Spirit Trail: 25th Anniversary Edition
Release Date: October 27th, 2023
Tracklist
Disc One – original album
King of the Hill
Resting Place
Preacher in the Ring Part One
Preacher in the Ring Part Two
Song C
Sad Moon
Pete and manny
Fortunate Son
Sneaking Up on Boo Radley
Great Divide
Disc Two
Line in the Dust
See the Same Way
Shadow Hand
Sunlight Moon
Listen to the Silence
Funhouse
Sunflower Cat (Some Dour Cat) (Down With That)
Song D
Swan Song
Variations on Swan Song and Song D
Living in the Sunshine (unreleased)
Groove Infatuation (unreleased)
Evening Sun (unreleased)
Clown’s Tambourine (unreleased)
Disc Three – Live Trail
King of the Hill
Resting Place
Preacher in the Ring Part Two > Variation 2 > (Catenaires)
Fortunate Son
Sneaking Up on Boo Radley
See the Same Way
Shadow Hand
Funhouse
Sunflower cat
Swan Song
Bruce Hornsby Q&A for Spirit Trail
Bruce Hornsby talked about the 25th anniversary reissue of Spirit Trail in an interview from his home in Williamsburg, Virginia. As has always been the case, his responses were thoughtful, candid and detailed. Occasionally he moved to a keyboard to illustrate a musical point. This album – his fifth, originally released in 1998 – holds a cherished place in his catalog, and he is clearly excited about reissuing it with extra material. –Parke Puterbaugh
Spirit Trail is the first album you’ve given the anniversary treatment to. Why this album? What is important about it to you?
Probably two or three things. One, it’s come to my attention over the years that for my true fans - devotees who’ve followed me through this crazy and stylistically peripatetic journey I’ve taken - this record is their favorite. Two, it’s the record from my past that personally holds up best for me. It’s the first record where I thought the singing has aged well, and I’m most proud of the songwriting on it. Third, we’re trying to get the word out again now on something we thought was pretty special then. So in a nutshell, it’s a true fan favorite and the one I’m most proud of.
It is a massive work: twenty songs, an hour and a half worth of music, a real dam-burst of creativity. What was going on that generated this massive outpouring?
It was 1994. I had turned forty and thought to myself, “This is a life crossroads here, a pivotal moment. Let me consider how I’m going to deal with the next part of my life. I have two choices. I can rest on my laurels and deal with my music in a similar stylistic area I’ve dealt with so far in my career. Or I can try to push it into new places.”
I chose the latter road, and what it involved very specifically was this. There had always been this one door of piano virtuosity that I would open, look in there, shut quickly and go, “That’s too hard, that’s too much work.” It’s called two-handed independence. I decided at age 40 that I was going to deal with this. Two-handed independence is basically about playing something in the left hand – an ostinato, a series of chords, maybe just a rhythmic pattern – and then trying to improvise in the right hand very freely over that left-hand pattern. And it’s very difficult.
How did that figure into the making of Spirit Trail?
I felt like I’d dealt with the jazz language enough on my previous two records – Harbor Lights and Hot House – and it was time to do something else. I was writing songs that were a little more bluesy, rootsy, a little more down in the dirt, not so harmonically florid. But I was also writing songs based on patterns and ostinatos influenced by what I was learning to do on the piano. A perfect example is “King of the Hill,” the pattern that starts it off. I was working on split-brain, two-handed independence. Another example is “Sneaking Up on Boo Radley.” I came up with a left-hand ostinato and then learned how to play over that. And it’s not easy at all. So that influenced the record and took it into some new territory for me.
In an interview from that time you talked about practicing four hours a day.
Yeah! I started at Christmastime 1994. That’s when I decided to go deep in the shed. My wife said, “You’ve always spent a lot of time out there, but you’re spending more now. What’s going on?” This was early in January 1995. I said, “I’ve decided to take a deep dive into this two-handed independence pursuit. And just so you know, I called the Virginia Special Olympics and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and offered my services for two benefit concerts. One is on May 5th in Richmond and one is on May 7th in Norfolk. So just give me this space and talk to me after the first solo concert, because you’re going to hear something real different.” I did the first concert at the Carver Center in Richmond, and after the first set my wife came back in tears and said, “Oh my god, this is so special! I’m so glad you’ve done this!” She’s a very artistic person who’s sensitive to all this and gets it. So that informed the songwriting on album one of Spirit Trail. Then there’s album two, which is a different story.
What do you mean by albums one and two? Are you saying that you regard Spirit Trail as two separate albums?
I see the two CDs as fairly disparate, yeah. The first record, from “King of the Hill” to “The Great Divide,” features the piano playing. The songs are longer. There’s one song on CD two, “See the Same Way,” that’s also part of that group. So I made that first album of eleven songs and then I guess there was an idea about “Oh, where’s the single?” (laughs) I’d made all these attempts at virtuosity in the pop song context, which of course guards against commercial success because it’s never been what that type of radio station is about.
So I felt the need to write a different kind of song, and I decided to keep going. I wrote “Shadow Hand” on a Casio keyboard when we were on the road, and that became my first song with a dulcimer on it. Now I’m starting to move into different areas from the first record’s music. I wrote “Line in the Dust’ with a synth bed and an Alesis drum-machine beat. That’s the first song on CD two.
My A&R guy at the time turned me on to this producer, Mike Mangini, who I hit it off with. We just got going on some more music. He was sort of a hip-hop guy, a white dude who was interested in what he called dusty beats and grooves. At one point in the sessions he said to me, “Explain this Grateful Dead thing. I don’t get it at all.” So I started playing him some things. When I played “China Cat Sunflower,” he just went “Whoa, I love that!” I told him Garcia had played on my last three records and though he’s not around anymore, I want him to play on this one, too. So I said, “Let’s sample ‘China Cat Sunflower’ and try to write a song.” Mangini put a little groove around that lick and we wrote “Sunflower Cat” over it.
Spirit Trail is a smorgasbord of adventurous songs, styles and playing. You were advancing your game as a musician, and some of the songs delve into serious subjects. But the cover—
I knew you were gonna say that! (laughs)
It’s a picture of an older relative with his eyes bugging out as he’s about to light a cigarette that’s sticking out of his ear! What was that all about?
I think the black and white picture of me that’s on the inside is what the record company would’ve wanted, and I get that. But I felt it would’ve been so straight, so boring. I guess my only explanation is that I’ve never taken the extramusical trappings of my career very seriously. We found this picture in some old drawers at my parents’ house, and it just killed us. We thought it was a scream. Then we showed it to my managers at the time, and they thought it was great. So we said, “Okay, this is the cover.” Because in and around the serious content there is a good bit of humor on the record. The whole “Pete and Manny” thing and some of the lines in “King of the Hill,” “Funhouse,” even “Sunflower Cat.” But mostly we just thought it was hilarious. I just have to say I’ve never been one for the cover picture of the brooding geek, you know? So that’s why I did it.
There’s also a real spirit of playfulness in the playing.
Well, that’s absolutely true. It’s a very upbeat record. I didn’t think about that but I’ll add that to my list of excuses for the cover. (laughs)
Talk about the additional material on the anniversary edition. It comes from your “lost album,” the one that was shelved in favor of Big Swing Face. How far had you gotten with it when the producer challenged you to make a more modern-sounding record?
To me, it was pretty far along. These were not just demos with a drum machine or solo piano demos. They were about a band playing. There was mostly piano, bass and drums on a lot of them but there was also guitar on a couple, and I’d thrown some organ on one of them. So I felt it was fairly far along. These were rough mixes but they were fairly close, at least in conception, to me.
I’m glad these songs are coming out because they’re fun to play and I think a certain fan of mine will go, “Why doesn’t he do this more?” I was still dealing with two-handed independence. I’m starting to learn those songs now to play them in concert, and they’re not easy because they’re deeply involved in split-brain playing. I’ll really have to practice to keep the left-hand patterns together while playing freely with the right hand.