Bruce Hornsby’s new album inspired by Eaux Claires
Across four years at the Eaux Claires festival, no one had a reception like Bruce Hornsby.
A favorite artist of festival co-founder and Eau Claire native Justin Vernon from Bon Iver, the three-time Grammy winner made several appearances throughout the festival in 2016, inspiring a deep, loud cry of “Bruce” every time he appeared on stage.
At least it sounded like “Bruce.”
“The great thing about having the name Bruce is they can keep booing the (expletive) out of you and you can think they’re saying your name,” Hornsby, 64, told the Journal Sentinel ahead of a Milwaukee tour stop at the Pabst Theater Aug. 7. “I always choose to look on the rosy side.”
Hornsby is joking, but he’s also used to upsetting fans. After winning a Best New Artist Grammy in 1987 following “The Way It Is,” the triple-platinum album he made with his band the Range, Hornsby has veered away dramatically from the soft-rock sound to explore elements of jazz, bluegrass, classical and other genres across a 21album career.
“I’ve been pissing off soft-core fans of mine since the second recalso ord,” he said. “I started getting nasty letters since then and they’ve never abated. … I am proud of the (early) songs, but I am always pushing myself as a musician.”
And for his excellent new album “Absolute Zero,” Hornsby, 64, got that push in part thanks to his experience at Eaux Claires.
“It was a special two days for me,” said Hornsby. “I met a group of musicians that I feel are original thinkers, that have a very unique stylistic sense, and I am drawn to that.”
Finding new friends at Eaux Claires
Eaux Claires is where Hornsby met all-female folk trio The Staves, who lend beautiful vocal harmonies to “Absolute Zero” track “Never In This House.” Classical music ensemble yMusic, which performed at Eaux Claires 2016, is also featured on “Never In This House,” and on songs “Voyager One,” “The Blinding Light of Dreams” and “Take You There (Misty),” all also on the new album.
And then there’s Vernon himself, who appears with his Bon Iver drummer Sean Carey on lead single “Cast Off,” and on “Meds” with frequent collaborator Rob Moose and guitarist Blake Mills.
The result is intoxicating and unpredictable. “The Blinding Light of Dreams” is what Hornsby dubs a “bi-tonal pop song,” blending the hurried strings of yMusic with anxious jazz drum cadence, while “Echolocation” recalls an Appalachian folk song with an avant-garde spirit.
“On this record, I was looking to make a sound that I hadn’t heard before,” Hornsby said. “That was difficult to do, but I knew if I dig deep enough and I was going to find that, with some likeminded creative souls.”
He found it in part at April Base, Vernon’s recording studio in Falls Creek, where Hornsby worked for four days in 2018.
He had worked there before, when Hornsby, a former member of the Grateful Dead, recorded a cover of “Black Muddy River” with Vernon’s old band DeYarmond Edison for the star-studded tribute album “Day of the Dead,” released in 2016.
But the sessions for “Absolute Zero” were especially fertile, Hornsby said. Not only did Hornsby and Vernon record “Cast-Off ” and “Meds” together, but Vernon and former DeYarmond Edison band member (and Wisconsin native) Brad Cook produced the title track and “Voyager.”
It also was at that session that the genesis of “Man, Like U,” a track on Bon Iver’s forthcoming album “i,i,” was born.
“I had brought some music, most of which came from scoring ideas for Spike Lee,” Hornsby said. “I brought about 25 pieces of music and played them for Justin, and he took about 10 of them that moved him, and we probably worked on seven or eight songs.”
“They work fast and sort of have it down,” Hornsby continued.
No set list since 1990
Hornsby hopes to recreate a sense of that scene in his show in Milwaukee. Carey, who also performs behind his own music as S. Carey, is the opening act (“he’s a beautiful soul,” Hornsby says), and Hornsby hopes Carey might be able to sing “Cast-Off” with him and the band, although nothing had been set as of this interview.
What he can promise, he said, is a show that shares the same adventurous spirit he’s displayed across his eclectic discography.
“We haven’t had a set list since 1990,” he said. “The band watches me at all times. I’m creatively restless and never know what i am going to do next. I generally try to placate the soft-core fans … but you can come seven nights straight and not hear the same thing. On tour last year, we did over 100 songs.”