Talk of the Town – Bruuuce.com podcast

We kick off with an apology that we don't have the chat with Bruce online yet... both he and I have a bad cold at the moment, and it put paid to our joint podcast until late April/early May. We do have much to include in this week's show though, including songs from Charleston, SC on October 25, 2002. Additional music from Dave Rich, Keith Laws and Steve Harris. Please join our Facebook group to help spread the word, and of course Bruuuce.com - I've thrown a challenge out to members of the board! A fun show, so check it out!

I've had some terrific responses to the first episode, so here's a bonus for you. Dose is from Satatoga, CA on August 24 2001, additional music from Fieldwork and Erik Nagel/Gavin Murphy. Next up will be our sit-down with Bruce later this week, so this is your last chance to get your questions in! Head over to www.bruuuce.com.

I put out the invitation for you to suggest new ideas for Bruuuce.com, and this idea came out on top - a podcast! Serves me right. Nah, this should be a lot of fun, actually - but we'll need your help. To kick us off we'll need questions, comments, feedback, ideas, requests... we've made this as easy as we can for you, because next week's show is a corker: our guest is Bruce Hornsby. Hit me with whatever you can, and I'll get through as much as I can manage. You can submit questions via www.bruuuce.com. So this first episode is really a prelude of what's to come. We talk about the format, what to expect, and we have a few "doses" of live music from Bruce and the band at Scotsdale, AZ in April 2005. Join us, join in and we'll have the basis of a great little project! Additional music from Megan Metcalfe, Dave Rich and Noah Wilker. Send your questions, comments and feedback by either posting below, or via e-mail at www.bruuuce.com. Thanks as always, - Si.

Bruce particpated in a phone chat with me in April 2008 for almost an hour. You can hear it in two parts by clicking each audio player below. Part One: Bruce Phone Chat April 2008 - Part 1 Part Two: Bruce Phone Chat April 2008 - Part 2   Here's a transcript: “I got a great call about three weeks ago from Spike Lee”, Bruce says, in case anyone thought he’d been sitting on his hands lately. “He’s asked me to score the music for a new documentary about Kobe Bryant; it’s a day in the life of Kobe. Spike was with him from sun up to sun down. I’ll have a rough cut in early June, Spike and I will get together, figure out where the music goes, and I’ll go write it. And the band are going to play on it, so it’ll be a Noisemakers scenario – that’s what he wants. It’s the first score I’ve ever done, and it’s nice to be able to get my feet wet in this arena”. (Bruce ran over a story about negotiating with Spike “over the stall” (!!) and how John Shanks got his nickname…) “I’m working a lot at the moment – seven long weekends in a row - Wednesday through Sunday. It’s a Skaggs/Hornsby time. I think the Noisemakers are getting a little fed up as we’re booked until the middle of October! The Noisemakers are touring in August, and we have a joint date in September with Kentucky Thunder. But when we’re touring – maybe four or five days in between gigs – that’s probably when we’re going to record the music for this movie.” “We are hot on the trail of a new record – we’ve been working on sixteen songs, that are going hand-in-hand with the musical, SCKBSTD. (That’s a little more enigmatic than what it spells out!) We recorded for four days back in October, cut a bunch of tracks and then since then we’ve written several more songs, all for the musical. We’ve got eleven songs written for the musical now, and we’ve probably cut fifteen or sixteen songs total for the album." “It’ll end up being one record. It’s almost crazy to talk about ‘albums’ these days, it’s a dying form. I’m trying to keep it to twelve or thirteen songs for the ‘album’, in whatever form that will take. There are a couple of songs that everyone has liked so much that they’ve tried to shoehorn those into the musical, even though they weren’t written for that originally!" “The guys are coming here in May to record some more. A lot of the songs I’ve written with my old childhood friend Chip DeMatteo, with him writing all the lyrics on some songs. It’ll make you laugh, I think – we have such songs as “The Holy Trinity of Home Delivery” (quoted from it). “I’m just trying to write songs that interest me, and so consequently the subject matter over the years goes out of the mainstream. I’m trying to surprise people on a lyrical level. Our new song “The Black Rats of London” is about the unsung heroes of American history – the rodents and the bacterial strains that we brought over on the ships, and infected the Indians helping the English to prevail; also one and a half centuries later, infecting the red coats helping the colonists win. (Bruce quoted a couple of verses). “It’s comedic, but it’s got a point. It’s just a different take on American history. It’s so “live”; that’s going to be a big live song for us. It starts off with Sonny Emory just banging on the tom toms. To me it sounds like an old British pub-drinking song. Huey Lewis says that it sounds like an old Thin Lizzy tune!” “This record that we’re making really captures the sound of our band, more than ever. Most songs are performed by the band together playing in a room. I think the people who like our band will really hear that it feels like us playing a gig, and that’s hard to capture. I think that on at least half of these songs where we’re all just wanging away, I think it really has that sound. I think we’ll play several of them in our shows in August”. “We’ve no idea of a release date, it all depends on the development of the play,