Feb 9: H is for Bruce Hornsby

An alphabet of bands and artists as a series during February. These were selected by the Spotify algorithm.

I first became aware of Bruce from this stone cold classic...

Rewind to 1986 and Manchester Apollo.... and the first time I saw a band whose first album I'd played to death for the last year.

The debut album of Bruce Hornsby and the Range was also called 'The Way It Is'.

It was kick-started by a single which was all over the TV. MTV had just started to get popular, and this song was played a lot because of the video that went with it. It was also used as music for football results and highlights. I was in Hull at the time, doing my PGCE (training to be a teacher). 

Many of his classic songs relate to farmers, the environmental, landscape change and related themes. An American Pastoral but with issues, like predatory Country Doctors.

Here's one of my favourites, which references the classic poem by Robert Frost but also the coal mining landscape of the Appalachian hills.

Down in the southwest Virginia town of Richlands 

I fell in love with an Appalachian girl 

She lived in a long line of little row houses 

On the side of an old strip mining hill 

She walked along on the jagged ridge 

And looked as far as she could see 

But the hills out there so up and down 

You only see as far as the next big ridge

And here's Bruce in the BBC Piano Room with an orchestra - recorded a few days before I last saw him at the Royal Festival Hall.

Also check out Continents Drift - now there's a song with a geographical theme....

Bruce always rearranges his song when you see him live - these are not just playbacks of the album. His voice is holding up and his playing is as brilliant as ever. 

Discography - there's a few missing from this to be fair, including that debut album and a proper version of the Scenes from the Southside's cover ... you can't trust AI can you to do anything properly...

The last time I saw Bruce play (for now) was at Chaka Khan's Meltdown at the Festival Hall in June 2024.

Here's Bruce's own thoughts on that show...

What a special night in London. Playing solo at the Royal Festival Hall, the vaunted venue inside the Southbank Centre, was a real joy. Starting with “Days Ahead”, from the ‘Flicted album was the right first move judging from the response, and continued with “Soon Enough”, which I always seem to play in the U.K. because it has, to me, a very Paul Brady-esque Irish-British Isles flavor. Then went back and forth from the old to the new with 1988’s “Look Out Any Window” into 2019’s “Cast-Off”, then on to the “blues meets two- handed independence meets the modern” combo of my “murder ballad” “Country Doctor” into the Ligeti Etude 13 excerpt.
A 90-minute set limit was a challenge, but I tried to cover as many stylistic bases and eras of my career as possible, and was able to find time for a cover, The Pogues’ “Fairytale Of New York”, sung with my British friend and fantastic artist Olivia Chaney, who also helped out on “Mandolin Rain” for the encore.
There were so many requests and so little time that I decided to run a few together for a spontaneous medley, highlighting songs sung on record with several of my English musical mates through the years, plus the song written with Festival curator Chaka Khan (whose invitation led me to play this concert) back in 1994. 

Special thanks to Chaka for making this happen, and to the audience for being so interested and receptive.

1. Days Ahead
2. Soon Enough
3. Look Out Any Window
4. Cast-Off
5. Country Doctor/Etude 13-L’Escalier Du Diable (Ligeti)- excerpt
6. The End Of The Innocence/Song A
7. Fairytale Of New York(with Olivia Chaney)
8. Gavotte(Schoenberg)/The Way It Is/Goldberg Variation 1 (J.S. Bach)
9. Halcyon Days
10. Request Medley- Love Me Still(Khan-Hornsby)/
11. Dreamland/
12. Hooray For Tom
13. Preacher In The Ring, part 1/Variation 2(Webern)/ “Cherokee” solo (Bud Powell)/ Catenaires (Elliott Carter)-excerpt
14. Mandolin Rain (Olivia)

What 'H' does your algorithm send you? Also tell me any memories of Bruce's music.