so, that was a great education for me, and I got really deeply involved in this, and it’s influenced my writing. I guess, mostly, it has influenced my writing I am doing for our play, SCKBSTD. That’s a different topic. (laughs) There’s so much going on. My musical life is pretty full here for me.
From what you were saying, the other thought that reminds me is that the first time we ever opened for the Dead was at Laguna Seca Racetrack, May 1987, Monterey, California. We’re up there opening, and I hadn’t met the guys at the time. We’re playing away; we’re playing our set, and I see Phil [Lesh] watching our band from the wings. I knew a little bit about Phil’s taste. I was doing a piano intro to a song, and I looked up and I saw Phil looking at us, so I instantly went into a bitonal version of “The Entertainer” by Scott Joplin—the right hand is in C, and the left hand is in C-sharp—and, sure enough, that just lit him up. He got the biggest grin on his face, and threw his head back laughing, and we became friends from that point on. (laughter)
RR: Blood brothers right there.
BH: (laughs) That’s right. Brothers in the Dissonance. Brothers in Chromatism. (laughs)
RR: I just spoke with Bobby Weir because he’s doing some work with the Marin Symphony Orchestra.
BH: Wow, I’d like to hear that.
RR: Something I discussed with Bob was the relationship between classical music and improvisation. The thought being, held by many, is that on the surface, one is structured, and the other is allegedly very loose and undisciplined. Do you see the relationship between these two forms of music from your own studies and work?
BH: Certainly modern music has a relationship, has a kinship because there is improvisation in modern music. Certainly, John Cage’s aleatoric, or chance music is all about things happening in the moment. And through the history of classical music, certainly in classical piano music, there were improvised cadenzas that were in the compositions of the Romantic era. I’m not so interested in the Romantic era; I mostly deal with Bach, and then straight to the 20th century. (laughs) The rest of it is a little
florid, a little ornate, a little rococo for me. The harmonic content of modern music and the harmonic content of jazz music definitely intersect.
RR: Do you feel composers like Stravinsky are still relevant because he pulled away from some of the elements you discussed in the early 20th century?
BH: Yeah, Stravinsky, and Schoenberg who was the inventor of twelve-tone music. I think that is an area of music that Phil has been interested in for many years. Stravinsky, I wouldn’t say specifically, but anybody who was forward-thinking on a harmonic level, anybody who was pushing the envelope with chord progressions is someone who is still relevant because that’s still being done. Of course, it goes against popularity because most people want to hear simple music, and I understand that. I love simple music, also. Some of my favorite music that I’ve written is three-chord music. But, definitely, these people remain relevant to me because the music that they wrote in 1920 is still incredibly challenging for most people, including myself—to listen to, and to play.
RR: And that draws me back to your solo piano gigs pulling in bigger crowds than your gigs with the Noisemakers.
BH: Well, a bigger crowd than the Noisemakers, and it is clear to see why. Most of the older audience who is interested in me are more interested in the solo thing because it somehow sort of goes down easier. Our band gets a little rowdy, a little noisy (laughs), and just a little freewheeling. Our approach is that we’ll go into a song that we’ve never played before. Something will just come into my head, and I’ll just try it. I’ll look at the guys and say, “Well, good luck to us; here we go.”
I guess what I’m really saying is that we don’t mind sucking. We’re O.K. with mistakes; we make them all the time. But for people who want to hear their music a little straighter, or a lot straighter, then that’s not what they’re there for. Mind you, in my solo concerts, I inflict way more of this sort of modern music consciousness on the audience, but since it’s just piano, maybe it’s more palatable on a sonic level. That’s why I think it’s time for our band to get out and play for more like-minded individuals, so, hence, we’re playing Bonnaroo and Summer Camp and on and on.
RR: And you’re playing some dates with Béla Fleck, as well.
BH: Exactly. Perfect example. My old cohort. We’re old friends, and we’ve played together many times—banjo/piano concerts together through the years, here and there. I’ve played on his records, he’s played on my records, but we’ve never actually toured together, so that seems like a very natural alliance, a natural hook up.
RR: Was there anything different that you’ve encountered when you got back into touring with the Noisemakers? I know you recently played some gigs in New Orleans, and you had a fine collaboration with the Nightcrawlers.
BH: I met the Nightcrawlers about eight or nine years ago when I was part of a Keith Jarrett tribute record [ As Long As You’re Living Yours ]. Our version of his song, “Backhand” is the first song on that CD. Did it in New Orleans. It had Jason Marsallis on drums, and tuba for bass, the great Matt Perrine from New Orleans. So, these guys that played on the record were fantastic and part of the New Orleans Nightcrawlers. We hooked it up so they could open for us, and then, they were standing in a room next to the stage, and I could see them in there, so if I could hear them on a song, I’d sing, I’m hearing some Nightcrawlers; in the midst, I’m hearing Nightcrawlers music, and they came out and just started roaring away. That was great fun. That tape might make it to our download site.
Has anything really changed? We’re just getting our sea legs back, but we’ve had some great nights. I think what we have to watch out for is that we all know, everybody in the band is really aware of the new record and how it sounds, so, sometimes, there are certain sections of songs that can go anywhere where we tended to hear it in our heads on the Bride of the Noisemakers album, and I know I did that (laughs), and they look at me like “yeah, that sounds like it’s supposed to go.” But, now, we have to throw that out, get that sound out of our heads, so we can continue to move on, and find another place to go, so the sequel to this one— Beneath the Planet of the Noisemakers —when that comes out…(laughter)
RR: Conquest in 2014.
BH: Plan 9 From the Noisemakers. When that’s ready, then the songs will sound very differently again.
RR: I read somewhere that you described yourself as a slow learner, which surprises me because you appear to pick up things really fast.
BH: In some instances, that may be the case. What I’m referring to—unfortunately, for me—is the sad fact that so often for me is that I write the songs, we record the songs, and then, we learn how to play them, or I learn how to sing them. One reason for this Bride of the Noisemakers compilation is that when I feel that what we are doing live is so far surpassing the original record that most people who are interested would know, then I feel like I want to get that out there because that to me is so much better.
In this case, I was looking for a definitive version of these songs. Even recent songs, a song I wrote with Robert Hunter, “Cyclone”—I just feel like I do it better now. The arrangement is really very similar to the record we made two years ago, but I just think the vocal has evolved and changed for the better. That’s what I mean by “slow learner” in that sense.
RR: What is the status of the musical you mentioned, SCKBSTD ?
BH: We have one offer to go to the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, and there is another possible offer to go to Kansas City. There are some New York Off Broadway houses, but I don’t think we’re quite ready for that. I think our play is really good, but I don’t think it’s great yet. It needs to be great. When we were done with our first run, which was in Norfolk, Virginia in January and February, that is how I felt about it—it’s really good, but it needs work. Then, I saw The Book of Mormon, the amazing play by the South Park creators, I said, “Well, after seeing this, we really need some work.” (laughs)
You kind of get your assed kicked by something truly amazing to get a perspective about what great really is, what great, quote, unquote, really is. That was a nice wake up call and very inspiring. I think what they’ve done is really, really great. It’s really something, very creative, and really irreverent and offensive to a lot of people. (laughter)
We’re assiduously working on this thing. We just wrote a new song, a new weird song, and it is very dissonant and crazy. I think next year, some time, maybe next spring, will be the second production that we will have of SCKBSTD.
RR: And I imagine you are quite busy for the rest of the year with touring.
BH: I’m booked until next April because I’ve got a new solo piano concert record coming out next February, and I’m booked February, March and April for that. It’s crazy.
RR: So just one month at a time at this point.
BH: If I look too far ahead, I get tired just thinking about it. (laughter)
RR: But you are happy with the new 2-CD live compilation.
BH: I am happy with it. I think it captures what we do. I think it captures the joyful quality. I think it has a lot of energy captured on the discs, and that sometimes has been hard for us to do. I mean…I don’t know for sure. I’m too close to it. I hope other people feel that way. That’s all I can say. I don’t really know. We do our best. We’re not that good, frankly, at record making, so I often think that we screw up. (laughs)
RR: “Joyful” is a great word to describe many elements of your music. Your music does bring a joyful, euphoric quality to the moment. I always thought that was a unique quality of yours. Where does that joyfulness come from within you?
BH: Looking for that feeling. I guess I’m what you’d call an ecstatic; someone who is looking for that transcendent feeling where you can give yourself chills. It’s really hard to give yourself chills. So often, the chills come in unexpected situations. Mind you, when I played with the Dead, certain songs were so great that…I get chills just thinking about playing “Wharf Rat.” (laughs) I get chills just thinking about playing “Loser,” and,
consequently, there’s a Dead song on this record. Actually, it’s funny. Our record, Bride of the Noisemakers, has Robert Hunter bookends. The very first song is “Cyclone,” and the very last song is “Standing on the Moon,” a Garcia/Hunter underappreciated classic. Our approach to me is pretty conversational. A lot of the spontaneity occurs because in the slightest manner when someone like J.V. [Collier], the bass player, will play a lick, some line, and I’ll hear it, and I’ll play it back at him because our band has a bunch of guys with pretty good ears, and often play it back at you. Then, the organist, JT Thomas is a killer player. He used to play with Captain Beefheart for 21 years. He’s got monster ears. He’ll play it, and that will become the next section, a new riff, and there, we’re off and running. The newness of that creates one euphoric, joyful feeling of “Wow, (laughs) look where this just went. Who would have thought that would happen?” The conversational aspect of our approach really allows us a lot of those moments, rather than, as I said before, “here’s the song just like you know.”
