The Questlove Show - QLS Classic: Bruce Hornsby

Episode Date: August 23, 2026

Bruce Hornsby joined Questlove Supreme in 2020 for a deep-dive that went way beyond “The Way It Is,” tracing his late-blooming journey from Virginia jock to conservatory-trained improviser to unlikely pop star. Bruce broke down how playing with The Grateful Dead rewired his approach to live performance, why he’d spent decades upsetting soft-core fans, and how a small-town Southern upbringing informed his blunt (and progressive) songwriting about race and class. He shared wild, personal stories about mentoring Allen Iverson, getting discovered by Michael McDonald, and being the piano heartbeat behind (fellow QLS guest) Bonnie Raitt’s “I Can’t Make You Love Me.” Hornsby also talked about doing (fellow QLS guest) Spike Lee scores, his modern Classical influences, and why he’d rather chase new harmonic territory than nostalgia. It was a rare, funny, and candid portrait of a virtuoso who kept reinventing himself—even as his most famous song found new life with artists from 2Pac to Polo G.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Behind every night spent making the kids' lunches, there's a lot of suspense. Will they finally eat the veggies? Will the pastos survive the first bite? Will the lunchbox come home empty, half full, or come home at all?

And will you finish episode 8 before you're done slicing the cucumbers? Get Bell Pure Fiber Internet with Craved Netflix and Disney Plus from $94 a month. Price guaranteed for two years on Internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.za for details and to check availability. Bell, connection is everything. I survived nine months in captivity, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive

what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files. Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to the Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Hoda Kotbby, host of the podcast, Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby. You know, I'm always searching for inspiration and useful tools to maximize joy.

Like when my friend Henry Winkler offered advice to aspiring actors and really anybody hoping to stand out. You're not hired just to fill time and space. You're hired to fill the space. with you. Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Our hometown is not a test tube. 90 miles northeast of Nashville, a battle for the future of America plays out in one small town. Developers with right-wing ties have purchased hundreds of acres of land.

We need cities on a shining hill. This is our town, a podcast about what happens when a small town becomes the site of a social experiment and fights back. Guess you didn't move in on a bunch of dumb hillbillies now, did you? Listen to Our Town on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Questlove Supreme is a production of IHeart Radio. Hello, hello, hello.

What's going on, y'all? It's Questlove. We've been re-releasing a lot of the QLS episodes that we taped during the pandemic. And today's classic episode with Bruce Hornsby, who has been. and incredibly cool when we spoke to him in 2020 is no exception. Bruce is an absolute open book when he talks about the music he loves and finding success in the 80s with the range and his relationship with that material. And he also gets into his collaborative relationships with The Grateful Dead and fellow QLS guest,

Bonnie Raid, and his unexpected connection to a legend from my hometown. Yes, I'm always in Philadelphia Despite what you heard Yeah, his role in the life of Alan Iverson is in the eye opener So this year Bruce released an album Indigo Park Which features Bob Weir, Ezra from Vampire Weekend

And Bonnie Raid, so I want you to check it out And this episode is fun Spirited pack with some stories And Bruce Hornsby, me, Fon Tiggle Unpaid Bill, and Sugar Steve, enjoy it Ladies and gentlemen, what's up? This is another episode of Questlove Supreme. I'm your host, Questlove Jenkins.

We're with Team Supreme today. Sugar Steve in the house. Hello. Hello. Quarantine Steve. Yeah. What's up, man? How you doing?

Holding it down. Okay. It asterisk or just definitive it? Holding it semi-colon down. Everything's good. Working on some music for the street. All as well. Okay.

Gotta keep the street happy. And Fonte Golo. I'm good, brother. I'm good, man. Doing the work as well. Can't complain. Cool, cool. All right.

Our guest today is a Grammy Award winning singer, songwriter, a producer composer. He has actually come to us in many forms over the past three second. For real. For real, for real. Either as a soloist or fronting one of his many projects, sounds like Questlo,

either a member of the range, the noise makers. At one point. Ambrosia. And Ambrosia. Yes. Not really, but okay. We'll take it. We'll take it.

Wait a minute. You know what? And I often do this. I'm not interrupting my own intro. Yes or no? All right. I'm a sole train colleges. Is that you on Soul Train with Sheena Easton?

That's hilarious. You've nailed me. Yes. Yes. Yo. I think, like, I have all the episodes that I keep them on loop. And like three weeks ago,

she was on doing sugar walls and I was like, wait a minute. Is that really? And I, that was you? Okay, okay, okay. Well, look, yeah, there's a funny story about it. Look, I played with her for two years. And sure, we did Soul Train

and I'm up there looking like a complete clown, most likely. Yeah, you were screaming. I haven't seen that for years, but I tell you what, as a parent of a Division I basketball player, who's now a pro in Germany, I used that for a great benefit. My son Keith played at LSU, and he was live on national TV's junior year against Texas A&M on ESPN1, and he had a pretty rough game, and we're back at the hotel, the Cook Hotel on LSU campus, and he's just bumming, he's really down. And I said, you know what, I'm going to change your mood right now,

go to YouTube and look up Sheena Easton strut and the Sheena Easton sugar walls featuring me looking like a complete idiot. And so he looked at his dad just sort of undulating around with sunglasses on. And he just fell out and his mood change just like I predicted. And so you know what? Whatever works to help your kids get through the tough times, my clownish appearances in Sheena videos work. You were exaggerating, ladies and gentlemen.

Anyway. You had a little son, Bruce. Can I say who was on the- I forgot we still in the intro? Yeah, who's on the show? We didn't even talk about his work with Dijanette, Jack D. Zanet, and my high schoolmate, Christian McBride.

Yes, Philadelphia schoolmates, yes. Yeah, not to mention, you know, your musicianship, your DNA is all over our favorites by Bonnie Raid, Don Henley, so many projects. This intro is going to be forever. He played with squeeze. What? Yep.

When? I don't know. I saw it on Wikipedia. Just to be accurate, I played on one of their records. A great record of Walk a Straight Line. It's a beautiful, you know that one? No. It's a great, not a hit, but it's a beautiful song.

What album is it on? What album is it on? It's called Play. Okay. Early Midnights. And I played accordion, yeah, on that. So let me just say the two words so we can start the episode. Bruce Hornsby, the Questlove Supreme thing.

Anyway. Yeah, we often fall in a rabbit holes even before we get the name of the artist. Who cares? It's fine. Bruce Hornsby, Easton, veteran. So right now you're celebrating the release of your 22nd record, correct? Yes, that's true, sir. So without my knowledge of your deadhead,

years. Can I, can I assume that the fact that you have, uh, about, I believe it is 26 live albums, that's the lesson that you learned from playing with the Grateful Dead? Well, okay, people always ask me what, how did playing with the Dead change your musicianship, change your approach, et cetera. I was always an improvising musician. I went to school. I was one of those music school geeks. I started off. Berkeley for two semesters, but then I went to University of Miami, Sun Tan U, known to a lot of people, for your paid vacation for rich northern kids, northern white kids. Anyway, I came out with that background, and so the improvisational aspect of the dead was not anything that was

sort of epithelial for me, epithanic. What I got out of them mostly was inspiration on the songwriting level. People don't realize that they have fully 50 truly great songs. Half of them sound like they could have been written 100 years ago or plus old folk music, a deep well of influence there. So I love them. I miss Garcia. He was quite a guy. And you were there during the Garcia years. Oh, yes, the last spot. I played with them just for 20 months or so. I played about 100 shows with them from 8. from 1990 to 92. We'd open for them before that.

Okay. Oh, so you played the 92. Okay. Yeah, but then I stood in with them when they were geographically close to me up through 95, right up to his dad. Okay. Yeah, I went to one Garcia show,

I think in Houston, when Bramford Marcellus was sitting there with him. Yes, my guy. Yes, Bramford and I played together with the dead quite often. It's his birthday's coming up here pretty soon, fellas. Maybe you should shout his ass out.

Yeah. Shout out to Bramford ourselves. Are you on without Annette, the Dead Live? No, that's, Brantford's on that. Right. Okay, to respond to the 26 live albums to which you're referring, that's albums. I mean, they're just available online.

There's no CDs made of those. But frankly, we're like a lot of bands. I write the songs. We record the songs. and then we learned how to play the songs. So consequently, the live thing expands everything that we started with on the original record. And so quite often, live is the best way to hear us

because it's very loose, it's very free. Brantford sits in with us quite often because he knows that we're winging it like crazy because I don't know what I'm going to do. So if I don't know what I'm going to do, the band guys definitely don't. And it makes it great fun. Is there a pressure for you to make a memory

each and every night, knowing that some of these fans will follow you. There, to me, is no more loyal fan base than anything associated with the dead or six degrees within it. So how did that affect your actual,

the way that you put on shows? I think I probably started taking it a little more out than I had been doing. I was always improvising, but I got a lot freer, much to the chagrin of a lot of my fans. You know, when you come out having these big hit radio songs, you acquire an audience that I call sort of a soft core one, people who are only there to hear the songs they know. Only for the hit, yeah.

Yeah, that's right. And so I was never that guy. So it's been my self-appointed job to piss those people off for many a year. And so, nasty letters abound in my world for 32 years now. I'm saying that you've gone shows without playing modern rain or the way it is? Or? Well, not many. I've become a lot more kind about it in my senescence here, in my 60s.

But there have been shows. But the only times that I didn't do that was when I felt the audience was so jacked, so responsive, so deeply involved in what we were doing without playing those old war horses that I could get away with it and it wasn't a problem. Of course, I'd still get a couple of nasty letters from people who, again, are soft-core fans, and they would just come to hear those five or six songs that they know. So, yeah, now it's really gotten bad because my last two records have really gone. I'm a modern classical music devotee, and so that astringent, atonal, chromatic, dodeco-phonic sound

has been filtering into my music, much to many fans' chagrin. I apologize to them. That is actually the, that is the first time we've ever heard the word Dodecaphonic used on Questlo's Supreme. And that is amazing. I'm happy to be a first,

to give you all a first here, yeah. I saw you play once downtown, and there was a lot of feedback, and it was in the key of F. So we remember this. So they played everything in the key of F. We played to the feedback. And for that,

it was fucking hilarious, because every song was just in F, no matter what, in what range of his voice was. They took everything into F. And so, like, because it kept out feeding back. And so, like, so is not to be atonal, they played everything in F.

And it was hilarious. Well, look, if you're a musician of any worth, you should be able to transpose instantly. You can't, you're not going to play with me. And so, uh, I say that and Steve. What's that? Bruce, we share a guitar player.

Doug, Doug Derryberry, who used to be a noise maker many years ago, is a Sesame Street's guitar player. Well, not that many years ago. Doug was with me for 15 years, and I made a change about maybe five or six years ago. But Doug, it's a great asset, a great utilitarian, sort of an orchestral guitar player. It's a great New York guitar player named John Leventhal, most well known for the Sean Colvin, great records. And Leventhal had played on my sixth record Spirit Trail in 98, and I wanted somebody. to give me 11thalian sound. And so I got Doug and he did a great job for me. I started hearing another sound in my head. So, alas, I made a change.

But I love Doug and he did a great job for us. Like I say, for 15 years. Awesome. So your musical roots, I know that you started out in Virginia. What city were you born in? I was born in Richmond. And I grew up in Williamsburg, 50 miles down the road. And I still, this is where I am.

Now, I moved back after 10 years in LA. I moved back in 1990. So I've been here for back here for 30 years and we're in my studio. Yeah, you can have that shit. I went there once. They took us on the trip there like third grade one time and like that was it. No, I've got a feeling. I did a dread of Root show there.

GippaSvante, the one, we did like 106 in part live. Oh, oh. Yeah. So how did you go over? How did the garden push? Our song, break you off with nice for about four minutes. And then the rest of the show was like, okay. They're just out there looking at you.

They were like, where's Mr. Cheeks at? We're done. Yeah. I can relate. I've been there. What about Colonial Williams, Williamsburg? Well, we made it our self-appointed job as local townies to pelt tourists and local college of women-marry students with water balloons. And so we would ride through town and just wear an ass out.

Jesus Christ, man. Yeah, our karma was probably not so good then, hopefully improved. But we actually got stopped by the cops and taken to the police station. our senior year in high school, some young, well-appointed young college of women-marry grad student. We just pelted him, and he flagged the cops down,

and we were through. So that's, but, yeah, that was as exciting as it got in the little-ass town of Williamsburg, which I love. Obviously,

I moved back here. But, yes, Williamsburg is my town. Yeah. The court, yeah. I'm right down the street.

Yeah, I'm in North Carolina. born and raised. Where? Where? I'm in Raleigh. And I saw your son. He went to Asheville, right?

He went to. Yes. He was in the mountains. Yes. You saw him play NC State. Yeah, man. Yeah, he put 23 on NC State. And then they recruited him.

Mark Gottfried recruited him, but he picked LSU and it worked out great for him. But yeah, Raleigh's a good old town. We like playing that museum, the outdoor. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The art museum out of the, uh, yeah, it's nice. It's really nice. And you know, Brantford lives in Durham. Yeah, man, Bramford. So Bramford, he actually, I graduated from North Carolina Central. And Bramford taught there. He was there like the artist in residence for years.

And he's just super cool dude, man. Yeah, the best. He's also a fellow prankster with me. So I could talk about that. But I'll, I won't do it because he may not approve. We'll see. What was your first musical memory? Well, it's not a memory when someone's recorded you at age three or four. You know, at least I don't remember that. But since the tape's around, then you feel like you remembered it, there's a tape of me singing hound dog at age about three and a half or four.

Crocking all the time, you know, all that business. And some other songs, too, with the wind and the rain in her hair by Pat Boone. Our parents were turning us on to this stuff. So, yeah, sadly, alas, I probably heard Pat Boone's Tootie-Frudy and not Little Richard's. As sad as that sounds, that's, that was what was happening in my house. But yeah, did you have other siblings or was it just you? Yes, I'm the emotionally disturbed middle child. So, yes, I have an older brother and a younger brother.

And I, it's interesting. Since I was in the middle, I was really close with each of them, and they were friendly always, but not like a relationship that I had with each of them. My older brother was the original deadhead in our family, Bobby Hornsby. And I used, in my freshman year of college, I was little Brucey playing Fender Rhodes and singing lead in a dead cover band called Bobby High Test and the Octane Kids. So that was Bobby Hornsby. And my younger brother ended up writing a lot of songs with me later. in the aforementioned mandolin rain is a co-write with my younger brother john valley road school about a song about a young girl who gets knocked up as they used to say put in the family way and they

sent her away to the school for unwed mothers a while a strange way to have a hit the top five song that one so he yeah so he wrote that with me he wrote songs for several years but now he's out of it but yeah I'm the middle guy, the middle student. I was a jock as a kid, though. I was into music a little bit, but I mostly wanted to hoop. Yeah, I was going to say your relationship with basketball. I'm a Philadelphia, so it has been noted how your involvement in the life of Alan Iverson, some could say literally saved his life.

At the time, I'm just curious, like, what was he? it about him? Because the thing is that I'm not, one, I'm not a sports guy, but I'm still trying to understand the mentality of college sports fans and how they see that just as important as professional sports. And what was it at the time that made you want to get involved in his situation? Well, I think addressing first the college versus pro thing, you've got a whole a lot of people, for instance, in the southern part of the United States, where, say, in basketball, they're only maybe, they're only outside of Florida, there's only the Atlanta Hawks and the New Orleans Pelicans. So for most, for this vast area, college sports is king. That's one reason why the SEC,

I think, is so huge because they're the only game in time. And the ACC two. So those are the only games in town. And having said that, what did you just ask me other than that? Well, and what made you personally get involved with Alan Iverson situation? Oh, okay. Okay. So, well, Chuck, as we call him, Bubba Chuck. That was his local. Chuck was his name locally, at least in the hood of Hampton. When he got sent to jail, graffiti all over Hampton said, free Chuck. I just got chills thinking of going down and seeing all this because he was a beloved figure even as a kid. People just knew

he was special. There's an AAU program in our area, legendary program called the Boo Williams League, Blue Williams Summer League. And Chuck was a star in that. And then he played at Bethel High School and he led his team. He was a fantastic football pair to. He was just special athlete.

He got over 200 offers in football as well. And so... So he was just as good at football as he was in basketball? Well, it's arguable. Who can He was just fantastic at both. So, you know, what do you say? Greater, greater.

He was just great in both. What was this position in football? He was a quarterback. Okay. Yeah, and he was so fast. And he had all that juke, all those changing direction. You know, he'd go this way and go to the, you know, just, he was crossing people over on the football field. So the story goes that I went to see him played on Fort Eustis.

We have a very great military presence, huge military presence in our area. And one of the bases is Fort Eustis. They had a Christmas tournament. Chuck was playing. Bethel, high school was playing. So I went to see the game. And Ann Iverson, his mom, came up to me and, oh, I don't know, asked me to sign something. And so I told him, yeah, yeah, we loved Chuck, et cetera.

And so then after his junior year where he led his team to the state championship in football and then in basketball, he was in a bowling alley in Pococon, Virginia, a little, an area of Newport News, or Hampton, I guess. And a brawl broke out, and he and a bunch of others were arrested for brawling in a bowling alley and also maiming by mob. So he and three or four of his friends were convicted and sent to jail. And I thought it was a travesty, the miscarriage of justice. So I'm proud to say that we in Virginia elected the first black governor in America, Doug Wilder.

And he was the governor then. And I had done some work for him, some events for him. So I started lobbying him through his chief of staff. It was a friend of mine. And I don't know. I was just one of many probably to do this. But Wilder, around Christmas time of, say, 92, Doug Wilder, pardoned Alan.

Now, he should have pardoned everybody. And about two weeks later, the hub of was so intense that finally he did let everybody go so as not to show favoritism to the local favorite son, Killer Hooper, you know, killer job. So about two months later, I get a call out of the blue from his high school coach

a guy named Mike Bailey. And he says, hey, Bruce, Alan knows about what you did. Oh, you know, also, I just become friends with our mutual guy, Spike Lee. Spike, yeah. And so Spike and I, the first thing I did was Spike in 92,

he made a video for me. Brantford was in it because he played on the record, a song about the first interracial romance in my town of Williamsburg and all the consternation it caused with the local sort of conservative government crowd. Anyway, we're in editing, and I told him about Chuck. And, oh, that's right. I told him earlier about it. Anyway, I forget the exact timeline.

But this guy calls me. So I had gotten Spike when Chuck was in jail. I said, Spike, you know, you want to this kid I told you about it. Well, now he's in jail. And Spike said, yes, I've seen it on ESPN. I know all about it. I said, well, you do me a favor and send him just some of a care package from Spike Lee. It might pick him up when he's at the city farm in Newport News.

And so Spike did that. Anyway, this guy calls and says, well, Alan knows what you've done, what you've done. And he'd like to thank you. I said, well, you guys come up. and we'll play some ball. And he said, well, that's what he would like to do. So we ended up doing that and becoming friends through that forever. Wow.

Now, is there any truth of rumor that you... Oh, no. That you beat Alan Iris and King of 101. It's not just one game. It was three. Uh-oh. But you know, I'm just setting the record straight. I don't need to.

talk shit. I don't care about living, about making that some moment. I never bring it up. I never talk about it. But look, it's out there. But you won't deny it though, will you? Well, look, it just happened. Maybe I caught him rusty because he had obviously not been playing a whole lot of ball for the past four months. But I had one of those days where I just couldn't miss, you know, I just was just netting my ass off. And we were playing a game. Maybe he was not aware of this game. It's perfect for him, really. It helps the smaller guy, and he's a little smaller, shorter than me. It's the way the pros play. You start the top of the key, and you can either pick a two dribble or three dribble maximum, which basically means the big guy can't just

back in, back in, back into the rack and throw some little last land to pitiful land hook and do that all the time. So you've got to make a move. You've got to, you know, you've got to commit and shoot the ball. So that's what we played. Of course, he dunked on my head. And about five times. I mean, you know, he was a freaky athlete. Anyway, there are lots of witnesses, and I could name them all for you, so, including his high school coach.

But, you know, what, hell with it. I don't care. I love Chuck. And, you know, maybe he let me. You'll have to ask him. Okay. Yeah, there's a, there's a friend of Farrells who, I guess, went to high school with Alan Andrew.

And like one night they were at a party for the Neptunes. And, you know, it was like they were in the nightclub. And, you know, the guy was trying to bring up like old high school times. And, you know, Alan was like, way back in the midday. Like, really not trying to talk basketball when you're in the nightclub situation. Well, this guy, like, insists, like, whatever high school game they played, like, Oh, boy. He had walked or something or, like, he did some violation.

I don't know what happened, but the next thing I know, Ferell told me, tells me that this guy grabs his basketball and he's outside in the parking lot and it's pouring down rain and he's playing against Alan Iverson's Rolls Voice. Like he's just in front of the Rolls Voice like trying to cross as if that Rolls Royce is Alan Iverson like for no reason at all just. Oh, he was out there alone playing a car. He's out there alone just like playing a car. Playing a car. Playing a car. Trying to cross the roll's voice. Crossing over a car.

It was parked. Like, Alan was nowhere, you know, it was just one of those moments. That's sad, really. Yeah, it was. So for you, what was the moment that really drew you into your music career right now? Well, what was the moment that made me say? I mean, as younger. Yeah, exactly.

It made me say, okay, the hell with the standard routine, I'm casting my lot with the Musos. That moment, you're saying you're asking about? Okay, well, I went to one year of real college. I was a bit of a school hopper. I went to three colleges. University of Richmond, the one sort of lost year, and then Berkeley and Miami.

So that was a year that made me realize, okay, this is what I need to do. But I was such a late starter because I had been a jock as a kid, and that's what I cared about. But I started playing piano in 11th grade. And so kind of late, stage 17. Wait, you started playing piano in 11th grade?

Yeah, yeah. I had a lot of catching up to do. And started? Yes, started. How? That's just freakish. Well, okay, so how? I mean, you're really good, so I would just think that.

Yeah, to me, have started that late. Yeah, that's crazy. Well, look, it's all about putting in the time. As anyone knows, as you know, I, once I got into it, I got deeply involved. And when I went to college, I practiced for several years from five to eight hours every day. So if you're willing to do that every day, Christmas Day, New Year's Day, then you're going to catch up a little bit, although I do feel like I love classical music. But my technique, because I was such a late starter, it's commonly said that if you want to be a classical virtuos or a concert pianist, you have to start at age three, four, five, six.

no later than that because the demands are so intense. And I really feel that, to be honest. I always going, man, bitch, you sorry ass, you know, to myself. And so that's a regret. But hey, everyone's life path is different. I was just a guy who liked playing sports first. And so got into this later. So, yes, but I got deeply into it and went to music school and got a lot out of that too.

So that's my story. Just started late, but I just had to do it at all times. Why did you leave Berkeley? I went Berkeley because I wanted to practice four hours a day, and they had a limited number of practice rooms. So if you wanted to practice four hours today, you had to wait about six and a half hours to do that because they'd kick you out.

There was a sign-up sheet in the line. They'd kick you out for two hours, for good reason, I guess, because there's got a lot of people waiting. Yeah. That's right. So, and also since I was late to start, I felt I needed to, I'd amassed all this information, you know, this theoretical knowledge at Berkeley, taking harmony, et cetera. And I thought I needed some time to really, really assimilate and deal with this and really ingest it. So I lived in a farmhouse outside of Winsberg, and that was when I started my eight hours a

hours a day regiment. I played this little cocktail piano bar at night to make a buck and shed on this old upright. And then I went to Miami from there. Were you learning just by ear or were you reading at that time? Well, I started playing by ear because it came fairly naturally to me. I started because of two guys. My older brother went to New England prep school. And we were just local Virginia hooples who listened to the top 40 station and the soul station. We didn't get the underground stuff, you know, the stations where back then you could hear Miles Davis next to Hendricks next to Joni Mitchell, you know, whatever. And so, so he turned me on to, I know this sounds crazy to think that this could be sort of underground, but Elton John's second

record, Tumblewine Connection, his least most, the one record he probably almost ever made that had no hit on it, it's one of the best ones. It's a deep, beautiful record, and it got me into playing. And then he turned me on to Joe Cocker, Mad Dogs and Englishman, with the great Leon Russell playing piano. So Leon and Elton, Leon's a soul man. He came straight out. You guys familiar with Kojik, the Church of God and Christ? Oh, yes. I'm very much.

Deep gospel music roots. I mean, it's just the music that comes out of there. Like you hear those old Sam's Cook and the Soul Stirer's records, all that stuff that Leon play that go. all that stuff. You're hearing that in the background of what Sam Cook and the Soul Sturge are singing that killer gospel. That's where that came. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Gospel quartets. And so between Elton and Leon, I was hooked. And so I was learning those by ear. But my mom, my grandfather was a musician for a living in Richmond. And he was the supervisor of music in the public schools, the public school system.

And then he was also the theater organist at the local mosque. If you went to the state JC's convention, you'd be the guy over in the corner playing L.S. Turkey and the stras, some old freaking minstrel shit. But so anyway, my mom look at me. She thought my hands just looked terrible. I was probably playing like this. And he said, you know what?

You may be sounding okay, but you look rough. You've got to start taking lessons. And so then I started to learn to read and learn sort of the jazz language, the two fives, et cetera, all the color tones and all that. So that my mom was good for me. And so that's how that happened. Behind every night spent making the kids' lunches, there's a lot of suspense. Will they finally eat the veggies? Will the pasto survive the first bite?

Will the lunchbox come home empty, half full, or come home at all? And will you finish episode 8 before you're done slicing the cucumbers? Get Bell Pure Fiber Internet with Craved Netflix and Disney Plus from $94 a month. Price guaranteed for two years on internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.ca for details and to check availability. Bell, connection is everything. When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months. I survived and I've spent my life.

exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files. I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything. Every week, I'm with survivors who lived through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me. I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming. They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.

But these aren't stories about what's taken from them. There's stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to the Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, this is Hayes Davenport. And Sean Clements. We host the podcast Hollywood Handbook on the Big Money Players Network. Our show is extremely accessible to first-time listeners.

Each week, we talk to someone in show business, aka The Biz, and try to help them with their careers and see what they have to offer us. Everyone has a good time, and no one gets mad at their publicists for letting them do our show. We've had a lot of great guests like Sarah Sherman, not that great. Actually, can you help me shape this? How about we flip it on his head, right? How about we flip the script? What is the surprise woman?

But actually you think is the straight man is actually the one who's acting weird. Adam Scott, this entire time you've been expecting Adam Sandler to come to visit the show. I would never expect, I would never set expectations for something like that to happen. If the universe allows for something like that to happen, I'm open to it. I'm always going to accept. You know, Danny McBride, fine. Yeah, it's all this fragile masculinity exuding. I could smell it walking down the hallway, to be honest with you.

I was like, I was like, is that weed? Nope, it's fragile masculinity. Ben Stiller, no. Because a lot of times out of context, people don't get it, or even know what a circle is. You know what I mean? They're like, oh, what's a state. Everyone's so dumb except for you.

And fake. Right, fake and also not interested or just like, oh, I've got my life, I don't care about your life. care about your life. And a lot of other big shots that wouldn't be where they are without us. Oh, and by the way, Will Ferrell told us personally he loves the show and he wants to be a guest on every episode, but he's

just so busy. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the new podcast, Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is

offering me a ride on his motorcycle. I chose option B. I'm Julie Piniero. and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word solita, trading the pity for possibility. Every time I tried to be alone, I kept meeting people and they were like, you smiled at us. Not a lot of people smile around here. It's when you're alone that you're most receptive to the world as it is and not the lies you're sold about it. It can be a time where you push your limits, change your mind,

or wake up to a new version of yourself. So whether you're a solo travel veteran or you're too nervous to book your first trip, I hope you listen to Solita on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Real quick, what year were you at Berkeley? And were there any other notable students that were there at the time that was in the year that you went?

Yeah, well, I've always heard it's a badge of dishonor to actually graduate from Berkeley because you only go for a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Does that mean you ain't getting a gig? Yeah, that you don't have a gig. That's right.

That means you're sad. Yeah. You know, so, okay, I went for summer and fall of 74, but I was in the accelerated program, so I crammed two years into two semesters. And let me see, anybody who was there who really emerged, Pat Mathini was there, but he had come from Miami. He had been a student at Miami, but he was so bad. bad. He became a teacher, like, instantly. But he was playing with Gary Burton when I was at Berkeley.

And so I saw an amazing concert at the Sanders Theater in Harvard with Keith Jarrett opening on solo piano. Imagine that. And then Gary Burton's great quartet with Pad and Mick Goodrick and maybe Bob Moses. So it was a fertile scene in Boston. You know, they had the jazz workshop in Paul's Ball. You could go, I would go. I had enough money to go see,

hearsay, Bill Evans or Horace Silver, one of the weeknights, but I would go and listen through the wall on Boylston Avenue, Boyson Street, just to hear more. So it was amazing to be able to see,

hear all these people, all these legend, Cannonball, Adderley, miles on and on and on. How heavy was the competition there? Because I know, especially now, like, if we're anywhere near that campus in Boston,

and like, or at least this, the musicians I see now looking on YouTube or whatever. I feel like there's such a, not a cut through, but a need to out floss each other in terms of like overplay and. Yeah. Play everything. I really wasn't good enough to be perfectly honest with you. I really wasn't good enough to really emerge into the scene where I was hearing the great guys. I was fairly mid-level. And so I don't remember.

And I also don't remember anyone emerging to have a great career. Now, when I went to Miami, that's different. Okay. When I was at Miami, it was sort of the latter stages of the golden era of University of Miami. Right when I hit, when I got there, Pat had been there. Jocko had been teaching there, Jocko Vestorius. Oh, he held a job. Wow.

Yeah. Yeah, I didn't know that. Yeah. Well, it was personal. It was private lessons. I'm sure it was loose. Hey, I can't make it today. You know, that kind of thing.

But the Dixie Dregs, you guys know those guys were? Steve Morse, sort of like, I don't know, like, virtuosic rock and roll bluegrass or something. Steve Morse was crazy, the virtuosity level was high. But then Carmen Lundy, Rob Watson, but he's known as Bobby Watson now. and Carmen's little brother, Kurt Lundy. I played in Carmen's band.

That was sort of a right of patches. If you were merging, as one of the better players in the hierarchy of the school, you got to play in Carmen Lundy's band. You guys know Carmen, right? You guys know? I know of Carmen Lundy. Yeah, okay.

So she's had a nice career as a jazz singer. And, yeah, Bobby Watson, Carmen, Pat. Well, Pat Mathini, of course. So you were looking at a more serious jazz sort of road or just you were going for the road, whatever it took you? Well, I was just going with the inspiration, but it was pretty telltale at that time. I would go to the record store and I'd buy an Ornette Coleman record and a Joni Mitchell record. And I'd always find myself listening to the Joni Mitchell record more. You know, I get a Roberta Flack record and a Hubert Laws record, say.

and the flute player. Yeah. And so I'm a record. Yeah, yeah. It's fantastic. And so, but I always, I thought to myself, well, I think my, I really like this jazz music. It's a great intellectual pursuit. But I think my heart was in, in songs, in songs with words.

And so when I got out of Miami, we put together a band up in Virginia and started down the long road. eight years later, I got signed to RCA records at age 30. Wow. Let's back that. Let's back that up six years. 82, you joined Ambrosia. No, but I didn't. That's a fallacy on Wikipedia, whatever.

Oh, so you had nothing to do with Ambrosia. No, no. They were great friends of mine. Okay, I was discovered, the aforementioned band we put together in Virginia after Miami after I graduated. We were playing around the local area and we were playing bars and lounges where you're you're expected to play shake your booty and brick house and all that stuff. So we'd gradually acquired an audience who would come to these lounges to hear my songs. So we were big fans of Mike McDonald of the Doobie Brothers. And so they were coming through town

and so we knew where they were staying because the same people that booked the big concerts at Hampton Coliseum booked our little shit-ass gigs at the steak and ale. So we walked in, my drummer and I were both sort of big guys. I'm a big, bony-ass guy, but my drummer's a big, strong guy. And we walked in and found Mike McDonnell in the lobby. We went up to him and said, hey, Mike, we're the baddest motherfuckers in this town. And we're playing right over here, and you should come here. So he says, well, I will if I can.

I'm going to the movies. So sure enough, he came. We're going to movies right now. Yeah. He's like, I'm going to go. Everyone could do a Mike McDonald's oppression. No one could not do it. We've had him on the show.

We actually had him like a year to. He was doing a depression of himself. That was what happened. Well, he's a beautiful guy, as you know. He's just the sweetest person, so self-effacing, humbled. Anyway, he came and we were just raging at it. And he invited us over to the long story short, he kind of, he sort of discovered us and helped us.

and helped us meet some people in L.A. And that's what got me out to L.A. About a year and a half later, a lot of us moved to California. Did you ever end up working with Michael McDonald after that on projects or anything? No, but our claim to fame was that Mike McDonald and the Doobie Brothers were playing some PBS special and live thing,

and he was wearing a Bruce Hornsby band T-shirt. And so that was, of course, that was a huge, huge thing for us. We thought that was beautiful. We slept on his floor for 10 nights by drummer, John Molo and I. At that time, he was singing on everybody's record under the L.A. son. And so he would take our, admittedly, very mediocre demo tape around and try to turn people onto it. And that, but to no avail, again, years later, I got signed. Oh, but yeah, right. This is from moving to L.A. What year did you move to L.A.? 1980.

Yeah. Okay. Graduated 77 from UM and then two and a half years around the local scene from Virginia Beach to Richmond with Williamsburg in the middle and then moved to L.A. Well, obviously, I know what prompted the move to L.A. Oh, but you know, well, we, you got on this because you asked me about Ambrosia. Yes. Okay. So the opening act for the Dubey Brothers on that tour,

was Ambrosia. And so they came to the gig too, and we became friends with them. And when we went to L.A. later that summer, we slept on some of those guys' floors. And so they became friends with us. And then about 83, 83, 83, 84, they had made a record called Rhode Island. And it was very adventurous sort of Prague rock record because a lot of, everyone knows the hits, make a wish baby.

Yeah, biggest part of me, how much I feel. How much I feel, yeah. But really, their heart lay in the more progressive. Jaggle, go, go, gag, go, yeah, that kind of thing. They're feeling, yes, they do. And I liked that, too. So they made a record called Rhode Island, and I wasn't on it. But I wasn't doing much then.

And they said, hey, why don't you come be in a video? So now I'm outing myself again. I know what you're up to here. Because now you're making me admit to another laughable performance. on a video that is unfortunately out in the world. But, you know, what do I care? I look hilarious again. So you start off as a video extra.

I see now. Okay. I started off as a video pitiful. And so that's all I did with him. I was just in that video. The Rhode Island record didn't really do much commercially. And so they kind of broke up the band. And but right around that time, I was starting to get my own thing going.

And soon enough, I finally got my chance. So what was pounding the pavement like in Los Angeles between 1980 and 86 when you finally got your deal? What was the steps of, not the steps of heartbreak, but I mean, what was it like back then? Well, you'll have, I'll have to set the scene by remembering the pop music trend of the time, the early 80s. were just chock-a-block with new wave music. Guys in skinny ties and the kind of hair cut, buzz, whatever they had, groups like... You had a piano tie, didn't you?

Well, I didn't have any of that. I looked just like some Schmenzric who, you know, sold coffee somewhere. I mean, I just was totally not this... The pictures of me are pretty funny. Well, if I just pictures of me now are probably pretty far. but anyway, that,

so I was really, I'm trying to paint the picture that I was really a fish out of water stylistically, you know, I was wrong for the times. But then maybe I kind of caught a wave in this way. Maybe that's why I got signed.

I don't think about it much, but in 85, the pop trends tended to, we're starting to move away from, from this sort of Brit pop new wave thing. And LA had its own new wave, groups like X and the Blasters.

But it started moving into more of an Americana, Bruce Springsteen, John Belencamp, Tom Petty thing. So my music was sort of tangentially related to that stylistically. And so maybe that, but I was playing all this piano and so it was a little different

and I don't know. I'm proud to say the guy who signed me was the rhythm guitar player for the zombies back in the 60s. Just the best British man, Paul Atkinson, with that great resume. And I tell this to people all the time, as far as sort of a cautionary tale of what not to do, the least commercial tape I ever made was the one that got me signed. And the one that was the truest to my sort of artistic heart at the time.

I'm just soloing on piano, just stuff that's not done. and Paul Atkinson basically couldn't take the tape out of his car. So you're just trying to move somebody in a deep way, and that's what this tape did. It was my sort of screw you to the mainstream record business. I thought it was going to come out in some small label like Wyndham Hill or something. But you laugh. Okay. I get it.

It's kind of interesting that Paul Atkinson signed you. He's from the zombies, which was a keyboard-centric band. Yeah, Rod Arjun, exactly. Yeah, so he might have had a taste for that. An affinity for a keyboard or a dominated pop. So anyway, that's what happened. And then we met our first record. And it was a total fluke the way it is was thought to be a B-side.

There's lots of stories like this. This is not rare. Rod Stewart's Maggie Mae, for instance, one of the iconic songs. That was thought to be a B-side as well. So you're saying the way it is was kind of an afterthought like here? well was the title i titled the record that the record our first record was called the way it is but again a song about racism with two not one the two improvised piano solos is not the formula for a pop radio you know and so at all but it broke on the BBC BBC Radio one broke in

England then throughout Europe then throughout the rest of the world and then here and so I was really lucky man I broke on a song that at least for me had felt like it had a little more gravitas than the standard record that you were hearing on hit radio then. And so, yeah, I call it a wonderful accident, a great fluke. I want to ask you, before we even get to the actual crafting of the way it is, I just got to know, how did you avoid, like, 86 would have been a very tempting year patchwise for you to fall into Yamaha, DX-7itis with those like fake road sounds and whatnot. Yeah, I did.

I hated. No one as such a strong piano player. Like, how did you avoid falling into that? Because literally every other hit was just peppered with the DX7 fake Rhodes Bell sound. How did you avoid that? I thought it was the horror. I thought it was horrible. I was not, I just, I didn't want to make that sound.

And look, it's what I do. It's what I did. And so, again, I made this tape with no regard to that. That's why I said it's the least commercial attempted tape that I've ever, that I made. And so, so it was, again, it was honest and it was maybe fresh. And so it's easy to Monday morning quarterback, to me, was just a wonderful accident. Yeah, that was a record, man, the way it is. And I don't know, you know, you said it was a B-side and it was kind of a thing that kind of went off.

that was one of the first records. I remember it kind of being marketed as like a serious song, so to speak. And just as a kid, like I just remember just kind of the bookends of my elementary school education, like the way it is and we didn't start the fire. Like I remember my teacher like making us write about those songs. Oh, interesting. Wow. The way it is like, okay, so what do you think this is about? What do you think?

You know, and it just always. resonated with me. And I think even the mirrors one about, you know, the DX7, that kind of plastic keyboard kind of sound that was hot at the time, one of the things that always stuck out to me that you were actually playing a real piano. And I mean, I was, I mean, God, I was probably like seven, eight, whatever when this came. Is that right? Wow. But I remember it vividly, and that was just always one of my favorite songs and, you know, all the time, sampled and everything. I mean, it was just, I just always thought that was just a gorgeous song. How about Fast Car by Tracy Chapman? Did you like that one at that time? Yeah, Fowler.

Of course, yeah. That's beautiful. I love that too. But do you think growing up in Richmond sort of prompted you to craft the song in the way that you did? Because, again, I mean, people really weren't, especially with, I mean, barely with hip hop. I mean, hip hop really wasn't starting to get in your face for real, for real until 87, 88. right yeah so i mean to even bring up something as topical or whatnot uh do you think that's just experiences in richmond virginia or or like what prompted that well i think it's just growing up in

small town yes weensburg which is 50 miles from richmond so i've small more of a small town feeling in williamsburg and uh look it's just uh it's just based on my upbringing uh i was the only white dude on the basketball team in high school. And that was just the best experience for me. My old teammates are still my hanging pals in town here. We go out and talk shit and have a laugh and get something to eat for years now. It's just beautiful. And so I'll shout out Lawrence Jones, Keith Druitt, P.B. Martin, Alonzo Dandridge, Al Jackson.

I could keep naming them. So those are my guys. And so it was a very intense time. I came in just after integration, just after the first couple of years. But it was still sort of a fraught scene. It was definitely attention in the air. But I don't know. I embrace it.

They embraced me. My teammates embraced me. And spin ever thus. So I just wrote that song based on my upbringing in Williamsburg. I was curious to know what was it like working with Huey Lewis as a producer? I mean, we knew him as an artist, but what was he like kind of behind the boards and working in that capacity? Well, he produced three songs in the record, one of which I changed completely after the record. The original version of the record has a band version of this song, The River Rural.

I just thought it wasn't doing the song justice. So I stripped it all down and made it a keyboard vocal record. Huey is one of the great guys. And he was a big cheerleader for me, kind of like Mike McDonald had been. We were making a demo for epic records in 84. And Huey had sports at the time, which was just all everything around the world. And he called up and said, hi, this is Huey Lewis signed the range. I was hiding behind the name the range.

We were just the range then. RCA asked me to just be Bruce Hornsby, so I compromised on Bruce Hornsby and the range. But it didn't help us. We didn't get signed by Epic, but that just shows you Huey's real intense feeling for what I was doing. And as a producer,

we just had a great time to studio, and we did a song about this old horror house in the countryside in Williamsburg. He called down the road tonight. and he produced that song. He should have cut it himself. He'd have had a hit with it, I think. Yeah, I could imagine Hugh and Lewis singing about whole houses.

That's totally on brand. That totally fits. It's better than I. Yes, I think you're right. More, more, better suited. With the shock of or, you know, I don't know if it shocks you to have your first single totally come out the, out the box as a across the board. hit pressure wise what was that like to be like how did your life change as far as the results in you know of having that hit single and then suddenly being ubiquitous because

it's not like you had a hit single I mean this song is you know it's lasting yeah when you said shock I thought you were going to ask me about my shocka song my shock I didn't get there yet yeah I didn't get there we about to get there So all the plan. Every time I come to and play with you guys, your keyboard player, somebody in your band says, can we play Love Me Still? So I'll get, which I love. Yeah, I have a good story about you and that song on Fallon, but that's about nine years later.

So obviously this is a full dose of pop stardom that's smacking me in the head. And to be honest, I was pretty bad at it. mostly because when you're making, when you're having success at top 40, at least in America, oh, and absolutely in Europe. It's sometimes even sillier over there

with all the lip-syncing shows you have to be on. Top of the pops. Yeah, exactly right. You said it, Top of the pops and the like in Holland, Germany all around. So I would say I was in Cleveland because the record company

would send me there to sit at a table signing autographs. So here I am, and next to me is Tiffany, and next to me is Debbie Gibson on the other side, and then there's new kids on the block, and I'm going, man, what's wrong with this picture? It's me. So it just didn't fit.

I just, I didn't know how to handle it. I should have just taken the piss out of it, as the Brits would say, and just made it into a big joke. but then people got mad at me and I'd be drawing stupid things and signing different names I just did that everyone does that

yeah well I did that for a little while but I got tired of suffering the slings and arrows of disgruntled fans who would go oh come on man take it seriously we really like you you know and so and you go you know what I'm the dick here and so sorry you're right

you're right but basically it was, I was not a good fit for that thing. And so the second record we made was very much of a piece with the first record, stylistically. I wanted to cement this sound, which was basically a lindrum machine, piano, an OBX or Juno pad, vocals, boom. And so I did this, again, for that reason. And then I instantly started getting letters from fans, well, how dare you? change.

And I thought to myself, well, you know what, motherfucker, you haven't seen anything yet. You know, you just, just wait. And so then I started taking it out and my third record I had Wayne Shorter on the record and and Bella Fleck and oh, Charlie Hayden.

Wow, way to go. And so then the letters really started coming. But I, so I just never looked back because I never, I never, I never trusted hit radio anyway. I knew it was sort of ephemeral and not going to be around for me. Because I've, again, the hit off the second record was the song, this forementioned song Valley Road. I'm really blowing. I'm playing like McCoy Tyner, a quartal harmony in the left hand.

Seven, a gag of the gum, you know, just emphatic, demonstrative stuff. And it's on the radio. My musician friends could not believe what I was getting away with. And I didn't get away it for long, just those two times, way it's the Valley Road. And then that was it. It's kind of weird for me because, all right, so I'm slightly older than Fonte. So in my mind, though,

I think, even to this day, if I ask myself, I still consider Henley's End of the Innocence. Kind of like your fourth single. Yeah, well, it's the Lindramma

the Juno all over again. Yeah, like, I still feel like it's, it's, I never considered that a Don Henley song. To me, that's like your song and it's your... And you're not wrong. Your DNA print. Yeah, I don't want to sound like a suit, like the suit by the A&R guy, but, you know, you could have, you could have just served them up like how. You could have served at least 19 of them like hotcakes.

Like, why did you put the brakes on it? Well, you asked me, if I thought. felt pressure to come up with hits or something like that, U.S., and I didn't really answer it, but I can do it now. Because I had this big hit with a song that no one thought was anything, I really felt that no one at the record company felt they knew what a Bruce Hornsby hit was supposed to sound like. So I took that as total license to be free and write songs about interracial romances. and the girl who got pregnant on and on. So, and then I never got pressured from RCA.

They were really good to me. I think I was helped by the fact that the record company was really struggling, and I was the only artist that at the time did much for them. So they pretty much left me alone, and I ran with that like crazy. Pat Maffini started playing on my records. That was really special because he played so amazing. on my fourth and fifth records, Harbor Lights and Hot House. Man, he just turned it out.

It was so beautiful. Brantford played on those just great. So by then the record company, he's just thrown up their hands. Look, I was trying to sort of be a purist about it and just follow my musical instinct and the rest be damned. And the rest was kind of damned for me. I stopped having hits, but it was okay. Back in the 80s when the myth of winning best new artist was an actual thing.

Yes, the curse. Yeah, yeah, right. So how did you feel when your name was called? I frankly was so clueless at the time that I didn't start hearing about that curse until after we'd won it. And so how did I feel? I've thought, well, this is great. But you know, I'm a three-time winner, but I'm a 10-time loser. Just so you just set the record straight.

It's a pretty sorry batting average. Three for 13. But, yeah, how did I feel? I didn't know about it. When I've heard about it later, I thought, well, whatever happens. I'm certainly, it seems to me looking back on my career that I had this big success, and then I've been trying to rid myself of that audience ever since. Well, wait, I'll ask this question then.

Is your best new artist? Is it on the mantle? piece or is it a doorstopper? It's neither. It's down the bottom shelf of a little case that houses old scrapbooks

and the three Grammys. You know, they grew through the years. My second win was the best bluegrass record and the third win was with Brantford, the song we did for the Olympics, Barcelona, Mona back then. And I

think people just voted for us because Kenny G had won for a hundred years and they wanted somebody else to win. Wow. Bruce Hornsby problems. I love it. Exactly. Not a problem. Can you talk about working also with Bonnie Raid as well because that's your DNA I can't make you love him?

Yeah, look, she's my big sister in music. We became tight. She was a big fan of my early. records and subsequent records. And so she, I would see her at parties in L.A. After I had hits, of course, now I'm invited to these slickster parties, which was, yeah, it was fun. It was fun.

With Debbie Gibson. She's a lovely person. She sent me a fan letter one time. It was so sweet. So I'm all for Debbie Gibson. She's a talented person, too. So she's great. She's a good for you.

Oh, that's fantastic. Yeah. So, anyway, Bonnie. asked me to play on her record, I guess it was a second record she made with Don Wuss and producing.

And all of a sudden, for a little time there, I was sort of Don Watt was his boy, I played on a Seeger record, a Bob Dylan record, and a body rate record all in just a few months period when I still lived in LA, my latter days in L.A. But that

record was just one of those kismet moments. You had this fantastic song. And I give Don credit because he didn't dress it up a lot. We cut the track, just a trio. I was playing some little keyboard, Roadsie, not the AX-7, mind you, but something, some sort of rosy sound. And then they have me over.

Well, yeah, then they have you over the piano. And he told me later that he kept trying to dress it up, maybe strings, I don't know, maybe a little horned. And finally he just. He realized he took all the faders down in the mix and just put on those original four elements, drums, bass, electric piano, acoustic piano, and vocal. And it just resonated. So it was very, we might have cut two or three tracks so fast.

And look, I consider that to be Bonnie's iconic hit record, the one that will be around forever. So look, how could I not be proud of being a part of that? It was just, and she's the greatest anyway. She's, Del, she's, send me some crazy, lewd, Twitter thing today. So, you know, so we're, she's, she's a hilarious, great fan, just beautiful woman. Do you think there was something with you guys kind of understand each other because, or I guess kind of the creative kinship that you guys had? Because Bonnie was also someone that didn't really hit Pader in her career until much later,

you know what I'm saying? Even later than me. Yes, that's right. You know what I mean? Do you think that kind of played a role with you guys understand each other? Yeah, it could. I think basically we have similar musical interests. And she's one of the great singers, one of the great soulful singers. And I like soul music. I'm not one of the great soul singers, but I love it. And so, so look, I think we just connect personally.

She likes to have a laugh, and I do too. That's what about, man. But anyway, it's just, like I say, she's my big sister. That says it all to me. Behind every night spent making the kids' lunches, there's a lot of suspense. Will they finally eat the veggies? Will the pasto survive the first bite? Will the lunchbox come home empty, half full, or come home at all?

And will you finish episode eight before you're done slicing the cucumbers? Get Bell Pure Fiber Internet with Craved Netflix and Disney Plus from $94 a month. Price guaranteed for two years on internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.ca for details and to check availability. Bell, connection is everything. When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months. I survived and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart and these are the Survivor files.

Just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything. Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me. I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming. They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. but these aren't stories about what's taken from them. They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to the Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart

on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, this is Hayes Davenport. And Sean Clements. We host the podcast Hollywood Handbook on the Big Money Players Network. Our show is extremely accessible to first-time listeners. Each week, we talk to someone in show business, aka the biz, and try to help them with their careers and see what they have to offer us. Everyone has a good time and no one gets mad at their publicists for letting them do our show.

We've had a lot of great guests like Sarah Sherman, not that great. Actually, can you help me shape this? How about we flip it on his head, right? How about we flip this script? What is the surprise woman? Actually, you think is the straight man is actually the one who's acting weird. Adam Scott. This entire time, you.

You've been expecting Adam Sandler to come to visit the show. I would never expect. I have. I would never set expectations for something like that to happen. If the universe allows for something like that to happen, I'm open to it. I'm always going to accept. You know, Danny McBride, fine. Yeah.

It's all this fragile masculinity exuding. I could smell it walking down the hallway, to be honest with you. I was like, I was like, is that weed? Nope. It's fragile. masculinity. Ben Stiller, no. Because a lot of times out of context, people don't get it or even know what a circle is. You know what I mean? Like, you're like, oh, what's a state?

Everyone's so dumb. And fake. Right, fake and also not interested or just like, oh, I've got my life. I don't care about your life. And a lot of other big shots that wouldn't be where they are without us. Oh, and by the way, Will Ferrell told us personally he loves the show and he wants to be a guest on every episode, but he's just so busy. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the new podcast Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle.

I chose option B. I'm Julie Pinheiro, and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word Solita, trading. the pity for possibility. Every time I tried to be alone, I kept meeting people, and they were like, you smiled at us. Not a lot of people smile around here. It's when you're alone that you're most receptive to the world as it is, and not the lies you're sold about it.

It can be a time where you push your limits, change your mind, or wake up to a new version of yourself. So whether you're a solo travel veteran or you're too nervous to book your first trip, I hope you listen to Solita on the IHeart Radio app. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Bruce, how does your mindset change when you're going from like sidemaning Bonnie Ray to like playing your own shit? Or is it just the same approach?

Because like I can't make you love me as like a fairly simple harmonic situation at the end of the day. I change, I know. I'm sure that you did. So I almost feel like you produced it even though you didn't. I'd love to hear it before you sat down to play it. But I'm sure that's a whole other situation. But I don't know.

The chords were more standard. You know, I'm a Bill Evans fanatic. You know, I love all that. I love that French impressionism, harmony, Ravel, whatever. And so I'm always interested in maybe finding a place for that. I had to figure out a facile way to describe my style, because people are always asking me.

They always say, well, we can always tell it's you and why do you think that is. And I say, well, I think it's sort of a harmonic, aesthetic, a way of playing chords. And I call it Bill Evans v. The hymn book. because I love the movement in the left hand of him, of him music, church music, but then I love those beautiful sexy chords at Pill Evans play too.

So I don't know. That's, I don't know if I answered your question. No, that makes total sense, because even when I hear something, you play something, like I really love your take on Nola's thing for she's got to have it. And just the way you play it,

It's like, oh, my God, that shit is gorgeous, man. I love it. I got chills hearing you say that. Yeah, right. You know, that's my thing. If you're going to do that, do a cover. And in that case, Spike's dad's great original theme, Bill Lee. And I wanted to, you know, make it my own.

That's why do a cover if you're not going to try to spin it and do it and not replicate what's come before? What's the point of that? So, yeah, thanks, man. I was proud of that. and I did it pretty fast. I gave him three takes, and Spike used the right one to me.

He used the one I liked the most. And so, yeah, that's good. But since we seem to be going chronologically, then we can go back to 1995, where we were talking about Pat Methenius. Wait, just one more thing, one important part you missed. Okay.

You disbanded the group and they went to the group. and we went to the Grateful Dead. So how was that? Like, hey, guys, I'm going over here. You guys take care. Like, what was the... Well, it wasn't exactly like that.

I joined the Dead in 1990, and the range was split apart in 92. So probably by joining the Dead, played a part in that. But mostly, I wanted to move on, the first record without that band. And I always loved it when people would say, oh, I just missed the old.

old band sound. And I would say to myself, well, what you're referring to as the old band sound is me playing on along with the drum machine and with a sit bass. It's a virtual one-man show all those hits that say the range. I mean, the band was great. And just like I've said before, the range live, we'd beat the dog shit out of those records, you know, just on an impact and intensity and groove level. The guys were great. Molo, Joe Puerta, George Marinelli, on and on Pete Harris, David Mansfield. So, so it wasn't disbanded.

But, okay, so I, we got asked to open for the dead in 1987, out of the blue. And as I said before, my older brother was a big deadhead and all his hippie friends up in University of Virginia. They used to drop acid, paint their faces,

and go play intramural volleyball. Sounds like high school. I like it. Life was easier then. I think they just exalted if they ever just hit the ball, made contact, you know. So, so I had my, my training with them. So I knew a lot of dead music. And so we played a dead song, well, an old traditional song in the dead manner called I Know You Rider in our gigs. I don't know, maybe they heard about that or they were just fans of the first record. And we got a call to open for them

in, in Monterey, California. We did that twice, two days in 87, 88. They asked us again, 89, some more, 90, some more. Every year they'd asked us to play a couple of times. And then, sadly, their keyboard player, Brent Midland, died of an overdose in the summer of 1990, right after we'd played with him. And it was so strange because it was this growing relationship. Garcia had, before that, played on our third record,

played fantastically on two songs. And I'm in Seattle, and it's seven, eight in the morning. I just heard it, Garcia, that Brent died in the middle of the night. I'm walking down the street and some young guy comes up to me and says, hey, Bruce, you're going to join the dead? It was so wild. I mean, the rumor mill was already out that I was going to replace. And I told them, so yes, sure enough, they came out to a gig that we did in Concord, California,

just a few days after this, and asked me to join. Garcia and Phil Lesh came out. And I said, look, guys, if you'd have caught me four years ago before I had this thing going on, I would have said yes and lived happily ever after as your keyboard player. But I've got this thing going on pretty solidly now. But I will help you if you need me to. So they asked me to help them through the adjustment period their new keyboard player, Vince Wellnick, who didn't have a long history with the music.

He learned it pretty quickly. He cropped it fairly rapidly. And so I played with them for about two years, of 20 months, about 100 shows. And I wouldn't trade that time with them for anything. And how happy was RCA with you doing this? Look, as I said before, these execs were really nice that they allowed me major latitude, major leeway, you know. It gave me long rope with which to hang myself. On a career level, you know.

But again, it wasn't about career. I wasn't trying to build this. I was just trying to be moved by music and just. It just sounded like great fun, and it really was, I mean, where else could you play one song for an hour? Yeah, I was going to say, what was the longest show you did? Longest show is probably four, four and a half hours, but there's an asterisk. Asterisk there because there's some long-ass breaks, you know, maybe you take an hour between the first set and the second set. Sometimes. It was very loose. I couldn't believe it. They have the most amazing audience anywhere.

you know, this 2015 Fair of the Well concerts. They could have played. They had a million, over a million ticket requests. Yeah. Okay. I almost went. I had a gig that night, the one in San Francisco I wanted to go to. I'll say during this Corona break, there's some video out.

I think Lee Oscar of War sitting in with them and also Slidland Family Stone drummer, Gregor Rico. You know, all, like I'm a studio musician junkie, so I didn't realize how many, like luminaries that they pull into the fold and and how they adapt, you know, and then how they just instantly get right in. Ornett sat in with them a few times, which was always amazing. So opening for the dead, is it a little bit different than

like, have you ever met an audience that you didn't vibe with right away? Oh, like opening for the dead, how was that? Well, it could be rough because the deadheads can be fairly myopic, fairly tunnel visioned. They're really not there to hear you for me. And so, so yes. So would you do a jammy version of the way it is?

Sure, sure. But we were kind of doing that anyway. But so, yeah, it was tough. It was really tough when I would, we probably opened for them eight times or so, eight, nine times. And probably only twice did we ever really garner a crowd. and have them really be interested in what they were doing. And so when I started playing in the band,

I was self-appointed sort of psychologist for these poor opening acts who would go out there and just be roundly ignored. You know, Dwight Yolkham came out there, and he's been playing away. And, man, I mean, he's a beautiful guy. I just said to him, man, I feel you, I've been there, you know. So it can be real tough.

Now, some acts like traffic Steve Winwood or Dylan when he would play with him or Little Feet. You know, the Dead fans just really embrace certain groups. Maybe some reggae groups. If Ziggy Marley was playing, they'd probably love that sort of related musical styles, I guess. Since we're on the Dead and that they asked you to join, and I'm not trying to be funny, morbid, disrespectful here, but the three previous keyboard and piano players had died. Yeah. And I don't know if you're...

Spinal tap. Did that cross your mind? Like, back away slowly? No. No, I left the dead because I came home in the middle of one of their spring tours. They'd have the spring, the summer, and the fall tours around the U.S. I came home in the middle of the March tour in 92. My wife and I had just had our twin sons, Russell and Keith,

named for Keith Jarrett and Leon Russell. And so I came home and they didn't know me. And I went, you know what? I don't like this. I need to get off the freaking road at least most of the time for a while anyway. So that's when I went back to finish the tour. and I said, hey, guys. And Vince really had the gig, solid. He was doing a great job by then. He was doing solid the whole time, but he really seemed to be getting in the groove with it and so knowledgeable about the

music. So that was my swan song. Although I would sit in with them when they were geographically close to me, when he was really struggling in his last year, they would actually call me up and say, hey, we're in Charlotte. Would you come down here? We'll fly you down here to play because he was having such a hard time. It was so listless on stage, so low energy. And they thought I could maybe prod and give a little cattle prod and get him going. So I did that in Charlotte and then in, at RFK Stadium, two nights in D.C. And then a month and a half late, months or five weeks later, he was gone.

Damn. Yeah. I kind of had like a kind of a two-part question along those lines of just your family and your kids and everything. At this point of your career, when we first got on the show, you were saying, you're in the studio working on something.

Do you think of yourself more primarily as a player or a singer or producer? And like kind of what is the hierarchy, you know, when you sit down to create? Well, when I sit down to create, it's all about the song.

So it's all about being a songwriter. Is the songwriter first? Yeah. And what, frankly, my last two records that are receiving such great I don't know, sort of acclaim around the world.

It's amazing. It's some of the more adventurous, strange music I've ever made, and all of a sudden I'm being embraced by all these founted venues. I've been taking, I've been writing music to some Spike Leekues. And because I thought through the years, Spike hired me. I'd always do a little bit, little things for them here and there. In fact. No, man, Shadowlands.

I love that song. Well, I was just going to say, because Questlove, your first acting gig was bamboozled, right? Yes. So. And Oscar Worthy, a performance. Is that your Sheena Easton moment? It's not, no, it isn't because, you know, I knew that it was a satire. It was just the way that Spike often does these social experiments.

So I'll say that the only part that was like hard to do about that movie was the fact that he purposely will put our trailer five blocks, five city blocks away from where we were shooting. Why? Because he wanted us, he at the end, I was like, you did a school days on us. You purposely. He wanted you to feel the shame of wanting us to walk through the streets of New York. In those clothes and in blackface, like for five blocks. Wow. Yeah, and it was, yeah, like we knew that this was, you know, at the time in 2000,

I was like, yo, you know, you don't think it's ever going to get it. Now it's like we're past it, like, you know, it's more like a documentary than it. It's like, it's like idiocracy. Yes, it is. It is. Yeah, well, that sounds cold, but it sounds like it has a real person. purpose, what he made y'all do. Totally. No, it had an absolute purpose into it.

Yeah, yeah. I enjoyed it. Yeah, so what was, how did you do, was this your, or you did Clackers first, correct? Okay, my, my spike, I guess a resume goes like this. We made this video with Brantford in New York City. I drove in New York cab. Then in 95, he called and asked me if I would write an entitled song for his great movie Clockers. I think it's one of his great ones. And he has so many. And I just had, Shaka Khan had called me right around the same time and said, hey, would you write a song with me? And I said, yes, come to Virginia. Because I heard Shaka, look, I love her to death, but I heard she was famous for making a meeting at noon and showing up many hours late.

That's called being Shaka, yes. So I thought to myself, well, if I'm going to wait on her, I'm going to wait into my house. So she came, and we had the best time. We wrote this, the song, Love Me Still. And then Spike, right around the time we were writing it, he calls me and said, hey, I'd like, I'd like an entitled, I need an entitled song. What do you got? I said, well, Chuck and I are writing this song.

And we'll get, and see, okay, well, I claim it. And so that's as simple as that. Wow. Without even having heard the song, he was just like, that's it. Well, I guess I claim first writer refusal. Oh, okay, okay, got you. You know, I guess. So, wait, were you initially trying to put that on her, on another album of hers?

It was just, we're just writing a song. It was, it was, it was, she was writing the words. She was going to sing it. So, and she's done it great. She's on her greatest hits record. And then six years later, he asked me again for bamboozled. And this time, though, he wanted it to be specific to the script, to the story. I guess it's Damon Wayans character, right?

And so I basically wrote it from his point of view. And look, so that ended up being the entitled song for that. And then years, so he kept to ask me for little bits and pieces for boobies. But then in 2008, he called me and said, hey, I want you to score. I'm doing this documentary, ESPN documentary on the late great Kobe Bryant. It's called Kobe doing work, and I'd like you to score. So I think this was my audition. So that was my first one.

And that was 2008, came out in 2009, I believe. and then all the way up through last year with the she's got to have it part two, the second season, I did a bunch of stuff, probably six or seven full scores and some little incidental music. So in that time, 11 years, I wrote probably almost 240 different pieces of music.

And now and then I would think, man, this piece, this instrumental cue, it sounds like it needs to be expanded into a song. So I started doing that three years ago, and I started giving myself chills while doing this. because the cues themselves were very vibey, cinematic,

and that became my record absolute zero, and then I came follow it up with, you know, just last week came out, non-secure connection, also chock full of score of music that became songs. Yes, Scott Spike music. Yeah. And do you, you know, when you talk about your songwriting process, I was curious to know,

do you think of yourself as a singer, or is it just kind of your voice is just the, I guess the vehicle to kind of get it out. Like if someone came to you and was like, yo, I have a song I wrote for you. Is that something that you have explored before? Oh, people writing songs for me to do? Yeah, yeah, for you to sing specifically as a singer.

Yeah, no, I don't. People usually don't do that much, but I have had that. Look, if there was ever a book written about me, it should be called Slow Learner. And I feel like as a vocalist, what I do now is far exceeds what I did then. just on a soulful level, an expressive level. And so, so yeah, I'm just deep, people ask me,

well, do you have any interest in doing this and scoring films, blah, blah, blah, or doing this and that. I say, look, I'm just really trying to do what I do better and better. And I also tell them that I'm like Tom Hagan and the Godfather, who has one client as a lawyer, Don Corleone. I'm, as a film composer, I'm the same. I have one client, Spike Lee. I'm not interested in doing this for other people.

We have a special relationship. And so that's... No, y'all have a synergy, man. It definitely is. It's just, you know, when you were describing your style, kind of like the Bill Evans meets the him kind of thing. Yes. It fits his...

I mean, it fits the tone of his movies. Like, the thing you guys have. It works, man. Yeah, well, he just likes what I do. He called me up last week about something and said, look, I'm going to keep calling. because I'd like what you do. So that's not.

I love him. I'll tell you what. I'll tell you one great Spike story. Speaking of the Bill Lee, the Zobodamba Zabodam. We were recording that with Leslie Odom Jr. singing from Hamilton. Hamilton.

And he was in Harriet Tubman lately. He's had a great post-Hamilton career. Anyway, we're doing recording in Brooklyn, recording Leslie and with a great jazz group backing us up. And so I said, hey, Spike, I need a ride to my

hotel somewhere in the middle of the session. He said, yeah, no problem. We'll get it. So the obsession ends and he says, hey, it's a nice day. Let's just walk to your hotel. So we go out in the street, just the two of us. And man, it was like

walking with, I don't know. I mean, MLK. He was spikily. Well, I just, I was just, I just loved it. People are hanging out of cars, hanging out of apartment. Yo, spy, no, spy! And it was, I said to him, is it always like this? Yeah, pretty much.

But then later on, you know, spike, spike, spike. And he looks at me, he said, well, maybe today's a little more intense than usual. But it was, we had the best time. It was a beautiful November afternoon in Brooklyn. And we just walked and walked and walked. And it's one of my great Spike Lee moments is walking with him while he's just getting the love from, you know, he was just getting his king of Brooklyn.

Exactly right. It's just fantastic. So let me ask you, so with where we are now, today in Corona and the world's slowed down, I know for a lot of musicians, this is the time period in which the portals of a lot of ideas are opening up and, you know, Again, you've done blue grass work with Ricky Skaggs and, you know, jazz work and all this other things. Like, what have you, what have you been trying to cook up as of late?

Like, how have you spent the last, or as of this recording, six, seven months? Yeah, well, in early mid-March, when the quarantine shutdown era began, obviously like everyone else, I wasn't going to go anywhere. but I have this great facility, this great studio. So I just decided, okay, well, I'm going to try to take the deep dive and try to really take it to another level. So I wrote six songs in six weeks from mid-March to the end of April. Then I had to go do a few other things, some music for other records, et cetera. But I learned how to play the songs off this current new record

because now we're in the remote era. And so you have to perform in your house. And so I did that. And I was just in L.A. last week working with Tony Berg, who says hi to you, Questlove. Tony Berg has a studio in Brentwood on Kenter. And he said, you worked there with a woman named Susan Rogers. Yeah. Okay.

Wow. Yes. Prince, engineer. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. So he says hello.

Tony Berg's great, great producer. He produces, it produced Fiona Apples, so of her great records. he produces young girl Phoebe Bridgers, who's sort of all the rage in that world, very strong. So that's what I've been doing, just working on new stuff. And that's,

I'm lucky, just like I guess all of us, we get to do what we love to do for a living. And so I'm just continuing to try to be creative. At this point in my career, sometimes I'm trying to make a sound that I've never heard before. So it takes me far afield into,

again, phonic stylings. Oh, wow. There you go. Full circle. Where you were coming? You were coming up where your kids, like, were they aware that, you know, their dad was Bruce Hornsby?

Like, how did you navigate being a musician and a parent? And what was that? I think they gradually, it just, as you grew up as a kid, you sort of gradually become awake, you know, you wake up every year a little bit more. And so they, they knew about it, say when they were seven or eight, where they'd go see, we did a tour. And when they were six, Bonnie, Ray, Jackson, Brown, Sean Colvin and I and David Lindley did a tour. The boys came around on this tour and, you know, they're at Red Rocks and seeing a big crowd of 9,000 going crazy for their grizzled old cood of a dad. And so anyway, they've enjoyed it.

My boys are fans of what I do. And so that's really. Really, really nice. So, okay, before we let you go, I do have one question. So obviously, you got a long, long mileage out of the way it is via Tupac. But did you ever foresee or think

that there would be a time in which, even 20 years after Tupac, that the way it is would come back again? I know that Pologi. Polo G, wishing for a hero, man. Yeah, yeah. wish for a hero. I love it.

I really love what Polo G did. We got out of the blue in maybe February of this year. We got reached out to by his people saying, Poloji would like to fly to Virginia to ask your permission. I said, well, just send me the thing, and I heard it. And I went, man, save your job and buddy. Wait, rappers don't do that? Well.

They fly out and ask for permission and put person in, wait, that's really a thing? Well, it wasn't. case. It was in this case. So I said, hey, save your time and money. I love what you did. It's called wishing for a hero. And yes, we may work together at some point. Yeah, the odd couple.

Kind of like Spike and Bruce, another odd couple. It was cool. It works, though, man. It works. Well, look, I just, I love what Tupac did. It's a positive message. And same with Polo G. The video is beautiful.

The record has this great gospel choir coming in sort of halfway through and taking you home with it. It's, I love it. So I'm, I'm proud and grateful to these great young artists for, for their interest in my music. At least that song anyway. I always wondered if that myth is really real. Like on television of movies, you always hear this thing about like, it just takes one song to change your life. And then I think Carl Douglas, creator of what is now the under. unplayable kung fu fighting Kung fu fighting

Wow once family said that you know just that one song can you know can change your life and you don't have to work another day again

like you got this one song the fall back on put maybe I'm gonna try to get those cats was fast as lightning maybe I'm gonna try to get the lyric into my next room there you go

I'm sorry I cut you off what you say man I mean I also know that you're not in the game just to monetarily, you know, kick off of, you know, burn $100 bills with the cigar

or burn cigars with $100 bills. So I'd love to see that. Or go to the whole house with Huey Lewis. That's the movie show. Hugh is there. Maybe I'll start burning hundreds. I don't think so, though. I'll leave that to the Wolf of Wall Street guy,

you know, Decaprio and them. Yeah, that's good. Well, we thank you very much, Bruce, for being on the show today. That's been amazing. Thank you, man. And, yes, we are still, I listen to our version of Love Me Still from the Tonight Show. Well, I'm so glad you brought it up. Can I just end with my Quest Love story?

So. Yes. Yes, please. Kayaker. We're in that little, that little rehearsal room. It's tiny, right? And so you're a piano player, the bad dude. He says, hey, can we play Lovey Still?

So I say, sure. So we're playing it in the normal way. And all of a sudden, I guess you had this great idea to play it as a slow shuffle. So we said, can we try it this way? So we start playing. We're playing a little bit. And I guess, so you made the greatest sort of producer request. You said, hey, play it like you're drunk.

But which was great because. Because what I really felt was, I was, when I think you really meant, truly, you meant was, hey, man, you're a little on top. We're laying back. Always. You just need to get back with us. So I started really sitting on it. And what a feel.

The next time I came back, we had to do it again. And now my band plays Love Me Still, the Quest Love version. Thanks. Okay. Rebix. Wow. Now Questlo is going to have to cover that version before you recover and cover your version. Be my guess whatever you want.

Yeah. Thanks, man. But one of my friends. All right. Well, we got to do it. We got to do it now. Sounds great. That room was going crazy that day.

Yeah. That's probably one of our moments. That's a top 10 moment inside that room. Well, it was you and Weird Al playing accordion with us. Yes. I put that up there. Definitely. Definitely. Well, I'll take it.

I'll be lumped in with Weird Al anytime. He's a bad dude. He is a bad dude. He can go, man. You're all bad, man. This is Questlove. Thank you very much, Bruce Orangeby for joining us. And we'll see you on the next go-round of Questlove Supreme.

It's been a real pleasure. Thank you so much. No, thank you very time. Thanks for the music. Thank you, Bruce. Questlove Supreme is a production of I-Heart Radio. More podcasts from IHeartRadio, visit the IHartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. I survived nine months in captivity, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.

I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files. Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to the Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Hoda Kotbby, host of the podcast, Joy 101 with Hoda Kotbby. You know, I'm always searching for inspiration and useful tools to maximize joy. Like when my friend Henry Winkler offered advice to aspiring actors and really anybody hoping to stand out. You're not hired just to fill time and space.

You're hired to fill the space with you. Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Our hometown is not a test tube. 90 miles northeast of Nashville, a battle for the future of America plays out in one small town. Developers with right-wing ties have purchased hundreds of acres of land. We need cities on a shining hill. This is our town, a podcast about what happens when a small town, becomes the site of a social experiment and fights back.

Guess you didn't move in on a bunch of dumb hillbillies now, did you? Listen to Our Town on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you hear the new episode of The Hey Jonas Podcast? We are at D23, so we'll see who stops by. The cast of Frozen stopped by. Kristen Bell, Josh Gad, and Adina Menzel. I auditioned for Frozen. What?

For Christop. They said, okay, what are you going to be singing today? I said, I don't know. That must have been why you didn't get it. Oh, you probably one. Plus, John Stamos, Hayden Christensen from Star Wars and more. And I guess I can share that... No way.

Listen to the latest episode of Hey Jonas on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.