It took Bruce Hornsby & the Noisemakers just three songs to nod to the Ohio River that straddles the border between Ohio and West Virginia with the traditional “Old Kentucky Shore.”

Though Hornsby, the Noisemakers and the audience in Marietta, Ohio, were not really near the Bluegrass State, the 942 people who gobbled up free tickets to the Sept. 14 gig inside People’s Bank Theatre responded thunderously, making clear they were there for more than the free entertainment and the no-charge copy of Spirit Trail 25th Anniversary Edition that came with it.

Hornsby’s generosity extended to the nearly 2.5-hour, single-set performance, which spanned 1986’s The Way it Is through 2022’s ’Flicted, with covers (Robert Johnson’s “Come On in My Kitchen”), fanciful improvisations (“Little Sadie”), requests and a couple of detours to dulcimer (“Every Little Kiss”) and squeezebox for (“Big Stick”) filling the stage time.

“I’m gonna play ’em and you guys just kinda dick around,” Horsby told the Noisemakers – guitarist Gibb Droll, fiddler/mandolinist John Mailander, bassist J.V. Collier, drummer Chad Wright and keyboardist J.T. Thomas – at one point. And the band kept up with their leader’s flights of fancy every step, with Droll channeling Hornsby’s former Grateful bandmate Jerry Garcia through his six strings; Mailander locking in with his stringed brother on fiddle to weave a beautiful, layered texture; the rhythm section remaining taut and flexible; and Thomas, whose organ was out front facing Hornsby’s piano, playing Garth Hudson to Hornsby’s Richard Manuel.

The evening began at one minute after 8 o’clock as Hornsby retrieved written requests from folks in the front row and got down to business, promoting the Spirit Trail reissue with “Preacher in the Ring Pt. II” and reworking “The Way it Is” so radically that Collier could be heard off mic laughing with delight; this after Hornsby promised the audience the band was going “to be kind and play an old, very big hit for you.”

But they were into it, too. As the evening unfolded and Hornsby played for himself first and his audience second, it became clear the people had come not for the free music, but specifically for Hornsby and his sonic whims. So when the house exploded and everyone rose to their free after the set-closing “White-Wheeled Limousine,” the response was likely more sincere than the typical standing O.