Hornsby: Staying loose is key to performance

Spencer Patterson

Friday, Nov. 26, 2004 | 8:34 a.m.

Bruce Hornsby celebrated his 50th birthday Tuesday, and the vocalist/pianist had grand plans as the big day approached.

"I'm going to go around to all the Top 40 radio stations in the country and tell them how old I am and then say, 'Here's my new record. I'm sure it's for you'," Hornsby said in a phone interview from a Seattle hotel room last Friday.

Of course, the Virginia native couldn't keep from laughing as he said that. Eighteen years after topping Billboard's Hot 100 chart with breakout hit "The Way it Is," Hornsby doesn't seem concerned with reaching the musical mainstream.

Hornsby's shows are free-form affairs, heavy on improvisation, unexpected cover tunes and audience requests.

According to fan Web site www.bruuuce.com, Hornsby segued in and out of Stevie Wonder's "Sir Duke" four times at one recent show.

At another, he performed a bit of Eminem's "Lose Yourself." And throughout the year, he's worked in "Variation No. 2," a piece by German 12-tone classical composer Anton Webern.

"It's loose, man," Hornsby said. "We walk onstage most nights and there are 50 to 100 pieces of paper (with requests) littering the stage. We pretty much wing the whole thing."

Local fans can bring their requests to the House of Blues at Mandalay Bay on Sunday night, when Hornsby will play the first Las Vegas gig of his career, not counting private corporate functions or guest spots with other bands.

Doors to the 21-and-over event open at 7:30. Nine-piece Chicago collective Sonia Dada is scheduled to open the show.

Even when Hornsby and his band do play a selection from January's "Greatest Radio Hits" best-of collection -- such as 1986's "Mandolin Rain" or 1988's "The Valley Road" -- the song rarely sounds the way it did originally.

"I am aware that most of the people who hear music want to hear the songs the way they know them," Hornsby said. "But at the same time, it's a creative prison to feel like you have to do that, so we don't.

"If people don't like that, they shouldn't come."

In part, Hornsby's freewheeling approach dates to his days as a jazz student at Boston's prestigious Berklee School of Music, and his early years as the frontman for his original band, Bruce Hornsby & The Range.

He later expanded on it significantly after spending 18 months as a touring member of the Grateful Dead, a band famous for onstage experimentalism, from September 1990 through March 1992.

"Playing with them certainly influenced me and made me just go, 'Why not just let it go, let it fly?'," Hornsby said. "We had been doing it with our band, the Range. We weren't that great at it, but we did try a little bit. But after playing with Jerry (Garcia) and the boys, it was more full thrust."

Hornsby left the Dead when he and his wife became parents to twin boys (now age 12). Even though his stint with that band is more than a decade behind him, he still sees plenty of its fans at his own live appearances.

"After I came back from having played with them on that first tour, I did some shows on my own," Hornsby said. "And I came back and said to Garcia, 'Now I've got a bunch of Deadheads at my shows.' And he said. 'Well, you've got the curse. They'll never leave.' And he's right."

That's just fine with Hornsby, who said he appreciates that sector of his audience's musical openness.

"They don't want us to play it straight," he said. "They're not fans of Top 40 radio."

Still, Hornsby said he accepts that his crowds also include those who turn out to hear his radio hits, so he sprinkles a few into his sets.

"I've been pretty nice about that. I've played three or four of them every night this year," he said. "I used to not be so nice. I sort of felt like if they were there for that reason they were there for the wrong reason."

Hornsby's 2004 shows have also featured material from his latest album, August's "Halcyon Days," a return to more traditional Hornsby fare after 2002's unexpectedly offbeat "Big Swing Face."

"Musically, I just wanted to bring the piano back after my last record had virtually no piano," Hornsby said. "The challenge (with 'Big Swing Face') was to make a Bruce Hornsby record with no piano. It was very polarizing. A lot of people hated it and then other people said, 'It's the first record you've ever made that I liked.' "

Hornsby described "Halcyon Days" as a "youthful, fun record."

"The older I get, the more I just like funny stuff," he said.

And the more he enjoys challenging audiences with his most atypical concert style.

"I love that on a sort of crusade level, sort of educator level, I might be able to turn people on to Samuel Barber's 'Piano Sonata' and Charles Ives and Webern and (Arnold) Schoenberg and Bud Powell and Bill Evans and Keith Jarrett and the list goes on and on and on," Hornsby said.

"So we throw that stuff in there, and that's fun for me to feel like people are learning about more than just the standard popular music that they hear all the time."

It's that playful spirit, Hornsby said, that keeps him young at heart.

"How do I deal with 50? I'm a kid for a living, doing what kids like to do and I get paid for it," he said. "Everyone goes, 'Wow, you're getting old.' Well, I'm still running up and down the court with my sons playing basketball.

"So I say bring all the old man jokes. Bring it."