Conference rdvax::grateful

382.0. "Bruce Hornsby -WOW" by TRKWSH::COMFORT (Here beside the rising tide) Sun Nov 14 1993 01:43

I don't write here often but I gotta talk about...   Bruce Hornsby.

Hornsby played the Allentown Symphany Hall last Sunday, it holds about 1200.
A group of us got together and bought tickets when we heard he was coming to
town.  None of us much knew his music that well, but he had a couple of radio
songs and he had the association with the Dead...it should be good time for
all of us to go out together.  

It was unbelievable.  One of the best concerts I have ever seen.  Three hours
of music.  Multiple encores.  Songs from the Range, the Dead, the Band, some
new stuff, old blues stuff, all in all a great mix of mostly upbeat, fun
songs creating a great night of music.  If the Hornsby tour comes by your
area, try to see these guys.  It is well worth the effort.  

For those who are interested, below is my rendition of a review of the concert.

Dave
The band was not the Range, but a jazz band.  Horsby on vocals, accordian, and
acoustic piano.  Additionally, there was a synth player, a bassist, a drummer,
a saxaphone and trumpet horn section and a backup vocalist (female).

The local paper review headline read: 

        "Bruce Hornsby presents near-perfect show in L.V."

Hornsby and band took the stage about 7:35 (5 min late) and played two songs
immediately.  After the second song, Hornsby got up and started walking
around and talking with the audience.  He said that they were going to play
two sets for us, that they had no set list to go by and they took requests.
There were a couple of equipment cases on the floor in front of the stage (in
the old orchastra pit) and he indicated that people could write down their
requests and put them there.  He went back to the piano and they played
another song.  Hornsby picked up about a dozen requests looked through them
and put them in a pile on the piano.  He played a tune on the accordian then,
I believe, then back to the piano for a couple.  From time to time you'd see
him checking the requests and crumbling one up at the end of a song.

Before one of the songs in this segment, he got up and told the audience that
the song he was going to play did not require the band, but he wanted them to
play along, so everyone talk to your neighbor for a minute while they had
a huddle.  Sure enough, he got the whole band in a huddle and you could see
arm gestures, etc.  He went back to the piano and apologized for the upcoming
song (just in case I guess) and they played the tune and it was beautiful.
The bassist at first just did the minimum they had discussed, but he started
embellishing and all of a sudden the song had a real rythym line to it,
really neat.  When the song was over the applause was deafening.  It was
truly amazing how well such an impromptu song came off.

It was shortly after that "magic" when things started to get really
interesting.  Up till now the concert has been quite good, in fact very good,
in both music and musicianship, I felt it was a solid show.  Then...

Hornsby announces the next song (he does that a lot) by saying that it is a
song by a band he used to play with, the Grateful Dead and blew off into a
really decent version of Scarlet Begonias (and with a good percentage of the
audience actually being Deadheads, it was great).  In typically Dead fashion,
he jammed out the end of the song and worked it into a jazz number by the
bassist (Hornsby actually had the music layed out in front of him), then into
a Charlie Parker song, into Hornsby's Jacob's Ladder, into Hornsby's What A
Time, into a Sonny Rollins tune to finish the song run.  He did one more song
and finished the first set at about 8:55.  (Thanks to the Morning Call for
that list of songs and authors, with the exception of Scarlet of course, they
did not have that song title in the article).

15 minute break.

Hornsby came back with the synth player.  The rest of the band stayed on
break.  They played a couple of numbers, Hornsby still collecting and
checking the request slips.  They started another piece without the band, and
as they played and went into a jam the band walked back in and sort filtered
into the jam to return to the concert.  They played The Weight by Robbie
Robertson, this featured the backup vocalist followed by another series of
songs that eventually broke out into a long jam.  During that period all of a
sudden the initial strains of Dark Star were heard.  As we listened and
looked, Hornsby stared straight at the drummer and sang the first line of
Dark Star, kinda smiled and dah-dah'ed the second line, letting the jam 'fade
away' from that and picked up a heavy back beat to another rock number which
they jammed into Not Fade Away.  Hornsby was playing the accordian during
NFA, walking around the band, singing next to the backup singer and ended up
standing on the piano belting out the end of "not fade away", the crowd was
going nuts!

They played one or two more songs and left the stage.  Within about 2 minutes
(of thunderous applause) they came back for an encore.  That turned into a
four song marathon filled with as much, if not more, energy than the show had
up till then.  In the midst of that, Hornsby hollered out to turn on the
house lights so he could see who he was playing to.  That was pretty neat,
cause they left them on for a while (or so it seemed).  Finished up with a big
ending and said goodnight.

After another minute of wild cheering, Hornsby and the synth player come
back, Hornsby holding up one finger ("just one more") and played two more
songs, the one about his wife leaving him 10 years ago...which he explained
while tinkling on the keys between songs that she came back and now they have
the twins and worked into the song he wrote about them to finish the concert.

Concert ends 10:50

What a night. :-)
    

    WoW!!! Dave, *grate* review!!!! ....you gotta write here more often :^)
    
    Thanx for taking me on the trip with ya...I rilly had a good time :^)
    
    Enjoyed,Andy

    
    i concur!!!!
    
    thanks for typing that in!  
    
    last time Hornsby was here (Grate Woods a couple of years back) he also
    did the request thing...  at that time he was ust about to join the
    dead onthe Europe tour...  did a few dead tunes too...  
    
    from what i understadn thre may still be a few tickets left for the
    Orpheum shows...   i am even more psyched now about using mine!!! :^)
    he claims to really enjoy Boston as he went to school here...
    
    					da ve

A little side note here:  My wife got me Hornsby's Harbor Light's album
for fathers day or some such holiday, and while I haven't listened to 
it much, I enjoy it.  However, when one of the tunes came on, I realized 
it was familiar to me.  After a bit I realized where I had heard this
tune before.  Boston Garden, 1991.  It was the show where Hornsby
jams extensively with Bill and Mickey while everyone else has left for
Drums.  This "jam" had become one of the songs on Harbor Lights.  Maybe
he'd already written it by the time of the concert, or maybe the song
grew out of that jam.  Only Bruce knows for sure.

PeterT

    What school did Hornsby go to ?
    
    

    
    Berkley School of Music
    
    

    
    I mean Berklee School of Music
    
    Hogan (?)

    
    Well, guess what, a friend dropped by a tape of Harbor Lights so I can
    (not in order) list some of the 30-odd songs he did.  Most of the
    album.  Interestingly, the songs I recognizied from the concert were
    rightthere when I heard the tape, but a couple that the newspaper said
    were played from the album, I could hardly recognize.  At any rate:
    
    
    	Harbor Lights (couldn't recognize)
    	Talk of the Town
    	Long Cool One
    	China Doll (different)
    	Fields of Gray (couldn't recognize)
	Rainbow Cadillac
    
    	He also played:
    
    	Just the way it is
    	One Fine Day (or is it Across the River?)
    
    	End of the Innocence (quite different)
    
    
    
    	Dave

    
    Although I did not attend (because I live in Atlanta area) I have a
    great copy of the Bruce show from the Orpheum Theater and I thought the
    show was great !  I was really impressed.  If he comes down this way
    I will definitly want to go.  I don't think the show was quite as free
    form as the one described in these notes, but none the less, it was a
    spectacular show musically.
    
    Randy
    

    kind of a cross post from MUSIC...
    
    anyone hear anything about a Bruce tour?  i figure since he has a new
    disc out thre must be a tour in the offing somewhere to support it...
    
    i always think of Bruce at valentines day...  the first time i saw him
    it was a valentines present...  now even though we don't see each other
    much, when i hear Bruce i still think of Lesa and smile...  i guess that 
    was probably her intent... :^) 
    
    					da ve 

    
    Pollstar doesn't list him - their help text says this probably means
    that he's not on tour...
    
    

    
>    i always think of Bruce at valentines day...  

	this sent me off on a tangent...Jerry and Deborah were married on
	Valentine's day...this will probably be a pretty painful day for
	her...healing vibes going her way...

	Debess

    very good point....peace, Deborah.
    
    
    rfb