Bruce Hornsby - Michael Weintrob

As the Matt ‘N’ Jeff Radio Hour enters double digits, it seemed quite appropriate that we should celebrate the milestone by welcoming in a singer/songwriter that Jeff and I both mutually share a lot of love for.

In fact, learning that Jeff was a Bruce Hornsby fan sometime around the time that he posted a Hornsby-themed edition of the Popdose Friday Mixtape was an important event which really helped to further hammer home the idea that this “Giles fellow” was somebody worth knowing.

For me, this was the third time that I’ve had the privilege of talking with Bruce. Each conversation is always an interesting journey, because I can go in with a lengthy prepared list of questions, but it’s only in the moment that I find out where it’s all really going to go during the course of the interview. Hornsby has a knack for touching on subjects that naturally carry the conversation into a variety of other areas that are equally as interesting as whatever else you might have planned to talk about.

We spoke with Bruce during a rare bit of downtime during the holidays where he was at work in his home studio, working on new music for the upcoming Spike Lee Oldboy movie, which follows closely on the heels of the recent scoring work that Hornsby did for Lee’s 2012 release Red Hook Summer. On paper, it might seem to be a strange pairing, but Hornsby and Lee have been friends and collaborators for nearly 20 years now and during our conversation, he explains the combo and other things that might come off as “unexpected” to those who are only casually familiar with his work.

But as Jeff expresses during our chat, we have learned to “expect the unexpected” and it is those unexpected moments that often bring about some of the most rewarding musical experiences for fans that are truly engaged with what Hornsby is doing as an artist.

We dig through a lot of different subjects during this hour-long conversation with Bruce and it’s something that as music fans, you’ll enjoy hearing Hornsby talk about the methods behind his musical madness.

Our gratitude goes out to Bruce for spending the time talking with us and also, big kudos go out to Marc and Kevin from Red Light (with further kudos also going to Bruce’s longtime producer Wayne Pooley) for helping us to connect all of the dots.

The Matt N’ Jeff Radio Hour, Episode 10: Bruce Hornsby interview 

Visit Bruce’s official website for the latest news and tour dates.

Keep up to date with the progress of his SCKBSTD musical here.

Musically, dip your toes into the world of Bruce Hornsby & The Noisemakers with their recent double live album Bride of the Noisemakers. (And hell, make it a box set by picking up their previous double live album Here Come The Noisemakers!)