Photo by Michelle Waters

On Saturday, Sept. 1 6, Bruce Hornsby & The Noisemakers celebrated 25 years of Spirit Trail, bringing his tour to the Sound Board at Detroit’s MotorCity Casino Hotel. Following sound check, the American singer-songwriter and pianist decided to experiment with the setlist, and the resulting synthesized show came alive in the form of a show comprised of all the “L” songs he had written over the years.

After the show, Hornsby took to social media to explore what had transpired; he wrote, “On every show day I send around a group text with a list of two to five songs to rehearse at soundcheck. Yesterday’s list was “Love Me Still, Lost Soul and Levitate”, and I noticed after having written it that it was alliterative, which was fun, leading me to try to think of all the “L” songs I had.” He went on to add, “I came up with twelve, made that list, and decided to pick songs from it during the gig.”

Hornsby and his band played ten songs that began with the letter road if you count “Long” Valley Road.” Another highlight included the first-ever dulcimer performance of his 1986 hit “Down The Road Tonight.” Following the collection of songs that start with “L” the band dished out other hits including “The Way It Is,” “Spider Fingers” and a set closing “Mandolin Rain.”

See the post detailing the performance below.

Setlist

1. Line In The Dust

2. Living In The Sunshine

3. Long Tall Cool One

4. Look Out Any Window (with whole-tone scale chordal outro!)

5. Lost Soul

6. Levitate (from Spike Lee’s “Kobe Doin’ Work” documentary)

7. Love Me Still (Chaka Khan-BH) (from Spike Lee’s “Clockers”)

8. The Show Goes On (from Ron Howard’s “Backdraft” and “The Bear”)

9. *Long Valley Road/ Not Dark Yet (Dylan)

10. *LIDAR

11. *Down The Road Tonight

12. -Long Race

13. Concord Sonata, movement 4-“Thoreau”(excerpt) (Charles Ives)/

14. The Way It Is

15. Spider Fingers

16. Mandolin Rain (minor key version/ Mandolin Rain (major key version)/ The Grand Tour (George Jones)

*denotes dulcimer

-denotes accordion