Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Ladies and Gentlemen. What's Up?
Speaker 3: This is another episode of Court Love Supreme. I'm your
Speaker 3: host Quest Love Jenkins. We're We're Team Supreme today Shook
Speaker 3: Steve in the house. Hello, Hello, Quarantine Steve, Quarantine Bill.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what's up?
Speaker 3: Man?
Speaker 2: How you doing?
Speaker 4: Holding it down?
Speaker 2: Okay it's asterisk or just definitive.
Speaker 4: It holding it semi calling down. Everything's good. Uh, working
Speaker 4: on some music for the street all as well.
Speaker 2: Okay, gotta keep the street tapping and h fan take
Speaker 2: a lot.
Speaker 5: I'm good brother, I'm good man, doing the work as well.
Speaker 5: I can't complain.
Speaker 2: Cool, cool, all right.
Speaker 3: Bark Yesterday is a Grammy Award winning singer, songwriter, producer, composer.
Speaker 2: He has actually come to us in many forms.
Speaker 3: Of the past, real real, for real, either as a
Speaker 3: soloist or fronting one of his many projects sounds like Quesla,
Speaker 3: either a member of the range the Noisemakers at one point,
Speaker 3: Ambrosia and Ambrosia.
Speaker 6: Yes, not really, but okay.
Speaker 2: We'll take it.
Speaker 3: We'll take it. You know, wait a minute, you know what,
Speaker 3: and I often do this. I'm not interrupting my own
Speaker 3: intro yes or no? All right, I'm a Soul trained collegist.
Speaker 3: Is that you on Soul Train with she and Easton?
Speaker 6: That's hilarious. You've nailed me.
Speaker 5: Yes, yes, yobs from Downtown.
Speaker 2: No, I didn't even know.
Speaker 3: I think like I have all the episodes that I
Speaker 3: keep them on loop. And like three weeks ago, she
Speaker 3: was on doing Sugar Walls and.
Speaker 2: I was like, wait and that was you? Okay, okay, okay.
Speaker 6: Well well, oh yeah, there's a funny story about it.
Speaker 7: Look, I played with her for two years and and
Speaker 7: sure we did Soule Train and I out there looking
Speaker 7: like a complete clown.
Speaker 6: Most likely I haven't seen that for years.
Speaker 7: But I'll tell you what, as a as a parent
Speaker 7: of a Division one basketball player who's now a pro
Speaker 7: in Germany, I used that to uh.
Speaker 6: For a great benefit.
Speaker 8: He was.
Speaker 7: He played My son, Keith played at LSU, and he
Speaker 7: was live on national TV his junior year maybe against
Speaker 7: testas A and l on ESPN one.
Speaker 6: And he had a pretty rough game.
Speaker 7: And we're back at the hotel, the Cook Hotel on
Speaker 7: LSU campus and he just bumming. He's really down, And
Speaker 7: I said, you know what, I'm going to change your
Speaker 7: mood right now, go to YouTube and look up Sheena
Speaker 7: Easton Strut and the China Easton sugar Walls featuring me
Speaker 7: looking like a complete idiot. And so he looked at
Speaker 7: his dad just sort of undulating around with funglasses on,
Speaker 7: and it just just fell out and his mood chains
Speaker 7: just like I predicted. And so, you know what, whatever
Speaker 7: works to help your kids get through the tough times.
Speaker 7: My clownest appearances in Sena videos worked well.
Speaker 3: I assure you that exaggerating lazy and gentlemen anyway.
Speaker 8: You had say, I forgot we was still on the intro. Yeah,
Speaker 8: who's on a show?
Speaker 4: Hold on, I never want played with CDs, did allot
Speaker 4: of second.
Speaker 3: We don't even talk about his work with U, d
Speaker 3: J Neet Jack Dsonnet and my high school mate Christa McBride.
Speaker 6: Yes Philadelphia schoolmates.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, not to mention you know your your musicianship,
Speaker 3: your DNA is all over our favorites by Bonnie Ray
Speaker 3: Don Henley, so many projects.
Speaker 2: This intro is going to be forever.
Speaker 8: Y uh.
Speaker 9: He played with Squeeze what yep when I don't know?
Speaker 7: On Wikipedia, Just to be accurate, I played on one.
Speaker 7: I played on one of their records. A great record
Speaker 7: of Walk a Straight Line is a beautiful bet you
Speaker 7: know that one. No, it's it's a great not a hit,
Speaker 7: but it's a beautiful song.
Speaker 2: Squeezehead.
Speaker 8: What album is it on?
Speaker 7: It's so called play Okay, early mid nineties and I
Speaker 7: played Accordion.
Speaker 6: Yeah on this right, let.
Speaker 3: Me just say the two words so we can start
Speaker 3: the episode. Bruce Hornsby the Quest Love Supreme. Thanks anyway, Yeah,
Speaker 3: we often fall in the rabbit holes even before we
Speaker 3: get the name of the artist.
Speaker 6: Who cares. It's fine, Bruce Hornsby, Easton veteran.
Speaker 3: So right now you're celebrating the release of your twenty
Speaker 3: second record.
Speaker 2: Correct, Yes, that's true, sir.
Speaker 3: So without my knowledge of your your your Deadhead years,
Speaker 3: can I can I assume that the fact that you
Speaker 3: have about I believe it is twenty six live albums,
Speaker 3: that's the less.
Speaker 2: And that you learned from playing with the Grateful Dead.
Speaker 6: Well, okay.
Speaker 7: People always ask me, how did playing with the Dead
Speaker 7: change your musician, ship, changed your approach, et cetera. I
Speaker 7: was always an improvising musician. I went to school. I
Speaker 7: was one of those music school geeks. I started off
Speaker 7: at Berkeley for two semesters, but then I went to
Speaker 7: University of Miami. Sun Tan you known to a lot
Speaker 7: of people for a year paid vacation for rich Nordon kids,
Speaker 7: Northern white kids. Anyway, I came out with that background,
Speaker 7: and so the improvisational aspect of the Dead was not
Speaker 7: anything that was sort of epiphanal for me, epiphantic. What
Speaker 7: I got out of them mostly was inspiration on the
Speaker 7: songwriting level. People don't realize that they have fully fifty
Speaker 7: truly great songs. Half of them sound like they could
Speaker 7: have been written one hundred years ago or plus. Old
Speaker 7: folk music keep well of influence there. So so I
Speaker 7: love them. I miss Garcia. He was quite a guy.
Speaker 2: He was a rocket during the Garcia years.
Speaker 7: Oh yes, the last spot I played with him, just
Speaker 7: for twenty months or so. I played about one hundred
Speaker 7: shows with them from eight from nineteen ninety to ninety two.
Speaker 7: We'd opened for them before that.
Speaker 2: Okay, Oh so you played the ninety two Okay.
Speaker 7: Yeah, but then I was sitting with them when they
Speaker 7: were geographically close to me up through ninety five, up
Speaker 7: right up to his death.
Speaker 3: Okay, so yeah, I went to one Garcia show. I
Speaker 3: think in Houston when Branford Marcellus was singing with them.
Speaker 7: Yes, my guy, Yes, Branford and I played together with
Speaker 7: it dead quite often. It's his birthday's coming up here
Speaker 7: pretty soon, Fellas, So maybe you should shout his ass out.
Speaker 8: Yeah, are you on without a net the deadline?
Speaker 6: No, that's Branford's on that, okay.
Speaker 7: To respond to the twenty six live albums to which
Speaker 7: you're referring, that's albums, I mean they're just available online.
Speaker 7: There's no CDs made of those. But frankly, we're like
Speaker 7: a lot of bands. I write the songs, we record
Speaker 7: the songs, and then we learned how to play the songs.
Speaker 7: So consequently the live thing expands everything that we started with.
Speaker 6: On the original record.
Speaker 7: And so so quite often live is the best way
Speaker 7: to hear us because it's very loose, it's very free.
Speaker 7: Branford sits in with this quite often because he knows
Speaker 7: that we're winging it like crazy because I don't know
Speaker 7: what I'm gonna do. So if I don't know what
Speaker 7: I'm gonna do with the band, guys definitely don't and
Speaker 7: it makes it great fun.
Speaker 3: Is there a pressure for you to make a memory
Speaker 3: each and every night knowing that some of these fans
Speaker 3: will follow you like there. To me is no more
Speaker 3: loyal fan base than you know, anything associated with the dead.
Speaker 2: Yes within it.
Speaker 3: So yeah, that's how did that affect your actual the
Speaker 3: way that you put on shows?
Speaker 7: I think I probably started taking a little more out
Speaker 7: than I had been doing. You know, I was always improvising,
Speaker 7: but I got a lot freer, much to the chagrin
Speaker 7: of a lot of my fans. You know, when you
Speaker 7: come out having these big hit radio songs, you acquire
Speaker 7: an audience that I call sort of a soft core one,
Speaker 7: people who are only there to hear the songs. They know, yeah,
Speaker 7: that's right. And so I was never that guy. So
Speaker 7: I've it's been my self appointed job to piss those
Speaker 7: people off for many a year, and so been nasty
Speaker 7: letters abound in my world for thirty two years.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: Wait, you're saying that you've gone shows without playing maldern
Speaker 3: Rain or the way it is.
Speaker 6: Or yet, well not many I've been.
Speaker 7: I've become a lot more kind about it in my
Speaker 7: snessence here in my sixties, but there have been shows.
Speaker 7: But the only only times that I didn't do that
Speaker 7: was when I felt the audience was so jacked, so responsive,
Speaker 7: so deeply involved in what we were doing without playing
Speaker 7: those old war horses, that I could get away with it,
Speaker 7: and it wasn't a problem. Of course, I still get
Speaker 7: a couple of nasty letters from people who again are
Speaker 7: so core fans and they would just come to hear
Speaker 7: those five or six songs that they know. But so, yeah,
Speaker 7: now it's really gotten bad because my last two records
Speaker 7: have really gone. I'm a modern classical music devo te
Speaker 7: and so that a stringent atonal chromatic, dough decophonic sound
Speaker 7: has been filtering into my music much too many fans chagrin.
Speaker 6: I apologize to that.
Speaker 5: Mat That is actually the g is the first time
Speaker 5: we've ever heard the word dough decophonic used on questloads
Speaker 5: and that is amazing, and I'm.
Speaker 6: Happy to be a first to give you all a
Speaker 6: first here.
Speaker 10: Yeah, I saw you play one downtown and uh, there
Speaker 10: was a lot of feedback and it.
Speaker 4: Was in the key of F.
Speaker 10: So so they played everything in the key of F.
Speaker 10: And for that it was fucking hilarious because every song
Speaker 10: was just in F, no matter what in what grange.
Speaker 10: They took everything into F and so like because they
Speaker 10: kept out feeding back and so like, so is not
Speaker 10: to be a total They played everything in f and
Speaker 10: it was hilarious.
Speaker 7: Well, look, if you're a musician of any worth, you
Speaker 7: should be able to transpose instantly.
Speaker 6: You can't. You're not going to play with me, and so, uh,
Speaker 6: what's that?
Speaker 10: We share a guitar player, Doug Doug Derryberry, who used
Speaker 10: to be a noise maker many years ago, is sesame
Speaker 10: Streets guitar player.
Speaker 6: So well, not that many years ago, Doug.
Speaker 7: Doug was with me for fifteen years and I made
Speaker 7: a change about maybe six five or six years ago.
Speaker 7: But Doug, it's a great asset, a great utilitarian sort
Speaker 7: of an orchestral guitar player. It's a it's a great
Speaker 7: New York guitar player named John Leventhal, most well known
Speaker 7: for the Sean Colvin Great Records and Levinthal had played
Speaker 7: on my sixth record, Spirit Trail in ninety eight, and
Speaker 7: I wanted somebody to give me eleventh alien sound, and
Speaker 7: so I got Doug and he did a great job
Speaker 7: for me. I started hearing another sound in my head,
Speaker 7: so alas I made a change, but I love Doug
Speaker 7: and he did a great job for us, Like I say,
Speaker 7: for fifteen years.
Speaker 3: So your musical roots. I know that you started out
Speaker 3: in Virginia. What city were you born in?
Speaker 7: I was born in Richmond, and I grew up in Willisburg,
Speaker 7: fifteen miles down the road, and I still this is
Speaker 7: where I am now. I moved back after ten years
Speaker 7: in la I moved back in nineteen ninety. So I've
Speaker 7: been here for back here for thirty years and we're
Speaker 7: in my garls.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you can have that shit.
Speaker 8: I went there once. They took us on the trip
Speaker 8: there like third grade one time, and like that was it?
Speaker 3: No roots show there our get the Spontine the the
Speaker 3: one we did like one.
Speaker 2: O six in part live.
Speaker 7: Oh h yeah, so how did you how did you
Speaker 7: go over?
Speaker 6: How did they.
Speaker 2: Our song?
Speaker 3: Break you off with nice for about four minutes and
Speaker 3: then the rest of the show was like.
Speaker 6: Okay, they're just they're just out there a little.
Speaker 2: They were like, where's mister cheeks? That we're done? So yeah,
Speaker 2: I can relate.
Speaker 9: I've been about what about Colonial Williams Williams, Vergon.
Speaker 7: Well, we made it our self appointed job as local
Speaker 7: townies to pelt tourists and local College of women marry
Speaker 7: students with water balloons, and so.
Speaker 6: We would ride through town and just wear an ass out.
Speaker 2: Uh Jesus christ Man.
Speaker 7: Yeah, our karma was probably not so good then hopefully improved.
Speaker 7: But uh we actually got stopped by the cops and
Speaker 7: take it to the cop the police station our senior
Speaker 7: year in high school. Uh, some young, well appointed young
Speaker 7: College of women marry grad students. We just pelted him
Speaker 7: and he flagged the cops down and we were through.
Speaker 7: So that's but yeah, that was as exciting as it
Speaker 7: got in the little last town of Winnsburg, which I love.
Speaker 6: Obviously I moved back here, but yes, Williensburg is my town.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Worns. We got Karen, Okay, I'm right down
Speaker 2: the street.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm I'm in North North Carolina, born and raised
Speaker 5: where where I'm in Raleigh? And I saw your son.
Speaker 5: He went to Ashville, right, he went to Yes, yeah,
Speaker 5: in the mountains.
Speaker 7: Yes, you saw him planc State, yeah, man, Yeah, he
Speaker 7: put twenty three on Ency State and then they recruited him.
Speaker 7: Mark Gottfried recruited him, but he picked LSU and it
Speaker 7: worked out great for him. But yes, Robbie's a good
Speaker 7: old town. We like playing that museum, the outdoor.
Speaker 8: One had art museum out uh huh.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's nice, it's really nice. And you know Branford
Speaker 7: lives in Durham.
Speaker 8: Yeah, man, Bradford.
Speaker 5: So Bradford he actually I'm I graduated from North Clina
Speaker 5: Central and Branford taught there. He was there the artist
Speaker 5: in residence for years and h he's just super cool dude, man.
Speaker 7: Yeah, the best. He's also a fellow prankster with me.
Speaker 7: So I could talk about that, but I'll I won't
Speaker 7: do it because he may not approve. We'll see.
Speaker 2: What was your first musical memory.
Speaker 7: Well, it's not a memory when someone's recorded you at
Speaker 7: a at age three or four. You know, you don't,
Speaker 7: at least I don't remember that. But since the tapes
Speaker 7: around then you feel like you remembered it. There's a
Speaker 7: tape of me singing hound Dog at age about three
Speaker 7: and a half or four. Yeah, crock and all the time,
Speaker 7: you know all that business. Uh and some other songs too,
Speaker 7: with the Wind and the Rain in her Hair by
Speaker 7: Pat Boone. Our parents were turning us on to this stuff.
Speaker 7: So yeah, sadly, alas I probably heard Pat Boone's Tutti
Speaker 7: fruity and not little Richard rich as sad as that sounds.
Speaker 7: That's that's that was what was happening in my house.
Speaker 2: But yeah, siblings or was it just you?
Speaker 6: Yes, I'm the emotionally disturbed middle child, and.
Speaker 7: So yes, I have an older brother and a younger brother,
Speaker 7: and uh I it's it's interesting since I was in
Speaker 7: the middle, I was really close with each of them
Speaker 7: and they were friendly always, but not like not like
Speaker 7: relationship that I had with each of them. My older
Speaker 7: brother was the original deadhead in our family, Bobby Hornsby,
Speaker 7: and I used in my freshman year of college, I
Speaker 7: was a little Brucey playing Fender Rose and singing lead
Speaker 7: in a dead cover band called Bobby High Test and
Speaker 7: the Octane Kids. So that was Bobby Hornsby and my
Speaker 7: younger brother ended up writing a lot of songs with
Speaker 7: me later in the aforementioned Mandolin Rain is a co
Speaker 7: write with my younger brother, John Valley Road School, about
Speaker 7: a song about a young girl who gets knocked up,
Speaker 7: as they used to say, put in the family way,
Speaker 7: and they sent her away to the school for unwed
Speaker 7: mothers a while, A strange way to have a hit.
Speaker 7: The Top five song that one, so he yeah, so
Speaker 7: he wrote that with me.
Speaker 6: He wrote songs for several years, but now he's out
Speaker 6: of it. But yeah, they're I was. I was.
Speaker 7: I'm the middle guy, the middle little student. I was
Speaker 7: a jock as a kid, though I was into music
Speaker 7: a little bit, but I mostly wanted to hoop.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was gonna say, your your relationship with basketball.
Speaker 3: I'm a Philadelphian, So yeah, it has been noted how
Speaker 3: your involvement in the life of Alan Iverson, some could
Speaker 3: say literally saved his life. At the time, it's too curious,
Speaker 3: like what was it about him? Because the thing is
Speaker 3: that I'm not one, I'm not a sports guy, but
Speaker 3: I'm still trying to understand the mentality of college sports
Speaker 3: fans and how they see that just as important as
Speaker 3: professional sports. And but what was it at the time
Speaker 3: that made you want to get involved in his situation?
Speaker 7: Well, I think addressing first the college versus pro thing.
Speaker 7: You've got a whole lot of people, for instance, in
Speaker 7: the southern part of the United States where say, in basketball,
Speaker 7: they're only maybe they're only outside of Florida, there's only
Speaker 7: the Atlanta Hawks and the New Orleans Pelicans. So for
Speaker 7: most of this vast area. College sports is king. That's
Speaker 7: one reason why the SEC, I think is so huge,
Speaker 7: because the only game into and the a SEC too,
Speaker 7: so those are the only games in town.
Speaker 6: And that Having said that, what what did you just
Speaker 6: ask me?
Speaker 3: Other than that, what made you personally get involved with
Speaker 3: Alan iverson situation?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 6: Okay, okay?
Speaker 7: So well, Chuck as we call him, Bubba Chuck, that
Speaker 7: was Chuck was his name in locally, at least in
Speaker 7: the hood of Hampton. When they when he got sent
Speaker 7: to jail, graffiti all over Hampton said free Chuck. I
Speaker 7: just got chills thinking of going down and seeing all
Speaker 7: this because he was a beloved figure. Even as a kid,
Speaker 7: people just knew he was special. There's an AAU program
Speaker 7: in our area, legendary program called the Blue Williams League
Speaker 7: Boo Wiams Summer League, and Chuck was a star in that.
Speaker 7: And then he played at Bethel High School and he
Speaker 7: led his team. He was a fantastic football player too.
Speaker 7: He was just special athlete. He got over two hundred
Speaker 7: offers in football as well, and so.
Speaker 2: So he was just as good at football as he
Speaker 2: was in basketball.
Speaker 7: Well, it's arguable who can say, he was just fantastic
Speaker 7: at both. So you know what he is saying, greater, greater,
Speaker 7: He was just great in both.
Speaker 2: What was his position in football?
Speaker 8: He was a quarterback Okay.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and he was so fast and he had all
Speaker 7: that juke, all those all those changing directions. You know,
Speaker 7: he'd go this way and then go there. You just
Speaker 7: he was crossing people off on the football field. So
Speaker 7: the story goes that I went to see him played
Speaker 7: at Fort Eustace. We have a very great military presence,
Speaker 7: huge military presence in our area. In one of the
Speaker 7: bases is Fort Ustess. They had a Christmas tournament. Chuck
Speaker 7: was playing. Bethel High School was playing. So I went
Speaker 7: to see the game and Anne Iverson, his mom, came
Speaker 7: up to me and, oh, I don't know, asked me
Speaker 7: to sign something, and so I told him, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 7: we left, We left Chuck, et cetera.
Speaker 6: And uh So.
Speaker 7: Then after his junior year where he led his team
Speaker 7: to the state championship in football and then in basketball,
Speaker 7: he was in a bowling alley in pecosin Virginia, a
Speaker 7: little an area of Newport News, Porhampton, I guess, and
Speaker 7: uh well, a brawl broke out and he and a
Speaker 7: bunch of others, uh were arrested for brawling in a
Speaker 7: bowling alley and also maving by mob. So he was
Speaker 7: He and three or four of his friends were convicted
Speaker 7: and sent to jail. And I thought it was a travesty,
Speaker 7: miscarriage of justice. So we're I'm proud to say that
Speaker 7: we and Virginia elected the first black governor in America.
Speaker 2: Doug Wilder.
Speaker 7: And he was and he was the governor then, and
Speaker 7: I had done some work for him, some events for him,
Speaker 7: so I started lobbying him through his chief of staff
Speaker 7: as a friend of mine. And I don't know, I
Speaker 7: was just one of many probably to do this. But
Speaker 7: but Wilder, around Christmas time of say ninety two, Wilder,
Speaker 7: Doug Wilder pardoned Allen. Now he should have pardoned everybody.
Speaker 7: And about two weeks later, the hubub was so intense
Speaker 7: that finally he did let everybody go, so as not
Speaker 7: to show favoritism to the local favorite son, Killer Hooper,
Speaker 7: you know, killer Jock. So about two months later I
Speaker 7: get call out of the blue from his high school coach,
Speaker 7: a guy named Mike Bailey, and he says, hey, Bruce
Speaker 7: Alan knows about what you did for oh, and also
Speaker 7: I had just become friends with our mutual guy, Spike
Speaker 7: LEEPI and so Spike and I. The first thing I
Speaker 7: did was Spike in ninety two he made a video
Speaker 7: for me. Branford was in it because he played on
Speaker 7: the record a song about the first interracial romance in
Speaker 7: my town of Williamsburg and all the consternation it caused
Speaker 7: with the local sort of conservative government crowd. Anyway, we're
Speaker 7: in we're in editing, and I told him about Chuck, and.
Speaker 6: Oh, that's right.
Speaker 7: I had told him earlier about that. Anyway, I forget
Speaker 7: the exact timeline. But this guy calls me and so
Speaker 7: I had gotten Spike when when when Chuck was in jail,
Speaker 7: I said, Spike, you know you know what this kid I
Speaker 7: told you about when now he's in jail. And Spike said, yes,
Speaker 7: I've seen it on ESPN know all about it. I said,
Speaker 7: will you do me a favor and send him just
Speaker 7: pat Carre package from Spike Lee. It might pick him
Speaker 7: up when he's at the City Farm in Newport News.
Speaker 7: And so Spike did that. Anyway, the sky calls, he said, well,
Speaker 7: Allan knows what you've done. What you've done, and he'd
Speaker 7: like to thank you. I said, well, you guys, come
Speaker 7: up and we'll play some ball, and he said, well,
Speaker 7: that's what he would like to do. So we ended
Speaker 7: up doing that and becoming friends through that forever.
Speaker 8: Wow.
Speaker 2: Now is there any truth that you Oh no, god, that.
Speaker 7: It's not just one game. It was three. But you know,
Speaker 7: I'm just setting the record straight. I don't need to
Speaker 7: talk shit. I don't care about living about making that
Speaker 7: some moment. I never bring it up. I never talk
Speaker 7: about it, but look, it's out.
Speaker 6: Well though, look it just happened.
Speaker 7: Maybe I caught him rusty because he had obviously not
Speaker 7: been playing a whole lot of ball for the past
Speaker 7: four months. But I had one of those days where
Speaker 7: I just couldn't miss, you know, I just was just
Speaker 7: just just netting my ass off, and and we were
Speaker 7: playing a game. Maybe he was not aware of this game.
Speaker 7: It's perfect for him.
Speaker 6: Really. It helps the smaller guy, and he's a little
Speaker 6: small shorter than me.
Speaker 7: Uh.
Speaker 6: It's it's the way the pros play.
Speaker 7: You start the top of the key and you can
Speaker 7: either pick a two dribble or three dribble maximum, which
Speaker 7: basically means the big guy can't just back in, back in,
Speaker 7: back into the bracket, throws up a little last land
Speaker 7: to a pitiful land hook and and do that all
Speaker 7: the time. So you've got to make a move, you
Speaker 7: gotta you know, you've got to commit and shoot the ball.
Speaker 6: So that's that's what we played.
Speaker 7: Of course, he dunked on my head about five times.
Speaker 7: I mean, you know, he's a freak. He was a
Speaker 7: freaky athlete. Anyway, there are lots of witnesses and I
Speaker 7: could name them all for you, so including including his
Speaker 7: high school cook. But you know, what, the hell with it,
Speaker 7: I don't care. I love I love Chuck and uh,
Speaker 7: you know, maybe maybe he let me.
Speaker 6: You'd have to ask him.
Speaker 3: Okay, Yeah, there's there's Uh there's a friend of Pharrell's
Speaker 3: who I guess went to high school with with Alan,
Speaker 3: and like one night they were at a party for
Speaker 3: the Neptunes, and you know it's like they're in the
Speaker 3: nightclub and you know, the guy was trying to bring
Speaker 3: up like old high school times and you know Alan
Speaker 3: was like, oh yeah, way back in the day, like
Speaker 3: really not trying to talk basketball when you're in a
Speaker 3: nightclub situation.
Speaker 2: Well, this guy like insists, like whatever high school.
Speaker 3: Game they played, like oh boy, he had walked or something,
Speaker 3: or like he did some violations. I don't know what happened.
Speaker 3: But the next thing I know, Farrell told me, tells
Speaker 3: me that this guy grabs his basketball and he's outside
Speaker 3: in the parking lot and it's pouring down rain and
Speaker 3: he's playing against Alan Iverson's roll's voice, like he's just
Speaker 3: in front of the rolls voice, like trying to cross
Speaker 3: as if that roll's voice is Alan Iverson, Like for
Speaker 3: no reason at all.
Speaker 7: Just oh, he was out there alone, playing out there.
Speaker 3: Alone, just like playing a car trying to cross the
Speaker 3: roles voice like it was parked, like Alan was nowhere.
Speaker 2: You know. It was just that is one of those
Speaker 2: moments that's sad. Really, yeah, it was so for you.
Speaker 3: What was your what was the moment that really drew
Speaker 3: you into your music career right now?
Speaker 6: Like, well, what what was the moment that made.
Speaker 2: Me say, I mean as younger.
Speaker 7: Yeah, exactly, there made me say, okay, the hell with
Speaker 7: the standard routine, I'm casting my lot with the muse.
Speaker 7: Tho's that moment you're you're asking about. Okay, Well, I
Speaker 7: went to one year of real college. I was a
Speaker 7: bit of a school hopper. I went to three colleges,
Speaker 7: University of Richmond the one sort of lost year that
Speaker 7: made and then Berkeley and Miami.
Speaker 6: So that was a year that made me.
Speaker 7: Realize, Okay, this, this is what I need to do.
Speaker 7: But I was such a late starter because I had
Speaker 7: been a jock as a kid and that's what I
Speaker 7: cared about. But I started playing piano in eleventh grade,
Speaker 7: and so kind of late stage seven.
Speaker 2: Seven started playing piano in eleventh grade.
Speaker 11: Yeah, yeah, I had a lot of catching up to do,
Speaker 11: and yes started How that's just freaking well okay, so
Speaker 11: how uhause?
Speaker 2: I mean you're really good. So I just think that.
Speaker 8: You can't have started that late. Yeah that's crazy.
Speaker 7: Well, look, it's all about it's all about putting in
Speaker 7: the time, as anyone knows. As you know, I when
Speaker 7: I once I got into it, I got deeply involved.
Speaker 7: And when I went to college, I practiced for several
Speaker 7: years for from five to eight hours every day. So
Speaker 7: if you're willing to do that every day, Christmas Day,
Speaker 7: New Year's Day, then you're going.
Speaker 6: To catch up a little bit.
Speaker 7: All the oh, I do feel like I love classical music,
Speaker 7: but my technique because I was such a late starter.
Speaker 7: It's it's commonly said that if you want to be
Speaker 7: a classical virtuos or a concert pianist, you have to
Speaker 7: start at age three, four, five, six, you know, no late,
Speaker 7: no later than that, because the demands are so intense.
Speaker 7: And I really feel that, to be honest, I always
Speaker 7: going men, bitch you sorry, as you know, to myself,
Speaker 7: and so.
Speaker 6: So that's that's a regret. But hey, everyone's life path
Speaker 6: is different.
Speaker 7: I was just a guy who like like playing sports
Speaker 7: first and so got into this later. So yeah, but
Speaker 7: I got deeply into it and went to music school
Speaker 7: and and got a lot out of that too. So
Speaker 7: that so that's my story. Just started started late, but
Speaker 7: couldn't stop. I just I just had to do it
Speaker 7: at all times.
Speaker 8: Why did you leave Berkeley?
Speaker 7: I went Berkeley because I wanted to practice four hours
Speaker 7: a day and they had a limited number of practice rooms.
Speaker 7: So if you wanted to practice for today, you had
Speaker 7: to wait about six and a half hours to do
Speaker 7: that because they kick you out.
Speaker 6: It was a good a line of sign.
Speaker 7: Up sheet in the line they kick you out after
Speaker 7: two hours for you know, for good reason, I guess,
Speaker 7: because there's got a lot of people waiting.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 7: So and also since I was late to start, I
Speaker 7: felt I needed to. I'd amassed all this information, you know,
Speaker 7: this theoretical knowledge at Berkeley, Heart, take taking, harmony, et cetera,
Speaker 7: and I thought I needed some time to really really
Speaker 7: assimilate and deal with this and really ingest it. So
Speaker 7: I lived in a farmhouse outside of Willnsburg, and that
Speaker 7: was when I started my eight hours hours day regiment.
Speaker 7: I played this little cocktail piano bar and at night
Speaker 7: to make a buck and shed on this old upright.
Speaker 6: And then I went to Miami from there.
Speaker 8: Were you learning just by ear or were you reading
Speaker 8: at that time?
Speaker 7: Well, I started playing by ear because it came fairly
Speaker 7: naturally to me. I started because of two guys. My
Speaker 7: older brother went to New England prep school, and we
Speaker 7: were just local Virginia hooples who listened to the top
Speaker 7: fourtyest station in the soul station. We didn't get the
Speaker 7: underground stuff, you know, the stations where back then you
Speaker 7: could hear Miles Davis next to Hendricks, next to Joni Mitchell,
Speaker 7: you know whatever. And so so he turned me on too.
Speaker 7: I know this sounds crazy, to think that this could
Speaker 7: be sort of underground. But Elton John's second record, Tumble
Speaker 7: Wee Connection, is least mostly the one record he probably
Speaker 7: almost ever made that had no hit on it. It's
Speaker 7: one of the best ones. It's a deep, beautiful record,
Speaker 7: and it got me into playing. And then he turned
Speaker 7: me onto Joe Cocker, Mad Dogs and Englishmen with the
Speaker 7: great Leon Russell playing piano. So Leon and Elton. Leon's
Speaker 7: a soul man. He came straight out of you guys
Speaker 7: familiar with Kojik Church of God in Christy, deep deep
Speaker 7: gospel music roots. I mean, it's just the music that
Speaker 7: comes out of there. Like you hear those old Sam's Cooking,
Speaker 7: the Soul Stirrs records, all that stuff that Leon played, that.
Speaker 6: Good, Good.
Speaker 7: Gonna Go, all that stuff. You're hearing that in the
Speaker 7: background where Sam's cooking, the soul Sterriers are singing that
Speaker 7: killer gospel.
Speaker 6: That's where that came.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's the right gospels, that's right gospel quartets. And
Speaker 7: so between Elton and Leon, I was hooked, and so
Speaker 7: I was.
Speaker 6: I was learning those by ear.
Speaker 7: But my mom, see, my grandfather was a musician for
Speaker 7: a living in Richmond, and he was the supervisor of
Speaker 7: music in the public schools, the pubic schools system, and
Speaker 7: then uh he uh was also the uh the theater
Speaker 7: organists at the local mosque. If you went to the
Speaker 7: state jc's convention, you you'd be the guy over in
Speaker 7: the corner playing Las Turkey in the star some old
Speaker 7: pretty convincedrul ship. But uh so anyway, uh, she my
Speaker 7: mom look at me, and she's my hands just looked terrible.
Speaker 7: I was probably playing like this, and he said, you
Speaker 7: know what, you you may be sounded okay, but you
Speaker 7: look rough. You got to start taking lessons. And so
Speaker 7: then I started to learn to read and learn sort
Speaker 7: of the the jazz language, the two fives, et.
Speaker 6: Cetera, all the color tones and all that. So that
Speaker 6: my mom was good for me.
Speaker 7: And so that's how that happened.
Speaker 3: Real quick, What year were you at Berkeley and were
Speaker 3: there any other notable students that were there at the
Speaker 3: time that was in the year that you went.
Speaker 7: Yeah, Well, I've always heard it's a it's a badge
Speaker 7: of dishonor to actually graduate from Berkeley, because I've.
Speaker 8: Heard it too. You only go for a little bit. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 8: I mean, you ain't getting a gege, Yeah.
Speaker 4: You don't have a gig. That's right.
Speaker 7: That means you're saying yeah, you know, so okay. I
Speaker 7: went for summer and fall of seventy four, but I
Speaker 7: was in the accelerated program. So I crammed two years
Speaker 7: into two semesters and let me see anybody who was
Speaker 7: there who really emerged. Pat Metheene was there, but he
Speaker 7: had come from Miami. He had been a student at Miami,
Speaker 7: but he was so bad he became a teacher like instantly.
Speaker 7: But he was playing with Gary Burton when I was
Speaker 7: at Berkeley, and so I saw an amazing concert at
Speaker 7: the Sanders Theater in Harvard with Keith Jarrett opening on
Speaker 7: solo piano, imagine that. And then Gary Burton's great Quartet
Speaker 7: with Pat and Mick Goodrick and maybe Bob Moses. So
Speaker 7: it was a fertile scene in Boston. You know, they
Speaker 7: had the Jazz Workshop in Paul's Ball.
Speaker 6: You could go. I would go.
Speaker 7: I had enough money to go see hearsay Bill Evans
Speaker 7: or Horrace Silver one of the week nights. But I
Speaker 7: would go and listen through the wall on Boylston Avenue,
Speaker 7: Boyston Street, just to hear more So it was amazing
Speaker 7: to be able to hear all these people, all these
Speaker 7: legend Cannonball added Lee Miles, on and on and on.
Speaker 2: Was it? How heavy was the competition there?
Speaker 3: Because I know, especially now, like if we're anywhere near
Speaker 3: that campus in Boston, like or at least the musicians
Speaker 3: I see now looking on YouTube or whatever, I feel
Speaker 3: like there's such a not a cut through, but a
Speaker 3: need to out floss each other into in terms of
Speaker 3: like you know, overplay and yeah, everything is that the
Speaker 3: story of Berkeley, just like, yeah, try to.
Speaker 7: I really wasn't good enough to be perfectly honest with you.
Speaker 7: I really wasn't good enough to really emerge into the
Speaker 7: scene where I was hearing the great guys. I was
Speaker 7: fairly mid level and uh so I don't remember, and
Speaker 7: I also don't remember anyone emerging to have a great career.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 6: When I went to Miami, that's different.
Speaker 7: Okay, When I was at Miami, it was sort of
Speaker 7: the letter stages of the golden era of University.
Speaker 6: Of Miami right when I hit.
Speaker 7: When I got there, Pat Pat had been there, Jocko
Speaker 7: had been teaching near Jocko Obastorius.
Speaker 2: Uh oh he held a job.
Speaker 8: Wow, Yeah, I didn't know, well it.
Speaker 6: Was personally it was private lessons.
Speaker 7: I'm sure it was loose hair, can't I can't make
Speaker 7: it today listen to you know that that kind of thing.
Speaker 7: But the Dixie Drags, you guys know, those guys were
Speaker 7: Steve Morse sort of like I don't know, like virtuosic
Speaker 7: rock and roll, bluegrass or something that Steve Morris was
Speaker 7: crazy that the virtuosity level was high.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 7: But then uh, Carmen Lundy, Rob Watson but known as
Speaker 7: Bobby Watson now uh and uh and and Carmen's little brother,
Speaker 7: Kurt Lundy. I played in Carmen's band. That was sort
Speaker 7: of a rite of patches. If you were emerging as
Speaker 7: one of the better players in the hierarchy of the school,
Speaker 7: you got to play in Carmen Lundy's band. You guys
Speaker 7: know Carmen, right, you guys know I. Yeah, okay, so
Speaker 7: she's had a nice career as a jazz singer, and
Speaker 7: uh yeah, Bobby Watson, Carmen pat pat Metheenie of course.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: And you're looking at it more serious jazz sort of
Speaker 3: road or just you're going for the whatever it took you.
Speaker 7: Well, I was just going with the inspiration, but it
Speaker 7: was pretty tall tale at that time. I would go
Speaker 7: to the record store and I'd buy an Ornette Coleman
Speaker 7: record and a Joni Mitchell record, and I'd always find
Speaker 7: myself listening to the Joni Mitchell record more. You know,
Speaker 7: I get a ROBERTA. Flack record and a Hubert Laws record,
Speaker 7: say and the flute.
Speaker 8: Player, yeah and so on record.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, it's it's fantastic and so but I always
Speaker 7: I thought to myself, well, I think I really like
Speaker 7: this jazz music. It's a it's a great intellectual pursuit.
Speaker 7: But I I think my heart was in in in
Speaker 7: songs and songs with words. And so when I got
Speaker 7: out of Miami, we put together a band up in
Speaker 7: Virginia and started down the long road. Eight years later,
Speaker 7: I got signed to our Sia Records at age thirty.
Speaker 2: So it was wow, over, let's back that up. Six
Speaker 2: years eighty two, you and you joined Ambrosia.
Speaker 4: No, but I didn't.
Speaker 6: That's a that's a fallacy on Wikipedia whatever.
Speaker 2: Oh so you had nothing to do with No.
Speaker 6: No, they were great friends of mine.
Speaker 7: Okay, I was discovered the aforementioned band we put together
Speaker 7: in Virginia after Miami. After I graduated, we were playing
Speaker 7: around the local area and we where we're playing bars
Speaker 7: and lounges where you're you know, you expected to play
Speaker 7: shake your booty and brick house and all that stuff.
Speaker 7: So we actually acquired an audience who would come to
Speaker 7: these lounges to hear my songs. So we were big
Speaker 7: fans of Mike McDonald of the Doobie Brothers, and so
Speaker 7: they were coming through town and uh so we knew
Speaker 7: where they were staying because the same people that booked
Speaker 7: the big concerts at Hampton Coliseum booked our little ship
Speaker 7: ass gigs at the at the Stake and Ale.
Speaker 2: So we walked in.
Speaker 7: My drummer and I were both sort of big guys.
Speaker 7: I'm big, bony ask guy, but my drummer is a big,
Speaker 7: strong guy. And we walk in and found Mike McDonald
Speaker 7: in the lobby. We went up to him and said, hey,
Speaker 7: Mike with the baddest motherfuckers in his town, and we're
Speaker 7: playing right.
Speaker 6: Over here and you should come here.
Speaker 7: So he says, well, I will if I can. I'm
Speaker 7: going to the movies. But so sure enough he came.
Speaker 6: Everyone could do a.
Speaker 4: Mike McDonald opression.
Speaker 8: We've had him on the show. We actually had him.
Speaker 4: He was doing a depression of himself.
Speaker 7: Well he's a beautiful guy, as you know, he's just
Speaker 7: the sweetest person, so self a face humbled. Anyway, he
Speaker 7: came and we were just raging at it, and he
Speaker 7: invited us over to the long story short, he kind
Speaker 7: of he sort of discovered us and helped us meet
Speaker 7: some people in LA and that's what got me out
Speaker 7: to LA.
Speaker 6: About a year and a half later, a lot of
Speaker 6: us moved to California.
Speaker 9: Did you ever end up working with Michael McDonald after
Speaker 9: that on projects or anything.
Speaker 7: No, But our claim to fame was that Mike McDonald
Speaker 7: and whether the Doobie Brothers were playing some PBS special
Speaker 7: and live thing and he was wearing a Bruce Hornsby
Speaker 7: band T shirt and so that was of course, that
Speaker 7: was a huge thing for us. We thought that was beautiful.
Speaker 7: We slept on his floor for ten nights, my drummer
Speaker 7: John Molo and I and at that time he was
Speaker 7: singing on everybody's record under the La Sun, and so
Speaker 7: he would take our admittedly very mediocre demo tape around
Speaker 7: and try to turn people onto it and that.
Speaker 6: But to no avail again. Years later I got signed.
Speaker 2: Oh but yeah, right, this is from moving to LA.
Speaker 2: What year did you move to LA?
Speaker 7: Nineteen eighty Yeah, okay, graduated seventy seven from UM and
Speaker 7: then two and a half years around the local scene
Speaker 7: from Virginia Beach to Richmond with Willisburg in the middle,
Speaker 7: and then moved, uh to LA.
Speaker 2: Well, obviously I know what prompted to move to La.
Speaker 2: Oh oh, but you know.
Speaker 7: You got we got onto this because you asked me
Speaker 7: about Ambrosia.
Speaker 6: So yes, okay.
Speaker 7: So the opening act for the Dewey Brothers and on
Speaker 7: that tour was Ambrosia, and so they came to the
Speaker 7: gig too, and we became friends with them.
Speaker 6: And when we moved we went to LA.
Speaker 7: Later that summer we slept on some of those guys floors,
Speaker 7: and so they became friends with us. And then about
Speaker 7: eighty three eighty two, eighty three eighty four, they had
Speaker 7: made a record called Rhode Island and very venturous, sort
Speaker 7: of prog rock record because a lot of everyone knows
Speaker 7: the hits make a wish baby, how much I feel yet,
Speaker 7: but really their their heart lay in in the uh
Speaker 7: the more progressive.
Speaker 6: You know that that kind of thing, and I liked
Speaker 6: that too.
Speaker 7: So they made a record called Rhode Island, and uh,
Speaker 7: I wasn't on it, but I wasn't doing much then,
Speaker 7: and they said, hey, why don't you come be in
Speaker 7: a video?
Speaker 6: So now I'm outing myself again.
Speaker 7: I know that I know what you're up to here,
Speaker 7: because now you're making me admit to another laughable performance
Speaker 7: on a video that is unfortunately out in the world.
Speaker 6: But you know what, do I care? I look hilarious again,
Speaker 6: So if you want extra I see now.
Speaker 7: I started off as a video pitiful and so that's
Speaker 7: all I did with him.
Speaker 6: I was just in that video. The Rhode Island.
Speaker 7: Record didn't really do much commercially, and so they kind
Speaker 7: of broke up the band, and uh, but right around
Speaker 7: that time, I was starting to get my own thing going,
Speaker 7: and soon enough I finally got my chance.
Speaker 3: So what was what was pounding the pavement like in
Speaker 3: Los Angeles between nineteen eighty and eighty six when you
Speaker 3: finally got your deal? Well you have what was what
Speaker 3: was the steps of not the steps of heartbreak?
Speaker 2: But I mean, what was it like back then?
Speaker 7: Well, you'll have you'll I'll have to set the scene
Speaker 7: by remembering the pop music trend of the time.
Speaker 6: The early eighties were just chock a block with new
Speaker 6: wave music.
Speaker 7: Guys in skinny ties and the kind of haircut buzz
Speaker 7: whatever they had groups.
Speaker 6: Like you, well, I didn't have. I didn't have any
Speaker 6: of that.
Speaker 7: I looked just like some Schmendrick who you know, sold
Speaker 7: sold coffee somewhere.
Speaker 6: I mean, I I just was totally not this. The
Speaker 6: pictures of me are pretty funny. Well if I just
Speaker 6: pictures of me now are probably pretty funny too.
Speaker 7: But anyway, that so I was really I'm trying to
Speaker 7: take the picture that I was really a fish out
Speaker 7: of water stylistically, you know, for that I was wrong
Speaker 7: for the times. But then maybe I kind of caught
Speaker 7: a wave in this way. Maybe that's why I got signed.
Speaker 7: I don't think about it much, but in eighty five,
Speaker 7: the pop trends tended to were starting to move away
Speaker 7: from from this sort of brit pop new wave thing,
Speaker 7: and LA had its own new wave groups like X
Speaker 7: and the Blasters, but it started moving into more of
Speaker 7: an Americana you know, Bruce Springsteen, John Mellencamp, Tom Petty thing.
Speaker 7: So my music was sort of tangentially related to that stylistically,
Speaker 7: and so maybe that, but I was playing all this
Speaker 7: piano and so it was a little differ and I
Speaker 7: don't know. I'm proud to say the guy who signed
Speaker 7: me was the rhythm guitar player for the Zombies back
Speaker 7: in the sixties soul. Just the best British man, Paul Atkinson,
Speaker 7: with that great resume, and he just and I tell
Speaker 7: this to people all the time, the least as far
Speaker 7: of sort of a tale, cautionary tale of what not
Speaker 7: to do, the least commercial tape I ever made was
Speaker 7: the one that got me signed, and the one that
Speaker 7: was the truest to my sort of artistic heart. At
Speaker 7: the time, I'm just soloing on piano, just stuff that's
Speaker 7: not done, and Paul Atkinson basically couldn't take the tape
Speaker 7: out of his car, So you're just trying to move
Speaker 7: somebody in a deep way. And that's what this tape did.
Speaker 7: It was my sort of screw you to the mainstream
Speaker 7: record business. I thought it was going to come out
Speaker 7: in some small label like Windham Hill or something.
Speaker 6: But you laugh, Okay, I get it.
Speaker 9: This kind of sorry, it's kind of interesting that Paul
Speaker 9: Atkinson signed. You have he's from The Zombies, which was
Speaker 9: a keyboard centric band.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Rod Argent, exactly.
Speaker 8: Yeah, so he might have had a taste for that, an.
Speaker 7: Affinity for a keyboard or dominated pop yet. So anyway,
Speaker 7: that's what happened, and then we met our first record
Speaker 7: and it was a total fluke. The Way It Is
Speaker 7: was thought to be a B side. There's lots of
Speaker 7: stories like this, This is not rare. Rod Stewart's Maggie May,
Speaker 7: for instance, one of the iconics that was thought to
Speaker 7: be a B side as well.
Speaker 2: So you're saying the Way It Is was kind of
Speaker 2: an afterthought.
Speaker 7: Like here, Well was the title I titled the record
Speaker 7: that the record our first record was called The Way
Speaker 7: It Is? But again, a song about racism with two,
Speaker 7: not one, but two improvised piano solos is not this
Speaker 7: formula for pop radio, you know, and so at all.
Speaker 7: But it broke on the BBC BBC Radio one broken England,
Speaker 7: then throughout Europe, then throughout the rest of the world,
Speaker 7: and then here and so I was really lucky, man.
Speaker 7: I broke on a song that, at least for me,
Speaker 7: felt like it had a little more gravitage than the
Speaker 7: standard record that you were hearing on hit radio then.
Speaker 6: And so yeah, I was good. It's a I call
Speaker 6: it a wonderful accident, a great fluke.
Speaker 3: I want to ask you before we even get to
Speaker 3: the actual crafting of the way it is. I just
Speaker 3: got to know, how did you avoid, like eighty six
Speaker 3: would have been a very tempting year patch wise for
Speaker 3: you to fall into Yamaha d X seven itis with
Speaker 3: those like fake.
Speaker 2: Road sounds and whatnot. Yeah, I did, and I hate
Speaker 2: no one is such a strong piano player, Like, how
Speaker 2: did you avoid falling into that?
Speaker 3: Because literally every other hit was just peppered with the
Speaker 3: DX seven fake Rhodes bell sound.
Speaker 2: How did you avoid that?
Speaker 6: I thought it was the horror. I thought it was horrible.
Speaker 4: I was not.
Speaker 7: I just I didn't want to make that sound. And look,
Speaker 7: it's what I do, it's what I did. And so
Speaker 7: again I made this tape with no regard to that.
Speaker 7: That's why I said, it's the least commercial attempted tape
Speaker 7: that I ever that I made. And uh so so
Speaker 7: it was again it was it was honest, and it
Speaker 7: was maybe fresh, and so it's easy to Monday Morning
Speaker 7: quarterback to me was just a wonderful accident.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that was a record, man, the way it is,
Speaker 5: and I don't know, you know, you said it was
Speaker 5: a B side and it was kind of a thing
Speaker 5: that kind of went off. That was one of the
Speaker 5: first records I remember it kind of being marketed as
Speaker 5: like a serious song, so to speak, and just as
Speaker 5: a kid, like I just remember just kind of the
Speaker 5: bookends of my elementary school education, like the way it is,
Speaker 5: and we didn't start the fire, like I remember my
Speaker 5: teacher like making us right about those songs, like oh interesting, wow,
Speaker 5: the way it is, like okay, so what do you
Speaker 5: think this is about?
Speaker 8: What do you think you know? And and and it
Speaker 8: just always resonated with me. And I think even the.
Speaker 5: Mirrors one about you know, the d X seven, that
Speaker 5: kind of plastic keyboard kind of sound that was hot
Speaker 5: at the time.
Speaker 8: One of the things that always took out to me
Speaker 8: that you were actually playing a real piano.
Speaker 5: And I mean I was, I mean got I was
Speaker 5: probably like seven eight whatever when it came, but but
Speaker 5: I remember it vividly, and that was just always one
Speaker 5: of my favorite songs. And you know, all the times
Speaker 5: it's sampled and everything. I mean, it was just I
Speaker 5: just always thought that was just a gorgeous song.
Speaker 6: Well, how about a fast car like Tracy Chapman. Did
Speaker 6: you like that when?
Speaker 3: Yeah, of course yeah, But do you do you think
Speaker 3: growing up in Richmond sort of prompted you to craft
Speaker 3: the song and the way that you did, because again,
Speaker 3: I mean, people really weren't especially with uh, I meant
Speaker 3: barely with with hip hop.
Speaker 2: I mean hip hop really.
Speaker 3: Wouldn't wasn't starting to get in your face for real,
Speaker 3: for real until eighty seven eighty eight. Right, Yeah, so
Speaker 3: I meant to even bring up something as topical or whatnot.
Speaker 2: Do you think that's just experience experiences in Richmond, Virginia,
Speaker 2: or or like what prompted that?
Speaker 7: Well, I think it's just growing up in a small town. Yes, Williamsburg,
Speaker 7: which is fifty miles for Richmond. So I have small
Speaker 7: more of a small town feeling in Williamsburg. And look,
Speaker 7: it's just it's just based on my upbringing. I was
Speaker 7: the only white dude on the basketball team in high
Speaker 7: school and that was just the best experience for me.
Speaker 7: My old teammates are still my hanging pals in town.
Speaker 6: Here. We go out and talk shit and have a
Speaker 6: laugh and get some beat all for years now.
Speaker 7: It's just beautiful and so I'll shout out Lawrence Jones,
Speaker 7: Keith Drewett, Pebe Martin, Alonzo Dandridge Algae.
Speaker 6: I could keep naming them.
Speaker 7: So those are my guys. Uh And so it was
Speaker 7: a very intense time. I came in just after integration,
Speaker 7: just after the first couple of years. But it was
Speaker 7: it was still sort of a fraud scene. It was
Speaker 7: was definitely attention in the air. And uh, but I
Speaker 7: don't know, I embraced it. They embraced me, My teammates,
Speaker 7: They my teammates embraced me, and uh and and spin
Speaker 7: ever thus so uh so I I just wrote that
Speaker 7: song based on my my upbringing in Williamsburg.
Speaker 5: I was curious to know what was it like working
Speaker 5: with Huey Lewis as a producer, Like, what was I mean,
Speaker 5: we knew him as an artist, but what was he
Speaker 5: like kind of behind the boards and in working in
Speaker 5: that capacity?
Speaker 7: Well, he he produced three songs on the record, one
Speaker 7: of which I changed completely after the record. The original
Speaker 7: version of the record has a band version of this song,
Speaker 7: the River Runs Lot. I just thought it wasn't doing
Speaker 7: the song justice, so I stripped it all down and
Speaker 7: it made it a keyboard vocal record. Hughuey is one
Speaker 7: of the great guys, and he was He was a
Speaker 7: big cheerleader for me, kind of like Mike McDonald had been.
Speaker 7: We were making a demo for Epic Records in eighty
Speaker 7: four and hue had sports at the time, which was
Speaker 7: just Hugh was all everything around the world. And he
Speaker 7: called up and said, Hi, this is Huey. Lewis signed
Speaker 7: the Range. I was hiding behind the name of the Range.
Speaker 7: We were just the Range.
Speaker 6: Then RCA asked me to just be Bruce Hornsby.
Speaker 7: So I compromised on Bruce Hornsby and the Range. But
Speaker 7: it didn't help us. We didn't get signed by Epic.
Speaker 7: But that just shows you Hughey's real intense feeling for
Speaker 7: what I was doing. And as a producer, we just
Speaker 7: had a great time in the studio and we did
Speaker 7: a song about this old horror this old horrorouse in
Speaker 7: the countryside in Willisburg.
Speaker 6: He called down the road tonight and he he produced.
Speaker 6: He produced that song. He should have cuted himself. He'd
Speaker 6: have had a hit with it.
Speaker 8: I think, yeah, I could imagine hue Lewis sing about
Speaker 8: whole houses that.
Speaker 6: Better than I.
Speaker 12: Yes, I think you're right more better suited with with
Speaker 12: with the shock of or you know, I don't know
Speaker 12: if it shocks you to have your first single totally
Speaker 12: come out the out the box as across the board
Speaker 12: hit pressure wise, what was that like?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 3: To be like, how did your life change as far
Speaker 3: as the results and you know, of having that hit
Speaker 3: single and then suddenly being ubiquitous because it's.
Speaker 2: Not like you had a hit single.
Speaker 6: I mean this song is you know, it's lasting.
Speaker 7: Yet when you said shock, I thought you were gonna
Speaker 7: ask me about my Shaka song.
Speaker 2: I didn't get there yet. Yeah, I didn't get there yet.
Speaker 2: About to be there everything.
Speaker 7: Every time I come to and play with you, guys
Speaker 7: you're keyboard player, somebody in your bend says, can we
Speaker 7: play love me still?
Speaker 6: So I'll get with you, which I love.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 7: I have a good, a good story about you and
Speaker 7: that song on Fallin. But that's that's about about nine
Speaker 7: years later. So obviously this is a full dose of
Speaker 7: pop stardom. That's you know, smacking me in the head.
Speaker 7: And to be honest, I was pretty bad at it,
Speaker 7: mostly because when you're when you're making when you're having
Speaker 7: success at top forty, at least in America. Oh and
Speaker 7: absolutely in Europe. It's sometimes even sillier over there, with
Speaker 7: all the lip syncing shows you have to be on.
Speaker 7: But I would yeah, exactly right, you said a Top
Speaker 7: of the Pops and the like in You're in Holland,
Speaker 7: Germany all around, So I would be saying I was
Speaker 7: being Cleveland because the record company will send me there
Speaker 7: to sit at a at a table signing autographs.
Speaker 6: So here I am, and.
Speaker 7: Next to me is Tiffany, and next to me is
Speaker 7: Debbie Gibson on the other side, and then there's new kids,
Speaker 7: kids on the block, and I'm going, man, what's wrong
Speaker 7: with this picture?
Speaker 8: It's me?
Speaker 7: And so it just didn't fit. I just I didn't
Speaker 7: know how to handle it. I should have just taken
Speaker 7: the piss out of it, as the Brits would say,
Speaker 7: and just made it into a big joke.
Speaker 6: But then people that have got mad at me, and
Speaker 6: I'd be.
Speaker 7: Drawing stupid things signing different names. I started.
Speaker 2: I just did that everyone.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well I did that for a little while.
Speaker 7: But I got tired of suffering the slings and arrows
Speaker 7: of disgruntled fans. Who would go, oh, come on, man,
Speaker 7: take it seriously. We really like you, you know, And
Speaker 7: so then you go, you know what, I'm the dick here,
Speaker 7: and so sorry, you're right, you're right. But but basically
Speaker 7: it was I was not a good fit for that thing.
Speaker 7: And so the second record we made was very much
Speaker 7: of a piece with the first record. Stylistically, I wanted
Speaker 7: to cement this sound, which was basically a Linn drum machine, piano,
Speaker 7: an OBX or Juno pad boom, vocals, boom, and so
Speaker 7: I did this again for that reason. And then I
Speaker 7: instantly started getting letters from fans well how dare you change?
Speaker 7: And I thought to myself, well, you know what, motherfucker,
Speaker 7: you haven't seen anything yet, you know, you.
Speaker 8: Just just wait.
Speaker 7: And so then I started taking it out and my
Speaker 7: third record, I had Wayne Shorter on the record and
Speaker 7: Bayla Fleck and Oh Charlie Hayden Nig say wow, way
Speaker 7: to go uh, And so then the letters really started cutting. Uh.
Speaker 7: But but I so I just never looked back because
Speaker 7: I never I never trusted hit radio anyway.
Speaker 6: I knew was sort of ephemeral and not going to
Speaker 6: be around for me.
Speaker 7: Because I again, they hit off the second record was
Speaker 7: the song this aforementioned song.
Speaker 6: Valley Road. I'm really blowing.
Speaker 7: I'm playing like McCoy tyner chordal harmony in the left
Speaker 7: hand seven egg. I got the come, you know, just emphatic,
Speaker 7: demonstrative stuff, and it's on the radio. My my musician
Speaker 7: friends could not believe what I was getting away with.
Speaker 7: And I didn't get away with it for long, just
Speaker 7: those two times and kind and then that was it.
Speaker 3: It's kind of weird for me because all right, so
Speaker 3: I'm slightly older than Fante.
Speaker 2: So like in my mind though, I think, even to
Speaker 2: this day, if.
Speaker 3: I asked myself, I still consider Henley's end of the
Speaker 3: Innocent mm hmm kind of like your fourth single.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well it's filing drumming that you know all over again.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like I still feel like it's it's I never
Speaker 3: consider that a Don Henley song, Like to me, that's
Speaker 3: like your song.
Speaker 2: And it's your and you're not DNA print.
Speaker 4: Yeah yet.
Speaker 2: I don't want to sound like a suit like the
Speaker 2: suit by on the an R Guy.
Speaker 3: But you know, you could have you could have just
Speaker 3: served them of like you could have served at least
Speaker 3: nineteen of them like hotcakes, like why did you I
Speaker 3: okay breaks on it like.
Speaker 7: Well, you asked me if I felt pressure to come
Speaker 7: up with hits or something like that us and I
Speaker 7: didn't really answer it.
Speaker 6: But I can do it now.
Speaker 7: Because I had this big hit with a song that
Speaker 7: no one thought was anything. I really felt that no
Speaker 7: one at the record company felt they knew what a
Speaker 7: Bruce Hornsby hit was supposed to sound like. So I
Speaker 7: took that as total license to be free and and
Speaker 7: and write songs about interracial romances and the girl who
Speaker 7: got pregnant, on and on so uh so and and
Speaker 7: then I never got pressured from RCA. They were really
Speaker 7: good to me. I think I was helped by the
Speaker 7: fact that the record company was really struggling and I
Speaker 7: was the only artist that at the time did much
Speaker 7: for them, so they pretty much left me alone and
Speaker 7: I ran with that like crazy. Pat mcfeeney started playing
Speaker 7: on my records. That was really special because he was
Speaker 7: He played so amazingly on my fourth and fifth records,
Speaker 7: Harbor Lights and Hothouse Man. He just turned it out.
Speaker 7: It was so beautiful. Branford played on those just great.
Speaker 7: So by then the record company has just thrown up
Speaker 7: their hands. Look, I was trying to sort of be
Speaker 7: a purist about it and and just follow my musical
Speaker 7: instinct and and the recipe damn and aggress was kind
Speaker 7: of damn for me. I stopped topped having hits.
Speaker 8: But it was okay.
Speaker 3: So back back in the eighties, when the myth of
Speaker 3: winning the Best New Artists was an actual that's the curse, Yes.
Speaker 2: How did you feel when your name was called?
Speaker 7: I frankly was so clueless at the time that I
Speaker 7: didn't start hearing about that curse until after we'd won it.
Speaker 6: And so, so how did I feel?
Speaker 7: I've thought that, well, this is great, but you know,
Speaker 7: I'm a three time winner, but I'm a ten time loser.
Speaker 7: Just so you just set the record straight, it's a
Speaker 7: pretty it's a pretty sorry batting average three for thirteen.
Speaker 6: But yeah, how did I feel? I didn't know about it.
Speaker 7: When I've heard about it later, I thought, well, whatever happens,
Speaker 7: I'm certainly it seems to me looking back on my
Speaker 7: career that I had this success and then I've been
Speaker 7: trying to rid myself of that audience ever since, because well.
Speaker 2: I'll ask this question, then, is your best new artist?
Speaker 2: Is it on the mantel piece or is it a doorstopper.
Speaker 6: It's neither.
Speaker 7: It's down the bottom shelf of a little a little
Speaker 7: little case that that that houses old scrap books.
Speaker 6: And the three Grammys. You know, they they grew with
Speaker 6: the through the years.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 7: My second win was the Best Bluegrass Record, and the
Speaker 7: third win was with Branford the song we did for
Speaker 7: the Olympics Barcelona, Mona back then. And uh, I think
Speaker 7: people just voted for us because Kenny g had won
Speaker 7: for a hundred years and they wanted somebody.
Speaker 2: Else to wow.
Speaker 4: Bruce Horse the problems.
Speaker 2: I love it exactly, exactly, not a problem.
Speaker 3: Just you talk about working also with U with Bonnie
Speaker 3: Ray as well, because that's your.
Speaker 7: Yeah. Look, she's my big sister in music. Uh we
Speaker 7: we became tight. She was a big fan of my
Speaker 7: early records and subsequent records.
Speaker 8: Uh and uh so.
Speaker 7: She I would see her at parties in La after
Speaker 7: I had hits. Of course, not I'm invited to these
Speaker 7: slickster parties, which was yeah, fun, it was fun. She's
Speaker 7: a lovely person. She sent me a fan letter one
Speaker 7: time and it was so sweet. So I'm all.
Speaker 6: For Debbie Gibson she's a talented person too, so that's fantastic. Yeah.
Speaker 7: So anyway, Bonnie Uh asked me to play on her
Speaker 7: record her I guess it was second record she made
Speaker 7: with Don was and Uh producing, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 7: I for a little little time there, I was sort
Speaker 7: of Don was his boy. I played on a Segur record,
Speaker 7: and a Bob Dylan record, and a Body Rate record,
Speaker 7: all in the all w just a few months period
Speaker 7: when I was still living in LA my latter days
Speaker 7: in l A. But that record was just one of
Speaker 7: those Kis moments. You had this fantastic song. And I
Speaker 7: give Don credit because he didn't dressed up a lot.
Speaker 7: We cut the track just a trio. I was playing
Speaker 7: some little keyboard roadside, not the ex seven, mind you,
Speaker 7: but something, some sort of rosy sound, and then they well, yeah.
Speaker 6: Then they have you have you over dubbed the piano.
Speaker 7: And he told me later he kept trying to dress
Speaker 7: it up, maybe strings, I don't know, maybe a little hornted,
Speaker 7: And finally he just he realized he took all the
Speaker 7: faders down in the mix and just put on those
Speaker 7: original four elements drums, bass, election, piano, accousia, piano, and vocal,
Speaker 7: and it just resonated, So it was very We.
Speaker 6: Might have cut two or three tracks so fast.
Speaker 7: And look, I consider that to be Bonnie's iconic hit
Speaker 7: record and the one that will be around forever.
Speaker 6: So look, how could I not be proud of being
Speaker 6: a part of that.
Speaker 7: It was just and and she's the greatest anyway, she's
Speaker 7: She's sent me some crazy lude uh to Twitter thing today,
Speaker 7: you know, so we're she's She's a hilarious, great, just
Speaker 7: beautiful woman.
Speaker 5: Do you think there was something with you guys kind
Speaker 5: of understand each other because or I guess kind of
Speaker 5: the creative kinship that you guys had, because Bonnie was
Speaker 5: also someone that didn't really hit paydirt in her career
Speaker 5: until much later, you know, even later than me. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean. Do you think that kind
Speaker 5: of played a role with you guys understand each other?
Speaker 6: Yeah, it could.
Speaker 7: I think basically we have similar musical interests and she's
Speaker 7: one of the great singers, one of the great soulful singers,
Speaker 7: and I like soul music. I'm not one of the
Speaker 7: great soul singers, but I love it and so so look,
Speaker 7: I think we just connect personally.
Speaker 6: She likes to have a laugh and I do too.
Speaker 6: But anyway, it's just like I said, she's my big sister.
Speaker 6: That's is it all to me?
Speaker 8: Bruce?
Speaker 10: How does how does your mindset change when you're going
Speaker 10: from like side manning Bonnie Ray to like playing your
Speaker 10: own shit? Or is it just the same approach, because like,
Speaker 10: I can't make you love me. It's like a fairly
Speaker 10: simple harmonic situation. At the end of the d I change,
Speaker 10: I changed.
Speaker 3: I'm sure you did that song, so I almost feel
Speaker 3: like you produced it even though you did.
Speaker 4: I'd love to hear it before you sat down to
Speaker 4: play it, but I heard. I'm sure. That's a whole
Speaker 4: other situation.
Speaker 7: But the chords were more standard. You know, I'm a
Speaker 7: Bill Evans fanatic. You know, I love all that. I
Speaker 7: love that French impressionism, harmony, reveil whatever, and uh so
Speaker 7: I'm always interested in maybe finding a place for that
Speaker 7: I called I had to find a fine figure out
Speaker 7: a fascial way to describe my style because people are
Speaker 7: always asking me. They always say, well, we can always
Speaker 7: tell it's you, and why do you think that is?
Speaker 7: And I say, well, I think it's a sort of
Speaker 7: a harmonic aesthetic, a way of playing chords. And I
Speaker 7: call it Bill Evans Me to him book because I
Speaker 7: love the uh the the movement in the left hand
Speaker 7: of him of him music church music. But then I
Speaker 7: love those beautiful sexy chords Bill Evans played too, so
Speaker 7: uh uh.
Speaker 2: So I don't know.
Speaker 6: That's I don't know if I answered your question.
Speaker 5: That makes total sense because even when I hear something
Speaker 5: you you play something like I really love your take
Speaker 5: on Nola's thing for She's got to have it, and
Speaker 5: just the way you play it, it's like, oh my god,
Speaker 5: it is.
Speaker 8: It's gorgeous.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 7: So I love it sounds like hearing you say that,
Speaker 7: because yeah, right, you know that's my thing. If you're
Speaker 7: gonna do that, do a cover. And in that case,
Speaker 7: Spike's Dad's great original theme Bill Lee, and I wanted to,
Speaker 7: you know, make it my own.
Speaker 8: That's what.
Speaker 7: Why why do a cover if you're not going to
Speaker 7: try to spin it and do it and not replicate
Speaker 7: what's come before? What what's the point of that? So yeah, thanks, man,
Speaker 7: I was proud of the and I did it pretty fast.
Speaker 7: I gave him three takes and and Spike used the
Speaker 7: right one to me, he's the one I liked the most,
Speaker 7: and so yeah, that's good. That's but we've seen since
Speaker 7: we seem to be going chronologically. Then we can go
Speaker 7: back to to ninety five where we were talking about Papathenas.
Speaker 2: Wait a minute, is one more thing, one more important
Speaker 2: part you missed? Okay, you just banded the group? Everyone
Speaker 2: went grateful Dead. So how how was that? Like, hey guys,
Speaker 2: I'm going over here, you guys take care of Like
Speaker 2: what was.
Speaker 6: The Well, it wasn't exactly like that.
Speaker 7: I joined the Dead in nineteen ninety and the Range
Speaker 7: was split apart in ninety two, but so probably by
Speaker 7: joining the Dead played a part of that. But mostly
Speaker 7: I wanted to move on the first record without that band.
Speaker 7: And I always loved it when people would say, oh,
Speaker 7: I just missed the old band sound, and I would
Speaker 7: say to myself, well, what you're referring to as the
Speaker 7: old band sound is me playing along with the drum
Speaker 7: machine and with the bass virtual one man show all
Speaker 7: those hits that say the Range, I mean, the band
Speaker 7: was great and just like I've said before, the Range
Speaker 7: live we beat the dog shit out of those records,
Speaker 7: you know, just on an impact and intensity and groove level.
Speaker 7: The guys were great Molo, Joe Puerta, George Marinelli, on
Speaker 7: and on, Pete Harris, David Mansfield. So they wasn't disbanded,
Speaker 7: but okay. So we got asked to open for the
Speaker 7: Dead in nineteen eighty seven out of the blue. And
Speaker 7: as I said before, my older brother was a big
Speaker 7: deadhead and all his hippie friends up up in University Virginia.
Speaker 7: They used to drop acid, paint their faces and go
Speaker 7: play innermural volleyball.
Speaker 4: Ah, it sounds like high school life was easier than
Speaker 4: I think.
Speaker 7: They just exalted if they ever just hit the ball,
Speaker 7: made contact, you know. So I had my training with them,
Speaker 7: so I knew a lot of dead music, and so
Speaker 7: we played a dead song, well, an old traditional song.
Speaker 6: In the dead manner called I Know You Ryde or
Speaker 6: in our gigs. I don't know.
Speaker 7: Maybe they heard about that or they were just fans
Speaker 7: of the first record, and we got a call to
Speaker 7: open for them in Monterey, Californias.
Speaker 6: We did that.
Speaker 7: Twice two days in eighty seven eighty eight. They asked
Speaker 7: us again eighty nine some more, ninety some more. Every
Speaker 7: year they'd asked us to play a couple of times,
Speaker 7: and then sadly, their keyboard player, Brent Midland, died of
Speaker 7: an overdose in the summer of nineteen ninety, right after
Speaker 7: we'd played with them. And it was so strange because
Speaker 7: it was this growing relationship Garcia had had before that
Speaker 7: played on our third record, played fantastically on two songs
Speaker 7: and I'm in I'm Seattle, And at seven eight in
Speaker 7: the morning, I just heard it Garcia that Brent died.
Speaker 7: In the middle of the night, I'm walking down the
Speaker 7: street and some young guy comes up to me and says, hey, Bruce,
Speaker 7: You're going to join the Dead. It was so wild.
Speaker 7: I mean, the rumor mill was already out that I
Speaker 7: was going to replace and I told them so, yes.
Speaker 7: Sure enough, they came out to a gig that we
Speaker 7: did in Concord, California, just a few days after this
Speaker 7: and asked me to join Garcia and Phil Lesh came
Speaker 7: out and I said, look, guys, if you'd have caught
Speaker 7: me four years ago, before I had this thing going on,
Speaker 7: I would have said yes and lived happily ever after
Speaker 7: as your keyboard player. But I've got this thing going
Speaker 7: on pretty solidly. Now. But I will help you if
Speaker 7: you need me to. So they asked me to help
Speaker 7: them through the adjustment period. Their new keyboard player, Vince
Speaker 7: well Nick, who didn't have a long history with the music,
Speaker 7: he learned it pretty quickly. He grocked it fairly rapidly.
Speaker 7: And so I played with them for about two years,
Speaker 7: twenty months, about one hundred shows. And I wouldn't trade that.
Speaker 7: I wouldn't trade that time with them for anything.
Speaker 2: It was And how happy was the RCA with you
Speaker 2: doing this?
Speaker 7: Look, as I said before, these were really nice that
Speaker 7: they allowed me major latitude, major leeway, you know, they
Speaker 7: gave me long rope with which to hang myself on
Speaker 7: a career level, you know. But again, it wasn't about career.
Speaker 7: I wasn't trying to build this. I was just trying
Speaker 7: to to be moved by music and and just it
Speaker 7: just sounded like great fun, and it really was. I mean,
Speaker 7: where else can you play one song for an hour?
Speaker 2: I was gonna say, what was the longest What was
Speaker 2: the longest show you did?
Speaker 7: Longest show is probably four four and a half hours,
Speaker 7: But there's an asterisk asterisk there because there's some long
Speaker 7: ass breaks. You know, maybe maybe you take an hour
Speaker 7: between the first set set and the second set. Sometimes
Speaker 7: it was very loose. I couldn't believe it. They have
Speaker 7: the most amazing audience anywhere, you know this twenty fifteen
Speaker 7: fairly well concerts they could have played, they had a
Speaker 7: million over a million.
Speaker 3: Takes almost Okay, I almost went. I had a gig
Speaker 3: that night, the one in San Francisco I wanted to
Speaker 3: go to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just want to study them from a just from.
Speaker 6: Out sociological sociological level.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I've been getting into them, and I'll say,
Speaker 3: during this Corona break, there's some video out I think
Speaker 3: uh Lee Oscar of War sitting in uh with them,
Speaker 3: and also uh Slide the Family Stones drummer greg Or Rico.
Speaker 2: I didn't realize how many of like my favorite you
Speaker 2: know all like.
Speaker 3: I'm a studio musician, junkie, so I didn't realize how
Speaker 3: many like luminaries that they pull into the fold, and
Speaker 3: and how they adapt.
Speaker 2: You know, and then how they just just instantly.
Speaker 6: Yet right in Ornett sat in with them a few
Speaker 6: times and which was always amazing.
Speaker 2: So opening for the dead is it?
Speaker 3: Is it a little bit different than like, have you
Speaker 3: ever met an audience that you didn't vibe with right away,
Speaker 3: like opening the dead how was that?
Speaker 7: Well, it could be rough because the dead Heads can
Speaker 7: be fairly biopic, fairly tunnel vision, you know. They they're
Speaker 7: really not.
Speaker 2: There to hear you, and so so jammy version of
Speaker 2: the way it is or.
Speaker 6: Sure, but we were kind of doing that anyway. But so, yeah,
Speaker 6: it was tough.
Speaker 7: It was really tough when I would we probably opened
Speaker 7: for them eight times or so eight nine times, and
Speaker 7: probably only twice did we ever really garner a crowd
Speaker 7: and have them really be interested in what they were
Speaker 7: doing and when.
Speaker 6: So, when I started playing in the band, I ad
Speaker 6: made it.
Speaker 7: I was self appointed sort of psychologist to these poor
Speaker 7: opening acts who would go out there and just be
Speaker 7: roundly ignored.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 7: Dwight Yoakum came out there and he's there playing away,
Speaker 7: and man, I mean he's a beautifull guy.
Speaker 6: I just said to him. Then I feel you. I've
Speaker 6: been there, you know, So so it can be real tough.
Speaker 7: Now, some acts like Traffic, Steve Winwood or Dylan or
Speaker 7: Little Feet, you know, the Dead fans just really embrace
Speaker 7: certain groups, maybe some reggae groups. If Ziggy Marley was playing,
Speaker 7: they probably love that sort of related musical styles.
Speaker 8: I guess I have a question, Bruce. Sorry Fante.
Speaker 9: Uh So, since we're on the Dead and that they
Speaker 9: asked you to join did And I'm not trying to
Speaker 9: be funny, morbid or disrespectful here, but the three previous
Speaker 9: keyboard and piano players keyboard died.
Speaker 8: And I don't know if you did that cross your mind, like,
Speaker 8: uh no, no.
Speaker 7: I I left the Dead because I came home in
Speaker 7: the middle of a one of their spring tours. They'd
Speaker 7: have the spring, the summer, and the fall tours around
Speaker 7: the US. I came home in the middle of the
Speaker 7: March tour in ninety two. I just my wife and
Speaker 7: I had just had our twin sons, Russell and Keith,
Speaker 7: named for Keith Jarrett and Leon Russell, and so I
Speaker 7: came home and they didn't know me, and I went,
Speaker 7: you know what, I don't like this. I need to
Speaker 7: get off the freaking road at least most of the
Speaker 7: time for a while anyway. So that's when I went
Speaker 7: back to finish the tour and I said, hey, guys,
Speaker 7: and Vin's really had the gig solid.
Speaker 6: He was doing a great job by then. He was
Speaker 6: doing solid the whole time.
Speaker 7: But he really seemed to be getting in the groove
Speaker 7: with it and so knowledgeable about the music.
Speaker 6: So that was my swan song.
Speaker 7: Although I would sit in with them when they were
Speaker 7: geographically close to me. When he was really struggling in
Speaker 7: his last year, they would actually call me up and say, Hey,
Speaker 7: we're in Charlotte, would you would you come down here?
Speaker 7: Will fly you down here to play because he was
Speaker 7: having such a hard time it was. It was so
Speaker 7: listless on stage, so low energy, and they thought I
Speaker 7: could maybe prod and give a little cattle prod and
Speaker 7: get him going. So I did that in Charlotte and
Speaker 7: then in at OURFK Stadium two Knights in DC, and
Speaker 7: then a month and a half months or five weeks later,
Speaker 7: he was gone.
Speaker 8: Damn Yeah.
Speaker 5: I kind of had like a kind of a two
Speaker 5: part question along along those lines of just your family
Speaker 5: and your you know, your kids and everything at this
Speaker 5: point of your career. When we first got on the show,
Speaker 5: you were saying, you know, you're in the studio working
Speaker 5: on something. Do you think of yourself more primarily as
Speaker 5: a player or a singer or a producer, and like
Speaker 5: kind of what is the hierarchy you know when you
Speaker 5: sit down to create.
Speaker 6: Well, well, I said down to create. It's all about
Speaker 6: the song. So it's all about being a songwriters.
Speaker 8: The songwriter first.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and what Frank, my last two records that are
Speaker 7: receiving such great I don't know, sort of acclaim around
Speaker 7: the world.
Speaker 6: It's amazing.
Speaker 7: It's some of the more adventurous, strange music I've ever made.
Speaker 7: And all of a sudden, I'm being embraced by all
Speaker 7: these these vaunted venues. Uh. I've been taking I've been
Speaker 7: writing music to some Spike Lee cues.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 7: And because I thought through the years Spike hired me,
Speaker 7: I'd always do a little bit little things for him
Speaker 7: here and there.
Speaker 8: In fact, no, I love that song.
Speaker 7: Well, I was just gonna say, because question love you.
Speaker 7: Your first acting gig was bamboozled.
Speaker 8: Right, Yes, so.
Speaker 4: And Oscar worthy of performance?
Speaker 6: Is that your Sheena Easton moment?
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, it isn't, because you know, I knew that
Speaker 2: it was a sattire. It's just yeah, the way that
Speaker 2: Spike often does these these social experiments.
Speaker 3: So I'll say that the only part that was like
Speaker 3: hard to do about that movie was the fact that
Speaker 3: he purposely will put our trailer.
Speaker 2: Five blocks five city blocks away from where we were shooting.
Speaker 2: Why because he wanted us He at the end, I
Speaker 2: was like, you you did a school days on us.
Speaker 8: You purposely wanted to feel the shame of wanted us to.
Speaker 3: Walk through the streets of New York and its closed
Speaker 3: and in black faith like five blocks wow. Yeah, And
Speaker 3: it was yeah, like we knew it that this was
Speaker 3: and you know, at the time in two thousand, I
Speaker 3: was like, yo, you know, you don't think that's going
Speaker 3: to get it. Now it's like we're past it, Like
Speaker 3: you know, it's more like a documentary than it's like
Speaker 3: it's like idiocracy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is, it is. It is.
Speaker 6: So yeah, well that sounds cool, but it sounds like
Speaker 6: it has a real purpose what he made, y'all do.
Speaker 2: Total I know it had an absolute purpose in doing it.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, I enjoyed it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So what was it? How did you do? Was
Speaker 2: this your where do you did Clockers? First? Correct?
Speaker 7: Okay, my my Spike, I guess the resume goes like this,
Speaker 7: we made this video. Uh, we prand for it in
Speaker 7: New York City. I trove in New York cap Then
Speaker 7: in ninety five he called messy if I would to
Speaker 7: write an end title song for his great movie Clockers.
Speaker 7: I think it's one of his great ones. And you
Speaker 7: have so many, and I just had. Shaka Khan had
Speaker 7: called me right around the same time and said said, hey,
Speaker 7: would you write a song with me? And I said, yes,
Speaker 7: come to Virginia because I heard Shaka look I love
Speaker 7: her to death, but I heard she was famous for
Speaker 7: making a meeting at noon and showing up many hours
Speaker 7: late being yes. So I thought to myself, well, if
Speaker 7: I'm going to wait on her, I'm going to wait
Speaker 7: in my house.
Speaker 6: So she came and we had the best time.
Speaker 7: We wrote this the song Love Me Still, and then Spike,
Speaker 7: right around the time we were writing it, he calls
Speaker 7: me and said, hey, uh, I'd like I'd like an
Speaker 7: entitle I need an entitle song. What do you got?
Speaker 7: I said, well, Jock and I are writing the song
Speaker 7: and we'll get and said, okay, well I claim it,
Speaker 7: and so that's as simple as that.
Speaker 8: Without even having heard the song, he was just like that, Well.
Speaker 6: I guess I claimed first write a refusal.
Speaker 8: Oh okay, okay, you know I guess.
Speaker 3: Oh wait, were you initially trying to put that on her?
Speaker 3: On another album of hers, or it.
Speaker 7: Was just we're just writing a song. It was it
Speaker 7: was for her though, it was for it was she,
Speaker 7: she was writing the words, she was going to sing it.
Speaker 7: Uh so, and she's done it. Great, She's on her
Speaker 7: greatest hits record. And then six years later he asked
Speaker 7: me again for Bamboozled, and this time though he wanted
Speaker 7: it to be specific to the the script to the story.
Speaker 7: I guess it's Damon Wayn's character, right, and so I
Speaker 7: basically wrote it from his point of view, and uh
Speaker 7: and look, that ended up being the entitled song for
Speaker 7: that and then years so we kept asking for little
Speaker 7: bits and pieces for movies. But then in two thousand
Speaker 7: and eight he called me and said, hey, I want
Speaker 7: you to score. I'm doing this documentary ESPN documentary on
Speaker 7: the late Great Kobe Bryant. It's called Kobe Doing Work,
Speaker 7: and I'd like you to score.
Speaker 6: So I think this was my audition.
Speaker 7: So that was my first one, and that was two
Speaker 7: thousand and eight, came out in nine, I believe, and
Speaker 7: then all the way up through last year with this
Speaker 7: She's Got to Have It Part two, the second season,
Speaker 7: I did a bunch of stuff, probably six or seven
Speaker 7: full scores and some little incidental music. So in that
Speaker 7: time eleven years, I wrote probably almost two hundred and
Speaker 7: forty different pieces of music, and now and then I
Speaker 7: would think, Man, this song, this piece, this instrumental cue,
Speaker 7: it sounds like it needs to be expanded into a song.
Speaker 7: So I started doing that three years ago. And I
Speaker 7: started giving myself chills while doing this because the cues
Speaker 7: themselves were very vibe.
Speaker 6: He's cinematic.
Speaker 7: And that became my record absolute zero, and then I
Speaker 7: can't follow it up with you know, just last week
Speaker 7: came out non Secure Connection also uh chock full of
Speaker 7: of score of music that became songs.
Speaker 8: Yeah, Scott, Yeah, And do you you know you talk
Speaker 8: about your songwriting process.
Speaker 5: I was curious to know do you think of yourself
Speaker 5: as a singer or is it just kind of your
Speaker 5: voice is just the I guess, the vehicle to kind
Speaker 5: of get it out.
Speaker 8: Like if someone came to you and was like, Yo,
Speaker 8: I have a song I wrote for you. Is that
Speaker 8: something that you have explored.
Speaker 6: For oh, people writing songs for me to do?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 8: Yeah, specifically as a sing Yeah, No, I don't.
Speaker 7: People excuse me, don't do that much. But I had
Speaker 7: that look if there was ever a book written about me,
Speaker 7: you should be called slow learner. And I feel like
Speaker 7: as a vocalist, what I do now is far, far
Speaker 7: exceeds what I did then, just on a soulful level,
Speaker 7: an expressive level, and so.
Speaker 6: So yeah, I'm just deep.
Speaker 7: People ask me, well, do you have any interest in
Speaker 7: doing this and scoring films blah blah blah and or
Speaker 7: doing this and that.
Speaker 6: I say, Look, I'm just really trying to do what
Speaker 6: I do better and better.
Speaker 7: And I also tell them that I'm like Tom Hagen
Speaker 7: and The Godfather who has one client as a lawyer
Speaker 7: Don Corleoni, I'm as a film composer, I'm the same.
Speaker 7: I have one client, Spike Lee. I'm not interested in
Speaker 7: doing this for other people. We have a special relationship.
Speaker 8: And so that's now y'all have a synergy. Man, it
Speaker 8: definitely is.
Speaker 5: It's just, you know, when you were just describing your
Speaker 5: your style kind of like the Bill Evans meets the
Speaker 5: him kind of thing.
Speaker 6: Yes, it fits his.
Speaker 5: I mean it fits the tone of his movies, like
Speaker 5: the thing you guys have. It works man, Yeah, Well
Speaker 5: he just likes what I do.
Speaker 7: He called me up last week about something and said look,
Speaker 7: just I'm gonna keep calling.
Speaker 6: You because I like what you do. So so that's
Speaker 6: not I love him. I'll tell you what.
Speaker 7: I'll tell you one great Spike story. Speaking of the
Speaker 7: the Bill Lee the Uh the.
Speaker 6: Uh, we were.
Speaker 7: Recording that with Leslie Odom Junior singing uh from Hamilton
Speaker 7: and he's he's he was in Harriet Tubman lately he's
Speaker 7: had a great post Hamilton career. Anyway, we're doing recording
Speaker 7: in Brooklyn, recording Leslie and uh with a great jazz
Speaker 7: group backing us up.
Speaker 6: And uh.
Speaker 7: So I said, hey, Spike, I need a ride to
Speaker 7: my hotel. Somewhere in the middle middle of the session.
Speaker 7: He said, yeah, no problem, we'll get it. So the
Speaker 7: session ends and he says, hey, let's it's a nice day.
Speaker 7: Let's just walk to your hotel. So we go out
Speaker 7: in the street, just the two of us, and man,
Speaker 7: it was like walking with I don't know, I mean, well,
Speaker 7: I just I was just I just love people are
Speaker 7: hanging out of cars, hanging out of an apartment.
Speaker 8: Go spy, Go spy, it was.
Speaker 7: I said to him, is it always like this? Yeah,
Speaker 7: pretty much. But then later on, you know, Spike, Spike,
Speaker 7: Spike he looks at me, so, well, maybe today is
Speaker 7: a little more intense than you, but it was. We
Speaker 7: had the best time. It was a beautiful November afternoon
Speaker 7: in Brooklyn and we just walked and walked and walked,
Speaker 7: and it's just it's one of my great Spike Lee
Speaker 7: Mogoks is walking with him while he's just getting the
Speaker 7: love from you know, he was just getting his King.
Speaker 2: Of Boklyn exactly right.
Speaker 6: It's just fantastic.
Speaker 3: So let me ask you, so with where we are
Speaker 3: now today and Corona and the world slowed down, I
Speaker 3: know for a lot of musicians, this is the time
Speaker 3: period in which the portals of a lot of ideas
Speaker 3: are opening up. And you know, again you've done blue
Speaker 3: grass work with Ricky Skaggs, and you know, jazz working
Speaker 3: all the other things.
Speaker 2: Like what have you what have you been trying to
Speaker 2: cook up as of late?
Speaker 3: Like how have you how have you spent the last
Speaker 3: well as of this recording six seven months?
Speaker 7: Yeah, Well, in early mid March when the quarantine shut
Speaker 7: down era began, obviously, like everyone else, I wasn't going
Speaker 7: to go go anywhere. But I have this great facility,
Speaker 7: this great studio, so I just decided Okay, well, I'm
Speaker 7: going to try to take the deep dive and and
Speaker 7: try to really take it to another level. So I
Speaker 7: wrote six songs in six weeks from mid March to
Speaker 7: the end of April. Then I had to go do
Speaker 7: a few other things, some music for other records, et cetera.
Speaker 7: But uh, and I've learned how to play these the
Speaker 7: songs off this current new record because now we're in
Speaker 7: the remote era and so you have to perform in your.
Speaker 6: House and so I did that.
Speaker 7: And I was just in l A last week working
Speaker 7: with with ton Burr, who says, hi to you, questlove.
Speaker 7: Tony Berg has a studio in Brentwood on Kent, and
Speaker 7: he said, you work there with a woman named Susan
Speaker 7: Rodgers and engineer.
Speaker 8: Okay, wow, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 6: That's right.
Speaker 7: So he says, hello, Tony Brooks a great, great producer.
Speaker 7: He produces It produced Fiona Apples of her great records.
Speaker 7: He produces young girl Phoebe Bridges, who's sort of all
Speaker 7: the rage in that world, very very strong. So that's
Speaker 7: what I've been doing, just uh, just working on new stuff.
Speaker 6: And that's I'm lucky, just like I guess all of us.
Speaker 7: We get to do what we love to do for
Speaker 7: a living. And so I'm just continuing to try to
Speaker 7: be creative at this point in my career. Sometimes I'm
Speaker 7: trying to make a sound that I've never heard before.
Speaker 6: So it takes me far.
Speaker 7: Afield into again dough decophonic stylings.
Speaker 4: Wow, there you.
Speaker 2: Were, you were coming up?
Speaker 8: Were your kids?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 5: Were they aware that you know their dad was Bruce Hornsby?
Speaker 5: Like how did you navigate being a musician and a parent?
Speaker 7: And I think I think they gradually it just as
Speaker 7: you grew up as a kid, you you sort of
Speaker 7: gradually become awake, you know, you wake up every year
Speaker 7: a little bit more. And so they they knew about it.
Speaker 7: Say when they were seven or eight, where they'd go
Speaker 7: see we did a tour. And when they were six,
Speaker 7: Bonnie Ray Jackson, Brown, Sean Colvin and I and David
Speaker 7: Linley did a tour. The boys came around on this
Speaker 7: tour and you know, they're red rocks and seeing a
Speaker 7: big crowd of nine thousand going crazy for their grizzled
Speaker 7: old code of a dad. And uh so anyway that
Speaker 7: that's they've enjoined it. My boys are fans of what.
Speaker 6: I do and so that's really really nice.
Speaker 8: Really.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, before we let you go, I do have
Speaker 2: one question.
Speaker 3: So obviously you got a long, long mile out of
Speaker 3: the way it is via Tupac, But did you ever
Speaker 3: foresee or think that there will be a time in which,
Speaker 3: even twenty years after Tupac, that the way it is
Speaker 3: would come back again?
Speaker 2: Another pology?
Speaker 6: Polo g wishing for a hero.
Speaker 2: Many wish for a hero. So I love it.
Speaker 6: I really love what Polog did.
Speaker 7: We got out of the blue and maybe February of
Speaker 7: this year, we got reached out to by his people saying, Polog,
Speaker 7: you would like to fly to Virginia to ask your permission.
Speaker 6: I said, we'll just send me the thing. And I
Speaker 6: heard it. I went mad, save your dats to do that.
Speaker 3: Well, they fly out and asked for miss an input person,
Speaker 3: and wait, that's that's really a thing.
Speaker 6: Well it was.
Speaker 7: It wasn't this case.
Speaker 6: It wasn't this case. So I said, hey, save your
Speaker 6: time money. I love what you did.
Speaker 7: It's called wishing for a hero. And and yes you
Speaker 7: may work together at some point. Yeah, the odd couple
Speaker 7: kind of like Spike and Bruce, another odd cop.
Speaker 8: It works though, Man, it works well, look, I.
Speaker 7: Just uh, I love what. I love what Tupac did.
Speaker 7: It's a positive message and same with Polo g.
Speaker 6: The the video is beautiful.
Speaker 7: This record has this great gospel choir coming in sort
Speaker 7: of halfway through and taking you home when it it's
Speaker 7: I love it. So I'm I'm proud and grateful to
Speaker 7: these great young artists for for their interest in my music,
Speaker 7: at least that song.
Speaker 6: Anyway.
Speaker 3: No, that's that, you know, that's the I always wondered
Speaker 3: if if that myth is really real? Like on on
Speaker 3: television and movies, you always hear this thing about like
Speaker 3: it just takes one song to change your life, and
Speaker 3: then you know that. I guess I think Carl Douglas,
Speaker 3: creator of what is now the unplayable Kung Fu Fight Fight.
Speaker 2: Once Fantasy, said that you know, just that one.
Speaker 3: Song can you know, can change your life and you
Speaker 3: don't have to work another day again.
Speaker 2: You got this one song to fall back on.
Speaker 6: But maybe I'm gonna try to get to those cats
Speaker 6: as fast as lightning. Maybe I'm gonna try to get
Speaker 6: the lyrics there you go. I'm sorry I cut you off.
Speaker 7: What you say?
Speaker 3: Man, No, no, no, no, I was no I was
Speaker 3: saying that, well, you confirmed it then, but I mean
Speaker 3: I also know that you're not in the game just
Speaker 3: to monetarily, you know, kick off of you know, burn
Speaker 3: one hundred dollars bills with.
Speaker 2: The cigar or burn cigars with one hundred dollar bills.
Speaker 4: So you should see that.
Speaker 8: I'll go to the whole house with Huey Lewis, that's.
Speaker 4: He was there.
Speaker 6: Maybe I'll start burning hundreds.
Speaker 7: No, I don't think so, I'll leave that to uh
Speaker 7: the Wolf of Wall Street guy, you know, Aprio.
Speaker 3: And then good, that's good. Well, we thank you very
Speaker 3: much Bruce for being on the show today. And and
Speaker 3: yes we are still.
Speaker 2: I listened to our version of love Me Still from
Speaker 2: the tonight show.
Speaker 7: Well, I'm so glad you brought it up. Can I
Speaker 7: just end with my quest love story?
Speaker 8: So yes, yes, yes please.
Speaker 7: We're in that little, that little rehearsal room. It's tiny, right,
Speaker 7: and uh so you're piano player. He says, hey, can
Speaker 7: we play Lovely Still? So I said sure. So we're
Speaker 7: playing it in the normal way, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 7: I guess you had this great idea to play it
Speaker 7: as a slow shuffle, so we can we try it
Speaker 7: this way.
Speaker 6: So we start playing.
Speaker 7: We're playing a little bit, and I guess so you
Speaker 7: you made the greatest sort of producer sort of request.
Speaker 7: You said, hey, play it like you're drunk, which was
Speaker 7: which was great because because what I really felt was,
Speaker 7: I was when I think you really meant truly you
Speaker 7: meant was, hey, man, you're a little on top, we're
Speaker 7: laying back.
Speaker 2: Always.
Speaker 7: You just need to get back with us. So I
Speaker 7: started really sitting on it, and what a feel. The
Speaker 7: next time I came back, we had to do it again.
Speaker 7: And now my band plays Love Me still, the Quest
Speaker 7: Love version.
Speaker 3: Wow, okay, question, I was going to have to cover
Speaker 3: that version before you recover and govern your version.
Speaker 6: Whatever you want.
Speaker 8: Yeah, well we got to do it.
Speaker 2: We gotta do it now.
Speaker 6: Sounds great.
Speaker 8: That room was going crazy that day.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that's probably one of our movements. That's that's
Speaker 3: the top ten moment inside that room. Well, it was
Speaker 3: you and we're now playing accordion with us. Yes, that
Speaker 3: I put that up there, definitely, definitely, Well.
Speaker 6: I'll take it up.
Speaker 7: I'll be lumped in with weird Al anytime.
Speaker 8: He's a bad.
Speaker 2: Go man, this Quest Love.
Speaker 3: Thank you very much, Bruce Sorensby for joining us and
Speaker 3: we'll see you on the next go round of Quest
Speaker 3: Love Supremo.
Speaker 6: It's been a real pleasure. Thank you so much.
Speaker 8: No, thank you for your time. Thanks thanks for the music.
Speaker 8: Thank you.
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