Ariana Proehl: You’ve performed in the Bay Area a lot over the years. And some may not know that you recorded some of your first album The Way It Is in Sausalito back in the ’80s. What stands out to you when you look back at that time, recording out here?
Bruce Hornsby: The group Journey was working next to us, and so somehow we got it into our heads to start phone pranking Journey. So I did that and called in to speak to [Journey lead guitarist] Neal Schon. I was a young man trying to get an audition for the group, that I referred to as “The Journeys.” “Hi, I’m trying to get an audition with The Journeys, is this Neal Schons?” I was using the pseudonym Melvin “Mooney” Minkins after a guy I went to high school with. So this just went on and on. So much so that in the credits for Journey’s record Raised on Radio, there’s a special thanks to Melvin Minkins, and that’s why. I was phone pranking their manager, Herbie Herbert. They found out about it, and then they liked it. They got such a kick out of it, they had me phone pranking other people, friends of theirs.
I used to phone prank [Jerry] Garcia for that matter, in the later years.
Speaking of Jerry Garcia and Bay Area memories, you toured with The Grateful Dead in the early ’90s, playing keyboards for over 100 shows. What are some of your favorite memories playing with them?
Oh, there are so many. Touring through Europe. Just the origin — the first gigs I did with them, I basically came in off the street and started winging it with them with, no rehearsal, at Madison Square Garden. That was crazy. And I used to play in my older brother’s Grateful Dead cover band in Charlottesville, Virginia. The name of the band was Bobby Hi-Test and the Octane Kids. And my brother is Bobby Hornsby. So imagine all those people who used to hang around with us, going to these great alcohol and hippie frat parties at University of Virginia playing Dead covers. Imagine them 16 years later, coming to Madison Square Garden to watch me start playing with that band. It was just an incomparable experience. Truly transcendent.
Let’s talk about what brings you to the Bay Area this time around – your new album Deep Sea Vents, with the ensemble yMusic. What sparked this album?
In the fall of 2019, they called me up and asked me if I would do a little five-song tour with them. Then Rob [Moose of yMusic] asked if I’d be interested in writing a song with him that we could play as our encore every night. So I said, “Sure, send me a track.” They sent me this track and I wrote a song called “Deep Sea Vents.” We had a great time playing that at our five concerts. And after the last one we said, “hey, let’s keep doing this, let’s keep writing.” Then a week later, the COVID shutdown occurred. In the fall, we reconvened on the phone. They would send me a track every two months or so. And we just kept on going. I was reading Moby Dick at the time. And all of a sudden they sent me this track that sounded like the book. So I decided to channel Herman Melville and write this song “The Wild Whaling Life.”
And they sent me another song — their working title was “Duck Hunt.” It starts off with these sort of quacking sounding clarinets and trumpet. I thought, “Well, okay, I’m going to write about the platypus.” Sort of taking my cue from John Lennon’s “I Am the Walrus.” So I wrote the song “Platypus Wow” over their track. These three songs together signaled very clearly that this record really should have a running theme. And so I decided every song that I write from here on out will be ocean-related or aquatic-related.
You’re known for taking your music in all kinds of directions. I scanned some of the YouTube comments for your Deep Sea Vents album tracks and one fan mentioned loving your music because you’re true to yourself and not a style. Does that resonate?
Well, now you’re being very kind to read the nice comments because there are always naysayers — people who would like me to make the same record stylistically for my entire life. I’m a bit of a restless soul. I’m an old music school nerd and I love so many different types of music. And I’ve just ended up being reached out to by so many people from so many disparate areas of musical life. So consequently, I’ve made bluegrass records with Ricky Skaggs. I’ve made jazz records with Jack DeJohnette and Christian McBride, just on and on. And [Deep Sea Vents] is just another version of all that. Another area to mine and to explore.
I’m always looking for new inspiration. Thirty-nine years into this crazy career, the page is pretty filled in and I don’t like to repeat myself. So I’m interested in the new. I’m interested in the modern. Mind you, I say that, but I also tend to always write a couple of songs that come from the folk world. And that folk world was being mined early on in my music — The Way It Is record, Scenes from the Southside record — and I’ve kept on doing that. So hopefully there’s always something for the old-time listener who really isn’t interested in much else than that. But yes, that’s been my life, and it’s been extremely fulfilling. But you were very kind to not cite some of the nasty ones because I always get them. I’ve been getting nasty letters from fans since my second record saying, “How dare you change?” And my reaction was, “Well, okay, but you haven’t seen anything yet.” And that’s been my life.
We’re seeing this kind of conversation on the biggest of stages right now, because we just had one of the world’s biggest artists, Beyoncé, making something that people aren’t used to hearing her make with Cowboy Carter. It will be interesting to see how we continue to evolve as a society in terms of thinking about genre and not thinking about genre.
I feel that Beyoncé’s record is nodding to the country world, but it’s hardly trying to be that. It is her own thing. It is Beyoncé music that leans now and then into a bit of a country flavor with the instrumentation, say, on the “Texas Hold ’Em” song.
Right, and she even said, “This ain’t a Country album. This is a ‘Beyoncé’ album.” And so I feel like with you – you have a trend as well of being able to say, you know, this isn’t a “this or that” album, this is a Bruce Hornsby album. And where I go, is where I go.
Well, okay. So I guess we’re kindred spirits, Beyoncé and I [laughter]. I’ll take it, because, of course, she’s absolutely fantastic. And this record [Cowboy Carter] is more of that same high bar, high level.
With all that said, back to the tour at hand: how are you approaching it? Are you staying focused on new music? What can audiences expect?
We are playing three or four old, well-known songs from 1986 to 1992. And Rob Moose [of yMusic] wrote some gorgeous arrangements of these songs. So the concert every night will include that. We’re not just “inflicting modernity” all night. We are also playing those songs, but in a very beautiful and modern fashion.
