Kevin Bacon and his brother, Michael, to sizzle your summer with new album
The Associated Press
NEW YORK» You could easily call Friday “National Actors Releasing Albums Day”: Kevin Bacon, Scarlett Johannsson and Erza Miller are among the famous faces dropping new music.
But releasing music for those wellknown for their roles in movies hasn’t always been accepting or a breeze.
“It’s crazy how actors bring out some kind of hostility from a rock music crowd that rock (fans think), ‘We have our idols and we don’t want you to try to share that.’ That kind of hero worship drives me crazy,” Michael Bacon, Kevin’s older brother and bandmate, said in an interview this week.
“I will say though that resistance to that idea comes from rock press and rock radio, but not from rock musicians. In my experience, when we play with musicians, musicians are incredibly welcoming of us. That’s not just studio guys, guys we’re paying, it’s like big musicians,” Kevin, 59, added.
The Bacon Brothers have been on the music scene for over two decades, releasing their debut album, “Forosoco,” in 1997. Their latest, a self-titled 10track set, comes out on Friday, the same day they’ll launch their three-month U.S. tour. (On Friday Johannsson will release an EP with Pete Yorn and Miller’s band, Sons of an Illustrious Father, will drop its sophomore album).
“The Bacon Brothers” was produced by G.E. Smith, the former “Saturday Night Live” music director and guitarist of Hall & Oates. It starts off with “Tom Petty T-Shirt,” written shortly after the rock icon died.
Kevin said he wrote the song based off wanting to fix a problem in marriage, relationship or friendship.
“You want to make it better. You want to step in and make everything right. Sometimes that’s a little out of your skill set, at least I find for myself when it comes to me and my relationship with my wife, or even with my relationship with my kids,” he said. “I don’t always say the right thing and do the right things exactly, to fix whatever that situation is. So it’s a little bit like, ‘Well, I don’t know if I can help, but here’s my Tom Petty T-Shirt.’“
The album doesn’t only feature the Bacon brothers: Kevin’s famous wife and daughter — actresses Kyra Sedgwick and Sosie Bacon (“13 Reasons Why”) — sing on the album.