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Bruce Hornsby: Big Swing Face

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: RCA Records
Released: 2002.06.11
Time:
 46:08
Category: Pop/Rock
Producer(s): David Bendeth
Rating: ***....... (3/10)
Media type: CD
Web address: www.brucehornsby.com
Appears with:
Purchase date: 2002.08.27
Price in €: 13,99





 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] Sticks and Stones (B.R.Hornsby) - 3:20
[2] Cartoons and Candy (B.R.Hornsby/M.Morganfield) - 3:53
[3] The Chill (B.R.Hornsby) - 4:10
[4] Big Swing Face (B.R.Hornsby) - 5:34
[5] This Too Shall Pass (B.R.Hornsby) - 4:59
[6] Try Anything Once (D.Bendeth/B.R.Hornsby) - 3:35
[7] Take Out the Trash (B.R.Hornsby) - 4:57
[8] The Good Life (B.R.Hornsby) - 3:47
[9] So Out (B.R.Hornsby) - 3:15
[10] No Home Training (F.Hill/B.R.Hornsby) - 4:25
[11] Place Under the Sun (B.R.Hornsby) - 4:13

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


BRUCE HORNSBY - Keyboards, Vocals

MICHAEL BAKER - Drums
TED JENSEN - Mastering
STEVE KIMOCK - Guitar
JOHN "J.T." THOMAS - Organ
DOUG DERRYBERRY - Guitar, Background Vocals
BOBBY READ - Bass Clarinet
JOE LEE - Background Vocals
J. COLLIER - Bass

DAVID BENDETH - Engineer, A&R
JEFF JULIANO - Talking, Engineer, Mixing
WAYNE POOLEY - Talking, Engineer
JOHN SEYMOUR - Engineer, Mixing
ARNOLD "Look at your arms" GEHER - Additional Engineer
JOHN ADLER - Assistant Engineer
TED JENSEN - Mastering
DAVE GORRIE - Production Coordination
PAT MARTIN - Production Assistant
MICHAEL MILLER - Illustration
SEAN SMITH - Photography

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


2002 CD RCA Records 68024



Never let it be said that Bruce Hornsby has had a predictable career. He very well could have followed one of two paths after his first two albums — he could have continued turning out heartland rock, or slipped into adult contemporary balladeering. He chose a third path — a restless, sometimes bewildering, foray into experimentation, heavy on jazz and improvisation; there was a reason he played with the Grateful Dead, after all. This led to a series of records that relied more on instrumentals than songs, culminating in 1998's sprawling double-disc set, Spirit Trail. By that point, only his hardcore fans were still paying attention, but even they could not have predicted the sharp change in direction on its follow-up, 2002's Big Swing Face. Nor could they have been prepared for this — a record that is heavy on post-electronica beats, filled with drum loops, Pro Tools editing, and dense arrangements. It's not just that the music sounds different: Hornsby himself sings differently. For the first two tracks, it feels like somebody else is singing, so different is the phrasing and timbre of his performance. Though that shock begins to wear off a few tracks into the record, Big Swing Face never stops feeling utterly alien to anybody expecting a typical Bruce Hornsby record, whether it would be the Hornsby of The Way It Is or of Spirit Trail. Which is not to say that it's a bad record, because it's not — it's very accomplished on its own terms, it succeeds more than the '90s albums where he seemed to drift into new age and, beneath all the busy surface, it boasts the tightest songs he's written in many a moon. It's hard to say who will hear this album — it's too much of a departure for many of his fans, and it's unlikely to win him new listeners — but it's some kind of an accomplishment all the same, one of the strangest records of 2002.

Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All-Music Guide, © 1992 - 2002 AEC One Stop Group, Inc.



Bruce Hornsby smashes his well-worn, previously cemented image and sound with his eighth album, Big Swing Face. In the debris are 11 layered and daring experiments in funk, trip-hop, New Orleans jazz, pop, and rock with a capital R. His signature poignant, rolling piano has been unexpectedly swapped for fuzzed-out guitars, rhythmic loops, and surprisingly hip samples. Using these new elements results in an irreverent tone, and grants Hornsby the freedom to veer from the socially conscious, lovelorn lyrics of previous hits ("The Way It Is," "Mandolin Rain"). From a litany of insults strung together on "Sticks & Stones" to the possible mission-statement chorus of "Try Anything Once" ("What the hell / Try anything once / Gotta keep an open mind in these crazy times"), Hornsby reveals all sorts of faces we've never seen before--on him or anyone else.

Laura Etling, Amazon.com



Admired by jazz aficionados, beloved by Deadheads, a Top Forty artist who has won three Grammy awards -- including Best Bluegrass Recording -- Bruce Hornsby is a musician continually attempting the new. He has played with Branford Marsalis, Jerry Garcia and Bela Fleck. And his latest album, Big Swing Face, is, no doubt, another effort meant to challenge expectations. Nearly synonymous with the piano, Hornsby, on this record, has abandoned it in favor of keyboards. "Sticks and Stones," the opening track, sounds wonderfully harsh, jarring, the keyboard solo filled with synthesized beats. But softer, melodious tracks such as, "Big Swing Face" and "This Too Will Pass," balance the harsher songs and feature lengthy guitar solos. Without piano, relying more upon guitar and keyboards, Hornsby's latest effort has all the elements for an album with an unrecognizable sound. But his rocky, pop groove and voice -- as strong as ever -- remain unchanged, making this record unmistakably Bruce Hornsby.

CHRISTOPHER SWETALA - June 25, 2002
© Copyright 2002 RollingStone.com



What the hell, I'll try anything once," Bruce Hornsby declares, "got to keep an open mind in these times." To prove his point on "Try Anything Once," the Virginia rock star ditches his familiar piano in favor of electric keyboards that he plays over a bed of programmed beats and metallic guitar. His whole new album, "Big Swing Face," takes the same techno approach. Once you get used to the incongruous idea of this tasteful songwriter and frequent Grateful Dead pianist getting down with synths and samples, the results aren't so bad.

At least Hornsby doesn't try to rap. Nor does he adapt his wistful elegies to the bleeps and loops. Instead he grabs catch phrases from American culture -- everything from blues songs to TV commercials -- and turns them into comic satires that are clever if not profound.

But the album's biggest pleasures come from the songwriter's irrepressible melodic gifts, which seem to have been given new life by the funky grooves crafted by producer David Bendeth. And when this mix of wise-guy lyrics, microchip beats and pop hooks are given a gloss of Beatlesque psychedelia, as on "So Out," the peculiar results have an odd charm.

Geoffrey Himes
© 2002 The Washington Post



Fans of this pianist-songwriter are going to be pretty shocked right off the bat — “Big Swing Face” is quite a curveball. With a noisier mix, heavily treated vocals that sound nothing like Hornsby’s previous work and a lack of stretched-out piano runs, you may check to see if you’ve got the right disc in the player (hey, I did).

Like the spawn between Eno-produced U2 and Beck at his least self-consciously wacky, Hornsby has decided to get loose in the studio. The lyrics are word soup, with lots of goofy rhyme schemes and a playful tone. Hornsby sings in a fairly credible funk-rock croon (although I did laugh out loud when he sang “styling and profiling.”). What’s missing is the catchiness that marked his best material and the head-turning tinkling of the ivories that made him distinctive (although he does play some mean organ parts here and there).

Cynics may cry fowl — and maybe they should. After all, this is slick-sounding weirdness, and the canned trendy beats smell like someone at RCA (or maybe Hornsby himself) wanted to graft some radio relevance onto Hornsby’s flagging career. But even though I smell some marketing at work, that doesn’t stop parts of “Face” from being a satisfying, and sometimes even engrossing, listen.

Mark Earnest - 6/27/2002
RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL



Hornsby's first release of new material in four years features

little of his trademark acoustic piano work. He and his A&R rep Dave Bendeth decided to explore a variety of moods and textures created with loops and samples.

"I had this oddball tune, "So Out,' different from the other stuff I was recording. I thought Dave would do a good job producing it, so I invited him down to Virginia. He listened and said, "Great songs, big (bleeping) deal.' In other words, interesting and memorable, but nothing new stylistically," Hornsby said recently. He'll perform at CityLights Pavilion Friday.

"He's not your typical A&R (artist & repertoire) guy looking for the hit. He wants to keep his job - you have to sell and make the record company money - but he's very adventurous musically. I think he saw me as someone he could come to and say, "Let's go for something different and out there,' because a lot of younger bands don't have that capability to completely step outside their standard mode. He pushed me in that direction.

"I loved the way he was making my voice sound. It's all about "studio trickery' - effects here, a compressed vocal there. Frankly, how many pop records do you hear that sound like a guy miked a band and they played? Not many. The sound has been very treated for many years now. But I've never done that much. I've always wanted to, but I never knew how to do it.

"He just wanted to shake up my world, so I went with that. It was hard - it took a little while to get in this mode writing-wise."

Hornsby took a downhome approach to the lyrics, and the opening "Sticks And Stones" is full of the vernacular he was exposed to as a teenager in his native Virgina.

"I've always been suspect of "fashion music' with the latest trendy sounds. Although I loved the grooves of electronica records, I felt it was a little thin lyrically, a little depthless.

"I thought, "If I'm going to be put into this sonic area, I want a very regional colloquialism factor in the lyrics and writing, to take it to a place that's so not about the dance club.' That's where you have this odd juxtaposition, of me talking about "scabby head knobby kneed old nappy head' over this different electronic groove.

"It's been a part of me ever since I was the only white boy on the basketball team hanging with the brothers - "Golden Boy' was my nickname. I got such a great education, and I've drawn from it forever, but I never quite dealt with it in my music until this time."

"Big Swing Face" is an accomplished record - Hornsby's dirty, funky singing is a treat - but the hip makeover may polarize the NPR set.

"If you make the same record, they go, "Oh, ho-hum, how boring.' And if you make a different record, they might go, "Well, where's the Bruce Hornsby we like?' I've never dealt with that. I've been changing all the time. This is just a bit more of a radical departure.

"If you don't have big hits, you're only preaching to your choir - the masses in America won't know about you. But to have big hits, you have to make such generic music - and who would bother with that unless your sole aim was to be commercial?

"I've always liked to wear a lot of different hats, collaborating with everyone from the Grateful Dead to Leon Russell to Ricky Skaggs to Pat Metheny to Branford Marsalis. I'll always be hard to pigeonhole, and that's the way I like it."

G. Brown - Friday, July 12, 2002
Denver Post Popular Music Writer



Bruce Hornsby's seventh studio album comes so densely wrapped in a barbed-wire package of drum loops, samples, vocal distortion and Wurlitzer parts that you're tempted to call it a radical departure from his usual jazzy roots-pop.

But peel back the plugged-in wrappings and you find the old Hornsby at work, applying meticulous craft to these bristling orchestrations, polishing lyrics till they glisten and sharpening hooks that bite deep.

That's not to say Hornsby sacrifices nothing in surrendering to this orgy of silicon. He has truncated his trademark long-lined melodies; and the prominence of loops and guitars means there's less time for his keyboard virtuosity. But for everything lost on ``Big Swing Face,'' there's something gained - not least a renewed sense of challenge and surprise. (Thursday at the South Shore Music Circus, Cohasset.)

KEVIN R. CONVEY
© Copyright by the Boston Herald



Piano star lightens up on the keys

Listen to "Big Swing Face" and it's easy to get caught up in the pulsing beat, the catchy refrains, the swirling rhythms. What you may not guess is that you're listening to the latest album from acclaimed musician Bruce Hornsby.

For starters, there's almost no piano. And while Mr. Hornsby has always incorporated a wide range of styles into his work – he won the bluegrass Grammy in 1989 – this is his first venture into the realm of dance music and, as he calls it, "sonic trickery." Hornsby, currently on tour, says it's caused some surprise – but may not be as much a stretch for him as it seems.

"I've gotten some reaction to this from people saying, 'Oh, this is the first thing you ever did I liked!' " he says with a laugh, speaking by phone from Salt Lake City. "And it's very different. But really, we have been very different for years. If you listen to my last record or the record before that and then listen to my first record, it's very different. We just moved on and on from that."

That first record, "The Way It Is," put Hornsby on the musical map in 1986, going triple platinum and earning him a Grammy for best new artist. Many of the album's songs, from the title song to "Mandolin Rain" and "Every Little Kiss," are still the ones many people connect with Hornsby's name. "The record company always picks the yearning, beautiful, sensitive ones [to play on the radio]," he laughs.

But Hornsby, considered by many a "musician's musician," refuses to be defined by his hits. Some of the creations he's most proud of are obscure: a song on a Keith Jarrett tribute record that he performed with a brass band, for instance, or his rendition of bluegrass legend Bill Monroe's "Darlin' Corey." And the tongue-in-cheek humor that abounds on "Big Swing Face" has been turning up in his lesser-known songs for years.

Still, even Hornsby admits that he had doubts when David Bendeth, his A&R representative from RCA records, first pushed him in this direction. He had another set of songs he'd been working on, about his twin sons, that he felt really good about. Mr. Bendeth agreed they were good – but not different enough. He needed to try something new.

"I'm a little skeptical of what I call 'fashion music,' " says Hornsby. "I've always tried to have my music be all substance and no style.... I wanted the uniqueness of what I do to be coming from the harmonic element – the chords I play."

But after Bendeth employed his "sonic trickery," says Hornsby, "frankly, I like it. There were certain things he was doing for me – the way he was making my voice sound, for instance."

In the end, Hornsby decided to see Bendeth's suggestion as a challenge – a chance "to try on some new musical clothes."

The one thing he was determined to do, though, was to keep the lyrics fresh and insightful. "I guess lyrically, I've always thought this sort of music was a little thin," he says. "So if I was going to deal in this area, I was going to take it to a lyrical place where no one who does that music would go."

For inspiration, he dug into his past – to his "days as the only white boy on the basketball team." His personal favorite is "Sticks & Stones," which offers a twist on the childhood refrain: "Sticks and stones can break my bones/ But your words always hurt me the most/ My scars will heal but the slurs won't."

"I think the verses of that song sound like no one else lyrically, and I like that. It's hard to do that after 50 or 60 years, or longer, of popular music."

Now, Hornsby is already looking for new stylistic directions to move in – and plans to return to the instrument he knows best. His next record will likely be a collection of live solo piano performances. Then there are the songs about his sons, which he still plans to release, and a bluegrass collaboration with country artist Ricky Skaggs.

"I always felt that was my job," says Hornsby – "trying to find a place for a lot of playing and virtuosity on the instrument in this music.... This was just a busman's holiday from that job."

Amanda Paulson
Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
 

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