Q+A: The Bacon Brothers

By Jerry Fink (contact)

Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Chris Morris

Kevin and Michael Bacon have been enormously successful in their chosen fields.

Kevin has appeared in so many films that Hollywood famously is tied together by “the six degrees of Kevin Bacon.” Older brother Michael is a composer who has scored hundreds of films and television shows.

The brothers also find time to join artistic forces in a rock band that performs their music. The Bacon Brothers will be at the Canyon Club in the Four Queens on Saturday.

Kevin Bacon, 50, made his film debut in “National Lampoon’s Animal House” in 1978. His filmography includes “Diner,” “Footloose,” “Apollo 13,” “A Few Good Men,” “The River Wild” and “Mystic River.” He’s also taken such risky roles as the pedophile in “The Woodsman” and a gay prostitute in “JFK.”

Michael, 59, won an Emmy for his work on the 1992 documentary film “The Kennedys.” He also wrote the scores for two films that Kevin directed — “Losing Chase” and “Loverboy.”

The brothers perform together 50 to 60 times a year, and have made six albums, including “New Year’s Day,” which was released on iTunes last week.

The brothers spoke with the Sun in a conference call from their respective apartments on the Upper West Side of New York City.

QHow did you get started in music?

Michael Bacon: I went to college when I was 16, which was kind of young, but the only thing I liked was playing in a rock band. I stayed in college for three years. Then a friend asked me to be lead singer of a group in Philadelphia. So I dropped out of college in ’68. I was a singer-songwriter with a sort of parallel career in classical music. I played cello and oboe.

Did he inspire you to become a musician?

Kevin Bacon: Older brothers, you look up to them. I had the experience of watching him in bands from the time I was a little kid. I loved to watch, to see the way he was able to influence the crowd. It seemed like a cool thing. Plus, my best friend’s dad was a rock ’n’ roll promoter so I used to go to a lot of rock shows when I was really, really young. Our most fun thing — even more fun than going to a baseball game — we were allowed to go see Janis Joplin or Led Zeppelin. That was huge for me, the idea of playing music.

On the other hand my brother was already doing it. I thought, I need to try something else. My mother encouraged me to take some acting classes, which I did. By the time I was 13 or 14 I had decided I was going to have a life in the theater. At same time I was always writing songs. So my life took a different road. I was pretty sure I wanted to be an actor, but at the same time I continued to write music and record demos and pitch songs to other people. For years and years I have always had a guitar with me on the set or in the trailer. I think the whole backbone of this band is song writing. It’s not a cover band. It’s not just “put on tight pants and play ‘Mustang Sally.’ ” It’s about wanting to share songs that you’ve written that are personal — about things that have affected you in your life. That’s what it’s about for both of us.

Did you recognize Kevin’s talent as a musician early on?

MB: I did. We wrote songs together when he was 8 years old. The first one was not the greatest song in the world, but it probably was one of the greatest songs written by an 8 year old. Later on he would bring me these songs and he’d sing to me — he had no chords. He didn’t know what the chords were but I heard them immediately and we did a demo — it’s a really beautiful song. Kevin has a great natural ability to take very internalized experiences and feelings and put them in a song format that people can relate to the first time they hear the song.

Have either of you thought about giving up your careers and just doing the band thing?

MB: The amazing thing about the band, we never had to make a choice about whether to make a living with the band. I would miss incredibly not scoring films. There’s a part of me that just needs to do that. I’m sure Kevin would agree about his stage and film work. What we’ve done besides trying to put on the best possible shows we can and getting the best musicians and working really hard on it — what we’ve done is also create a business. We have people that rely on us to get jobs and keep working. We have a manager and booking agent. When we first started we definitely were not a business, we were doing everything ourselves.

You don’t seem to mind taking chances with your film choices, such as “The Woodsman.”

KB: I really feel an important part of being an artist is taking risks. I’m someone who has to have some of those kinds of risks to keep me alive. I don’t jump out of airplanes or get into bar fights, but when it comes to pushing myself in terms of the kind of material I choose or things I’m going to tackle physically or emotionally in a film, that’s where I get that. Having a rock band goes into the category. People don’t want actors to be in rock bands. Nobody wants to hear it. It’s a source of irritation to a lot of people, and yet we just keep doing it, plowing away at it and trying to build a fan base and hopefully surprise people with the music. So every time we go out and play or do an interview or make a record, there’s a risk factor in that. That’s important, that’s what keeps me alive.