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OH, THE IRONY. The Bacon Brothers – the band formed by film star Kevin Bacon and his Emmy-winning composer brother Michael – go down a storm with audiences all over the US, except in one city. “We don’t do well in LA,” Hollywood A-lister Kevin, 65, tells me in that familiar Philadelphia drawl.
“People roll their eyes. It’s such an industry town, people aren’t happy that I could be doing something that’s not directly in the industry.
“Anywhere else, people come backstage and say they enjoyed the gig.
“When they come backstage in LA, they’re carrying a script for me. I never take unsolicited scripts.”
It’s momentarily disconcerting to see that famous face talking to me on my mobile – it feels almost like a personalised EE phone advert. But there is no doubting the brothers’ authentic love for their music and fans.
“We signed an artificial limb once,” adds Michael, 74, a professor of music whose cello concerto, Eidolons For Violoncello & Orchestra, was completed in 2017.
“It’s quite a touching story – the woman had diabetes and had had her leg removed.
“She said our song Angelina had really helped get her through it.”
Both men are high achievers, forever striving to excel. When I ask Kevin what he’d say his greatest screen role was, he replies, “I hope it’s in front of me.”
Their new album,
Ballad Of The Brothers is a lovingly crafted smorgasbord of American roots music.
Their lyrics are either biographical or “shortform stories that capture some kind of moment”.
The beguiling title track is partly set in historic
19th Century Texan dancehall Gruene Hall – “a tin shack” – where two nerdy East Coast city slickers find themselves performing with unexpected musical talent before vanishing forever. Michael explained: “I wanted to write a Faustian story set in one of my favourite states – it’s sort of Texas’s version of Charlie Daniels’ The Devil Went Down To Georgia.”
The full title is Ballad Of The Brothers (The Willie Door) – a reference to Willie Nelson, who, reluctant to reach the stage through the throng clambered in through a window, known as “the Willie door” ever since.
Performing together since 1994, the brothers have yet to experience a Liam and Noel style fall-out. Kevin was six when Michael left home, so sibling rivalry never festered. Mutual respect shines through.
“Michael has incredible sensitivity as a musician and writes songs that are extremely deep, emotional, and very personal – melody, harmonies, incredible licks,” says Kevin.
“The only negative, if any, is sometimes he overthinks things. Sometimes simplicity is all a song needs.”
Of Kevin, Michael says: “Here’s the deal. He’s the most talented person I know, super prolific, very focused on whatever he’s doing, so focused he’s almost unreachable.
“You can talk to him in the car and not know if he’s listening. He’s like a sphinx.”
The Bacons were born to teacher Ruth and Quaker Edmund, an architect and city planner, dubbed “The father of modern Philadelphia”.
The boys and their sisters – “the four blondes” – grew up in downtown Philly.
Michael recalls their father turning the ground floor into “one huge speaker, so we heard stunningly beautiful songs, a really eclectic mix – Broadway, world music, jazz, classical, folk… they loved ballet.”
Kevin: “I got into the British invasion bands, and Motown, Philly, singer-songwriters.
“My best friend’s dad was a rock promoter, with a club called The Discotheque where we’d see Janice Joplin and Arthur Brown. I wasn’t into show tunes.”
Mum Ruth played “a little mandolin and had the weirdest voice,” says Michael. “She’d had some voice training when she was young.”
‘‘ Michael has incredible sensitivity as a musician
Kevin: “Our father had a deep voice but was tone deaf. When he sang us a lullaby, we’d pretend to be asleep.”
Ruth was a twin, so they had what Michael calls “a mirror family in California – at Christmas, we’d send tapes back and forth.
“We communicated by music. My sister Hilda and I had a high-school jug band.”
Michael began playing cello at six, learnt banjo at eight and then guitar, ukulele, the dobro and mandolin. He bought Kevin his first guitar and taught him to play it. They wrote songs and played together, but the younger Bacon felt another pull. “He was heavily into acting and reluctant to go on with the music thing,” says Michael with a theatrical eye-roll.
Kevin was 18 when he made his movie debut as ill-fated Chip Diller in 1978’s Animal House.
He went on to establish himself as one of America’s most versatile character actors, playing everything from sleazy cops to a clean-cut astronaut in Apollo 13.
Blockbuster movie Footloose may have transformed him into a pin-up, but it derailed more serious roles until he resurrected his career playing charismatic convict Willie O’keefe in Oliver Stone’s JFK.
More recently he excelled as crooked
Jackie Rohr in TV crime drama City On A Hill.
He says the comical EE phone ads were
“an opportunity to make fun of myself ”.
Michael meanwhile became a respected film and TV composer. He teaches film-scoring at New York’s Lehman College, where he’d studied composition and orchestration with classical composer John Corigliano.
He won an Emmy for his score for The Kennedys in 1992; and films he has scored have won three Academy Awards.
He is most proud of his concerto, performed by a New York chamber orchestra.
“It’s my main achievement,” he says simply. The brothers’ double act restarted after Kevin’s old friend heard their demos and suggested they put the band together for a gig.
Michael: “Kevin had never played to an audience before and was really nervous, but we both enjoyed it.”
The floodgates opened. “Clubs started calling me. I was the driver and the producer, and audiences kept getting bigger.”
MICHAEL recalls years of touring, playing little clubs and staying in cheap motels. They have also opened for The Band at New York’s Carnegie Hall, played Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry and headlined in Japan and in Europe. Kevin: “My favourite gig is the Stone Pony in Asbury Park. It’s a legendary place. I’m such a fan of Springsteen. We’ve never played a bad show in New Jersey – people really seem to enjoy it.”
They call their music “forosoco” because it draws on folk, rock, soul and country. Michael insists they don’t limit themselves to one sound.
Their new album, their 12th, sees them teaming up with Nashville songwriters but also includes brassy soul – “my wife loves horns,” says Kevin – and Live With The Lie, their 1997 song re-recorded as live in a New Jersey studio.
Kevin’s rocker son Travis produced Take Off This Tattoo – daughter Sosie acts.
Kevin: “I’m really proud of Airport Bar. I was stuck in one and wrote a song about a guy whose relationship is on the rocks, who’s trying to call this woman and gets the answer machine. It’s a strange oasis in the middle of sadness.”
His wife, actress Kyra Sedgwick, provides the voice on the machine.
So what next? “I tend to take it one day at a time. I’m excited for some of the work in the can – I have a few movies coming out and I feel good about them. I just put one foot in front of the other and keep moving forward.”
Father-of-one Michael, who lives in New
York City with wife Betsy, says: “I have the same goal I’ve had since I was 13 years old – to have a hit record. So many of the things I do I have to push along myself.
“It’d be nice to have something just take off – have lightning strike and have a song everybody really likes.”
Kevin says: “We just want people to have a good time. We have a good time and we like to get out in front of people and play our songs.”