BRUCE HORNSBYKeys
As Bruce Hornsby returns to the UK on a wave of renewed acclaim,
the piano man tells Douglas McPherson about his constant quest to evolve
and how he has a hard time listening to his early albums
B
ruce Hornsby is having a
moment right now. A mere
33 years after he came to
fame with the unforgettable
piano-led social conscience-
pricking ballad The Way It
Is, the Virginian singer-
songwriter has been
receiving some of his best-ever reviews for
his latest album, Absolute Zero.
In particular, Hornsby has acquired a
new cachet with the hipsters, thanks to his
association with Justin Vernon, aka the
Grammy-winning Bon Iver.
Vernon initially displayed his fondness
for Bruce’s music on Beth/Rest, an
unmistakable homage to the Hornsby sound
that he described as the track he was most
proud of on Bon Iver’s self-titled second
album. On Absolute Zero he teamed up with
his idol to co-write and sing on current
single Cast-Off.
Hornsby fi rst became aware of Vernon via
Google Alerts. “In 2011 or 2012 I started
getting these alerts about Bon Iver and
Justin Vernon. He was shouting my name
out as someone who’d infl uenced him as a
young musician. I started investigating and
the fi rst Bon Iver song I heard was
Holocene. I just loved it. I thought it was
gorgeous, interesting and unique-sounding.
“I became a fan. Then, in 2015, Justin
reached out to me through our managersand asked if I’d do a duet with him on a
massive 5-CD indie rock Grateful Dead
tribute record, Day Of The Dead, curated by
The National. Justin had always been a fan
of my album Here Come The Noise Makers
from 2000. He liked the version of the
Grateful Dead song Black Muddy River and
wanted to do it as a duet with me.
“It was an instant ‘yes’ from me,” Hornsby
continues. “I was doing a solo piano tour
that ran through the state of Iowa and my
last gig of the run was in Mason City, which
is about three hours away from where
Justin lives in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. I went
up there and spent two days hanging out.”Hornsby then invited Vernon to sing on
his 2016 album Rehab Reunion, a folk-
oriented outing on which Bruce swapped
his trademark piano for a dulcimer.
Next, “Justin asked me to play his
beautiful Eaux Claire Music And Arts
Festival, and to appear at the Coachella
Valley Music and Arts Festival in California
with him.”
With typically wry self-deprecation,
Hornsby adds: “I was the grandpa on the
bill – probably by 25 years the oldest
motherfucker on the stage!”
Since then, the pair have continued to
collaborate, with Hornsby co-writing
U (Man Like) on the just-released Bon Iver
album, i,i.
“We actually just played a wedding
together, about a month ago,” Hornsby adds.
“So from Coachella to a wedding reception,
we’ve run the gamut already, Justin and I!”
It’s far from the fi rst time that Hornsby
has collaborated with another artist in a
long and constantly questing musical career
of which his Top 40 hits in the 1980s were
just the beginning. As early as the late 80s,
he was lending his piano and accordion
playing to albums by Clannad, Shawn
Colvin and country star Tom Wopat. He
co-wrote and co-produced the Don Henley
hit The End Of Innocence and played piano
on Bonnie Raitt’s iconic I Can’t Make You
Love Me.Wo r l d
to the