That’s the way it should be.
Bruce Hornsby is touring behind “Indigo Park,” an album released in 2026, which is 40 years after his debut that featured the hit single “The Way It Is.” I talked to him for an Enquirer story 10 years ago when he played the Taft Theatre after the release of his “Rehab Reunion album.” He was friendly and forthcoming, which isn’t always the case with rock stars that have been at it that long. During the conversation, it became clear that as important as music is to him, it’s his personal life that helps keep him energized. He and his wife, Kathy, have been married since 1983 and have twin sons who played college sports.
Bruce Hornsby is celebrating the 30th anniversary of his debut album, “The Way It Is,” which earned him the Grammy Award for Best New Artist in 1987.
The eponymous title tune might still be Hornsby’s most famous song, but the Virginia born and reared musician has spent that time dodging pigeonholes to explore different types of music that interest him. And that list is long.
Hornsby and his band the Noisemakers visit the Taft Theatre Friday as they prepare for the release of “Rehab Reunion.” In an interesting twist, he says the new album mirrors “The Way It Is” in one regard.
“This new record … is interesting that even though there is no piano on it, it’s most stylistically like my first record,” he says. “Just from a songwriting level, a stylistic level.”
Wait, what? Did Hornsby say that “Rehab Reunion” has no piano? This from the author of “Mandolin Rain” and co-writer of Don Henley’s “End of the Innocence,” both of which open with iconic gallops along the keyboard? From the man who replaced Brent Mydland in the Grateful Dead after that keyboard player’s death in 1990? (Hornsby covers “Black Muddy River” on the new “Day of the Dead” compilation from Cincinnati’s Aaron and Bryce Dessner of the National.)
Yes, he did. And that’s one more tale from a raconteur who has an endless supply of stories.
“The last record of new songs was ‘Levitate’ from 2009, and one of the songs was the first one I wrote completely on a dulcimer, which was ‘Prairie Dog Town,’ ” Hornsby says.
A dulcimer? Who knew? Apparently the folks who run Bonnaroo. They asked him to do a set featuring the dulcimer, which led him “further down the dulcimer road and I started writing songs on it. It became … a very popular part of our concert, an acoustic mini-set.”
For people who have followed Hornsby’s journey, however, the dulcimer road makes perfect sense.
“I’m a lifelong student, I’m always working to improve and push my music to new places,” he says. “I made a record with (jazz giants) Jack DeJohnette and Christian McBride, the Skaggs-Hornsby record (with bluegrass legend Ricky Skaggs), my solo concerts. I have moved to different places.
“I still love doing the old songs, I really do, but sometimes I change them. It’s about being creative for me. It’s about staying out of the musical prison of replication of your old music, faithful replication for a person who is there for a nostalgic night out.”
Hornsby’s fans are savvy enough to know this in advance. The early hits didn’t fit into the New Wave of the mid-’80s; those had more in common with songs of the era from Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty and John Mellencamp. And it could be argued that his output since then has been more adventurous, if not more successful.
And at 61, he understands that but isn’t complacent.
“I’m not really very popular,” he laughs, “which is really too bad because most people who come to see me now, the reaction I get is, ‘Wow, I had no idea.’ Because it is a way different, way more evolved version of what I do. (It’s) an attempt at having a big, musical party, which is what the Noisemakers gig is about.”
That’s the way it should be.