I'm posting a Bruce Hornsby album

February 2, 2018 10:28 PM

For his second solo album (post "and The Range", fifth album overall), Bruce Hornsby recruited Debbie Harry, Bela Fleck, Pat Metheny, Chaka Khan, Jerry Garcia and many others to create an album that is as wide-ranging and surprising in its subject material as it is in its musical styles and virtuosity -- 1995's Hot House. Side A: Spider Fingers, White Wheeled Limousine, Walk In The Sun, The Changes, The Tango King

Side B: Big Rumble [live 1996 recording, no album version available, so sorry], Country Doctor [also no album version I'm so sorry but jeebus this performance!], The Longest Night, Hot House Ball, Swing Street, Cruise Control

posted by hippybear (45 comments total)

If you're going to dip a toe in, I suggest White Wheeled Limousine.
posted by hippybear at 10:29 PM on February 2, 2018 [1 favorite]

thelonius, your presence is requested.

Personally, I'm not a Hornsby fan - he's the smooth jazz of the rock world, this album in particular. That's not to say he doesn't have chops, 'cause he does, he's just not a flavour that I'm fond of.

Keep 'em coming, hippybear.
posted by ashbury at 10:58 PM on February 2, 2018 [1 favorite]

This is where I'd use he "laugh out loud" emoji option instead of "add to favorites" if Metafilter offered one. Well played, hippybear, well played.
posted by Joey Michaels at 11:42 PM on February 2, 2018 [4 favorites]

Now, see, this is just not right
posted by thelonius at 2:27 AM on February 3, 2018 [4 favorites]

Great- now I've got "Mandolin Rain" caught in my head.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 5:00 AM on February 3, 2018 [5 favorites]

Metafilter: Great- now I've got "Mandolin Rain" caught in my head
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 5:27 AM on February 3, 2018 [2 favorites]

Debby Henry
posted by davebush at 5:38 AM on February 3, 2018

Personally, I'm not a Hornsby fan

The Grateful Dead don't invite just ANY accordion player to jam.
posted by mikelieman at 5:42 AM on February 3, 2018 [3 favorites]

I was always mystified that a lot of Dead fans esteemed Hornsby over Brent Mydland
posted by thelonius at 5:49 AM on February 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

Well, Brent had problems, and the Band needed to both give him a reality check, and have plan B on deck in case anything happened. Brent died in July 26, 1990 from a speedball misadventure ( I truly believe powdered drugs are Bad Karma ), and then Hornsby filled in until the band picked up Vince Welnick ( formerly of The Tubes ). And that didn't end well, either.

Keyboards for the Grateful Dead was, I think, the inspiration for the Drummers of Spın̈al Tap.
posted by mikelieman at 6:07 AM on February 3, 2018 [5 favorites]

Most of these are not available in my country. I don't know if I'll ever recover.
posted by svenni at 6:33 AM on February 3, 2018

I met Bruce Hornsby once. It was the Spring of 1993, in O'Callahan's bar & grill in Williamsburg, Va.

I had heard "Across the River", and I told him that Jerry sounded great. He said, "Jerry played like he hasn't played in years. He plays his dick off!"

On that quote alone, I'm a Hornsby fan.
posted by dfm500 at 6:40 AM on February 3, 2018 [4 favorites]

svenni: It's entirely possible the album is available on Spotify. I don't have an account there so I don't know, but you might look there if you have one.
posted by hippybear at 7:01 AM on February 3, 2018

My friend Erica’s mom used to play The Way It Is in her Volvo when she drove us home from the Roller Palace.
posted by pxe2000 at 7:18 AM on February 3, 2018 [3 favorites]

He's an astounding performer and the people he plays with are always talented and given room to express themselves. Someone above said he was "smooth jazz" but he's literally not that. He's real jazz in rock clothing, and yeah, seeing him live is great because every show is going to contain at least one moment that lifts your soul out of your body and sets it free on the wind.

Which is what all music should do.
posted by hippybear at 7:31 AM on February 3, 2018 [3 favorites]

I don’t like everything Hornsby does (I’m not a fan of the Dead, personally), but I usually buy his albums, and he pushes himself a lot to go in different directions. A guy like Harry Connick, Jr., is probably never going to surprise you (not slamming him, he has his thing), but Hornsby recorded “The Way It Is”, “Hot House”, “Halcyon Days”, and “Rehab Reunion”. Even when I don’t like the results that much I appreciate the deliberate effort to keep from falling into a rut. And, Good Lord, the left hand on “Spider Fingers”...
posted by wintermind at 7:51 AM on February 3, 2018

The existence of this thread is making me so happy.
posted by Nancy_LockIsLit_Palmer at 7:57 AM on February 3, 2018 [2 favorites]

I think the “smooth jazz” comment is meant as one of those comparison metaphor thingies i.e. “Hornsby is to rock as smooth jazz is to jazz” which....maybe? I guess you would have agree with the premise that smooth jazz is somehow a lesser or blander version of jazz and thus Hornsby is a lesser or blander version of rock.

But now I’m finding myself thinking “ok if that’s at all true than what is the standard of rock by which an artist must be judged?”

Where is the thin black line, as it were, dividing rock from kind-of-rock?
posted by Doleful Creature at 8:37 AM on February 3, 2018

Also isn’t there already a term of art for this and isn’t it just “soft rock”

So maybe it’s a spectrum called “rock” and you fall somewhere on the continuum between the two extremes of soft and hard and maybe Hornsby is like, medium-soft compared to Led Zeppelin who are like medium-hard or mostly-hard and so on
posted by Doleful Creature at 8:44 AM on February 3, 2018

Like a lot of Bruce Hornsby fans, I’m a little sad that he’s known by so many people only for his early Top 40 hits that got a bunch of air time. He’s an interesting and varied performer and his concerts are a hoot— never the same thing twice.

He was doing a solo tour like a month ago. Mrs. Lieman and I saw him at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall. Great venue. Horrible seats for us olds.
posted by mikelieman at 8:46 AM on February 3, 2018

Where is the thin black line, as it were, dividing rock from kind-of-rock?

I dunno. Hornsby on this album rocks harder than Steely Dan ever did. So where is that line, exactly?
posted by hippybear at 10:19 AM on February 3, 2018 [2 favorites]

Great- now I've got "Mandolin* Rain" caught in my head.

Hush now.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 10:34 AM on February 3, 2018 [4 favorites]

Hornsby on this album rocks harder than Steely Dan ever did.

*shines up battle apple*
posted by thelonius at 11:12 AM on February 3, 2018 [4 favorites]

I'm glad that the statute of limitations on the familiarity of contempt has expired so that I can appreciate the piano break on "The Way It Is" again for the gem that it is. Also, DAE look at the drummer on "The Valley Road" and think, "Wint?"
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:37 AM on February 3, 2018

I think what we’re really seeing here are the limitations of “rock” as a label. Yes, Zeppelin and Hornsby both use electrified instruments and draw on some of the same influences, but I think it’s tough to argue that they’re really in the same genre in a way that’s actually meaningful, but in some sort of eugenics-decomposition I think that Bruce would cluster closer to Steely Dan then, say, Iron Maiden. But...Hornsby and Page would probably have to talk about, like odd keys, changing time signatures, and a mutual interest in traditional folk music, so maybe my thesis is completely wrong.
posted by wintermind at 12:09 PM on February 3, 2018

I'm glad that the statute of limitations on the familiarity of contempt has expired

Heh. I've always just associated Hornsby with the playlist of the local easy-listening station my parents had on in the car when I was a kid - that's totally unfair, I know. It's just an association that's stuck with me.

So until today, I had no idea that he'd taken up the mountain dulcimer as his primary instrument for Rehab Reunion. Nifty.

Also, most of the songs on it seem to contain approximately 1,000% more mandolin than "Mandolin Rain" does (which in turn contains suprisingly little...and it's way down in the mix).
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 1:00 PM on February 3, 2018 [2 favorites]

I love that mandolin conspiracy dove down the rabbit hole.
posted by hippybear at 1:08 PM on February 3, 2018 [2 favorites]

I'm thinking of writing a song called "Banjo Wind" that contains only a faint trace of banjo.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 1:16 PM on February 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

Also, DAE look at the drummer on "The Valley Road yt " and think, "Wint?"

That's John Molo who has rocked with Phil and Friends in the Warren Haynes, Jimmy Herring, Rob Barracco, quintet.

E.G. Phil Lesh's 76 birthday party at the Capitol Theater in Portchester.

https://archive.org/details/plf2016-03-17.gefell.pasternak.flac2448
posted by mikelieman at 1:20 PM on February 3, 2018

Banjo Wind should be a Weird Al pastiche in the style of early Bruce Hornsby And The Range which is about farting.
posted by hippybear at 1:24 PM on February 3, 2018 [3 favorites]

Sorry, y’all, that was supposed to be eigen-docomposition, not eugenics-decomposition. I missed the edit window.
posted by wintermind at 2:28 PM on February 3, 2018 [2 favorites]

MetaFilter: I missed the edit window.
posted by hippybear at 2:51 PM on February 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

In November of 1986, my wife and I drove from Ontario to South Carolina to visit my parents, who were living in Myrtle Beach at the time. Listening to the radio all the way, "The Way it Is" was heard over and over. I distinctly remember hearing it while passing through a small Virginia town on a bright, golden afternoon as autumn leaves drifted over the road in front of me. I've never forgotten that moment. It was only later that I learned Hornsby was actually from that area.
posted by davebush at 3:27 PM on February 3, 2018 [2 favorites]

The music on this album is nearly a decade later than the music you heard on that trip. Like, did you even listen to any of the songs? Did anyone? I haven't even kept up with him since this point but this album was astonishing to me, and maybe he's done a lot more and do you want me posting about ANOTHJER more recent Hornsby album only to have you comment about his first early hits? Because I will do that, and you will do that, and that's not worthy of his musical talent and recorded legacy.
posted by hippybear at 4:53 PM on February 3, 2018

hippybear - I own Hot House and appreciate it, but your post brought that old memory to the surface. It's what I always think of when I see or hear the name Bruce Hornsby. That's just the way it is.
posted by davebush at 5:39 PM on February 3, 2018 [3 favorites]

"I'm posting a Bruce Hornsby album"
I don't know what that is.

"...Bruce Hornsby recruited Debbie Harry, Bela Fleck, Pat Metheny, Chaka Khan, Jerry Garcia and many others to create an album..."
I need to know what that is *clickclickclick*
posted by I'm always feeling, Blue at 7:06 PM on February 3, 2018

Idgaf. The version of Super Freak that Bruce Hornsby did with Ricky Skaggs is some A+ bluegrassing.
posted by fluffy battle kitten at 10:04 PM on February 3, 2018

I'm always feeling, Blue: It's possible that you might want to participate in one of the other zillion threads featured on the front page of the Blue. Please feel free to browse.

[edit] I probably misread your comment and thus made this comment in a response which doesn't apply to reality. I apologize if that is the case [/edit]
posted by hippybear at 11:07 PM on February 3, 2018

That's just the way it is.

Well, some things will never change.
posted by hippybear at 11:08 PM on February 3, 2018

BRUCE HORNSBY: LISTEN WITHOUT PREJUDICE

hippybear is going to turn this car around!
posted by thelonius at 2:29 AM on February 4, 2018 [1 favorite]

OMG now I want Bruce Hornsby to do a full album cover version of George Michael's Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1 only for him to do it his own way.

THAT WOULD BE AWESOME!
posted by hippybear at 1:49 PM on February 4, 2018

A cover of '[That's just] The Way it Is' by Rachel Flowers:
https://youtu.be/4HbTYoPWvsU

Also, found this ELP (Emmerson, Lake and Palmer) Hoedown cover:
https://youtu.be/gc2Q0k7VxLs

Flower is unsighted and has a documentary in the works about her (and her music):
https://youtu.be/eo4G-TkDVeI
posted by pftoet at 3:07 PM on February 4, 2018

Hornsby on this album rocks harder than Steely Dan ever did.

Well, yeah. The louche and imperturbable Dan rarely ever deigned to "rock."

He's real jazz in rock clothing

AKA "Fusion." And actually, a lot of Hot House—"Spider Fingers," especially—wouldn't sound too out of place on a Spyro Gyra or late Weather Report album. I say that not to knock it, but to note that he's working in a specific tradition. What Hornsby brings to it is a characteristic voice and syncopation. Hornsby as the inheritor of the post-fusion mandate? Possible.

(Note, too, this John Jarvis piece, "Wide Open Spaces," which sounds just like a Hornsby opening. You can pinpoint the moment where the drums and guitars would kick in if it was a Hornsby song. Jarvis' career of straddling piano jazz and New Age kitsch is right up my alley, btw.)

A couple of things I find fascinating about Hornsby:

• That he's made a career as one of the (maybe "the") preeminent performer of a certain kind of uniquely American Jam music—not rock, not jazz, not bluegrass, not pop, but an amalgam of all of it—and has gone almost entirely unnoticed for it. Weather Report + Grateful Dead + radio-friendly pop sensibility = Bruce Hornsby?

• That for a radio-friendly white dude, he sure has been sampled by a lot of Hip Hop artists: most notably by Tupac, but also by Mase, Snoop Dogg, E-40, and (my favorite) MC Buzz B.

• That the first few bars of "Every Little Kiss" are sampled from "The Alcotts" movement of the Concord Sonata, Charles Ives' celebration of New England Transcendentalism. Which seems appropriate given that the 1986 song sounds like a post-Springsteen evocation of Reagan's Morning In America (What I wouldn't give for only one night / A little relief in sight / Or someday when times weren't so tight) while the video, oddly, looks like a Pepsi ad directed by Frank Capra.

• That I'm still not sure if Big Swing Face is rubbish or nutso genius.

New Statesman's "How Bruce Hornsby survived a hit song" from '15 is a good look at his current career.
posted by octobersurprise at 8:59 AM on February 5, 2018 [1 favorite]

I would describe old-school Bruce Hornsby not as soft rock (the lyrics are too dark/sad) or jazz (the rest of the instrumentation is way too tame for that in my opinion) but rather "regular rock that is for listening to when you are alone on a grey morning" along side bands like The Smiths, The Ocean Blue, Belle and Sebastian and a few others I can't think of right now.

These tracks don't really fit in that genre which is too bad because it's a genre I really like.
posted by The_Vegetables at 1:28 PM on February 5, 2018

That article that octobersurprise posted is, well, surprising. This is a background I didn't have about Hornsby AT FUCKING ALL.

One choice quote:

Aged 20, he failed to get into the New England Conservatory because he chose an impossible audition programme of Chick Corea and McCoy Tyner, which he “had no business playing”. Then he bought an upright piano, moved out to a farmhouse in Toano, Virginia, and practised for six months, eight hours a day. He entered the University of Miami School of Music to study jazz in 1975 at the end of its “golden era”; in the years above or already teaching were Jaco Pastorius, Pat Metheny, most of Metheny’s first band and the guitar whizz (and future member of Deep Purple) Steve Morse. These were the fragrant, long-haired legends of 1970s jazz rock. Something tells me Hornsby didn’t cut the same figure.

“I was a geek! Oh, totally. I looked hilarious,” he cries. “But it’s a beautiful reason why I was a geek and why anyone is a geek. I was so consumed with it. You are so interested in what you are doing that you don’t even think about the fact that you’ve worn the same white T-shirt for a month without washing it and the same jeans and you probably reek from 20 yards away.”

posted by hippybear at 9:15 PM on February 6, 2018