Once again, The Art of Longevity brings you a music legend. Perhaps all ‘pop’ musicians should aspire to the Bruce Hornsby borderless, ‘post-genre’ way of working. “My art of longevity is not giving a rat's ass about what’s popular…but to please myself and to grow, evolve, change and expand…on and on”. Not a comeback then, but a renaissance.
As part of my background research before this conversation with Bruce Hornsby, I read an interview with Bruce in Style Weekly back in 2008 titled ‘Don’t call it a comeback’. It amused me because since 2021, I’ve been seeing the word comeback associated with Bruce Hornsby quite a bit. This has mostly been in reference to his collaborations with some of the very coolest contemporary indie artists including Vampire Weekend's Ezra Koenig, Danielle Haim, Justin Vernon aka Bon Iver and James Mercer of The Shins/Broken Bells.
Hornsby’s 2020 album Non-Secure Connection also featured Jamila Woods, one of the most cutting-edge artists on the modern soul scene. Clearly something is up when current indie A-listers want to collaborate with an old guy who had a couple of hit records in the 80s.
Of course something’s up. For one, Bruce Hornsby is a phenomenally talented pianist and musical arranger. For another, Hornsby is musically restless and curious, so much so that he ventured into post-genre territory many years ago. Having established a sound unique with the 1986 megahit and debut album The Way It Is, Hornsby’s catalogue has since expanded into jazz-pop (his first solo outing Harbor Lights, 1993), Americana-rock-jazz (his masterpiece album Spirit Trail, 1998) and bluegrass country (with Ricky Skaggs). More recently his output has gone so far beyond genre as to be unclassifiable. I have a feeling this is one of the reasons Bruce is such an inspiration for many of those aforementioned famous names.
Fundamentally, Hornsby has been a true collaborator. Not a lot of people know that he has played on seven Grateful Dead records (he was a member of that band from 1988 until Jerry Garcia's death in 1995). Indeed, it was an indie tribute to The Grateful Dead’s catalogue on which Justin Vernon was working back in 2015. Vernon asked Bruce to join him for that project and in doing so, inspired this latest renaissance for Hornsby. Much of Hornsby’s cool collaborators, including Bon Iver, are in awe of his early songs, though Bruce points out not just that song everybody knows:
“When he was a kid, Justin transcribed every note of Pat Metheny’s solo on Harbor Lights, so it wasn’t just the hits”.
Inspired by this partnership, Hornsby has been prolific in recent times, making a trilogy of albums beginning with the ‘return-to-form album’ Absolute Zero (2019). This trilogy is a real display of Hornsby’s musical prowess and curiosity – a mix of progressive, avant garde pop and contemporary classical. Completing the trio of albums, Flicted, Hornsby’s 23rd studio record, is a collection of songs built from ‘cues’ for his music to Spike Lee’s films (Bruce and Spike have been collaborating since the early 90s).
The album features some phenomenal side players including the producer Blake Mills (on guitar) and yMusic, a Brooklyn-based chamber sextet that lends lush arrangements throughout. Indeed as Bruce hints during our conversation, more is to come from his sessions with yMusic.
“I’m a lifelong student and I’m way more interested in getting better as a musician, a vocalist and especially as a writer. I’ve been getting nasty letters ever since my second record saying “how dare you change”, but my silent response is “you haven’t heard anything yet.”
Perhaps all ‘pop’ musicians of longevity should aspire to Bruce Hornsby’s ‘post-genre’ way of working.
“My art of longevity is not giving a rat's ass about what’s popular, or whether I’m popular but to please myself and to grow, evolve, change and expand…on and on”.
So, when it comes to music, and Bruce Hornsby, whatever you do, don’t call it a comeback.