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On July 26th, 2004 I arrived in Toronto for an exciting triple-shot of musical entertainment that started with a solo Bruce Hornsby performance at the Glenn Gould Studio (it middled with my standard Monday night Sister Euclid show at the Orbit Room following the Hornsby concert and ended with my first-ever Prince experience the following night).
This was my only time in the venue – which I believe is somehow affiliated with the CBC – and I remember the room being fairly small and intimate, if a bit boring and rectangular (both qualities not shared by the studio’s namesake; that is, the great Glenn Gould who was of course neither boring nor rectangular). As for the evening’s featured performer, well, aside from seeing Bruce Hornsby and his band at a festival nearly a decade earlier I was still only familiar with his one big hit (The Way It Is) and his connection to the Grateful Dead (as part-time keyboard player and near-member), but those factors combined with the convenient proximity to the Prince concert was plenty enough to get my butt into one of the seats.
And the show was great. Not only is Hornsby a great singer and a superbly creative piano wizard, but his willingness to please the crowd added, well…everything to the show. Before Bruce even emerged from the wings audience members were walking up to the front and placing pieces of paper on the stage. In no time it became a pile. It turned out these were all song requests, and I further discovered that this unusual practise of stacking requests for the performer’s perusal was a common feature at Bruce Hornsby concerts.
Fortunately the fans selected well (the setlist included Wharf Rat, Let It Bleed, and a nod to the next night’s big-room headliner with a run through Little Red Corvette), and even better, Hornsby pulled off inspired versions of virtually everything he touched (which included plenty of music I didn’t recognize, that’s for sure), including his big hit, which was pretty cool to hear stripped down to just piano and vocals.
By the time he closed with the Grateful Dead’s Black Muddy River I was convinced: Bruce Hornsby is just as brilliant as I’d always suspected he was. It’s amazing that I haven’t seen him since* (aside from a trio of Dead concerts in Chicago where he was one of two keyboardists on the gig), but I plan to.
You should too.
(After the show me and my crew raced over to The Orbit Room and had our brains melted to incomprehensible goo by Sisters Euclid for a $6 cover charge. Kevin Breit and his three cohorts are so unreasonably talented; it’s simply heart imploding. If you ever, ever get the chance to see Sister Euclid then I urge you to race over to see them. Scratch that…In fact I insist that you go see them. There. You have no choice. Free will is an illusion. Oh, and you will thank me, of that I am sure.)
*I have. It slipped my mind that I saw Hornsby and his band headlining at the Ottawa Folk Festival seven years after this show. I live a blessed life.
Todd Man Out 