"The Way It Is" (live, 10/3/09)
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"Night Of Liberated Pop"
Published in Berkshire Eagle (10/8/09)

Bruce Hornsby at the Mahaiwe. Photo: Stephen G. Donaldson Photography
By Jeremy D. Goodwin
GREAT BARRINGTON—Deep into a radically successful re-invention of his biggest hit Tuesday night at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, Bruce Hornsby found something new.
It was several minutes after he’d blown past the first verse and a couple choruses of “The Way It Is,” a song so indelibly stamped into Hornsby’s public identity that headline writers still can’t resist the urge to employ the turn of phrase atop stories about him, some 23 years after the song was the biggest radio hit of the year.
Hornsby and his ever-tight, five-piece band locked into a theme based on the outlines of the song’s chorus. They rode it through several passes before isolating a few guidepost notes, further breaking down the song into a series of syncopated bursts of sound. At Hornsby’s cue, the band kicked back into an uproarious restatement of the end of the chorus, all thundering drums and soaring guitar.
It wasn’t a unique moment in the annals of live Hornsby—in fact, it followed the pattern of other recent live performances of this song. But it felt entirely vital, and the obvious joy on the bandleader’s face—as he rarely broke eye contact with his rhythm section of drummer Sonny Emory and bassist JV Collier, and occasionally stood up at the piano mid-phrase as if to emphasize a musical point—made it clear there was no show biz sleight of hand at play here. Just a musician taking a song that could have been as stale and clichéd as a 1980’s haircut, and finding a way to make it fresh.
“This is not a stroll down memory lane. We placate the soft-cores and we play these songs,” he quipped after, with a wee dose of self-congratulation, “but we hope they still recognize them.”
GREAT BARRINGTON—Deep into a radically successful re-invention of his biggest hit Tuesday night at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, Bruce Hornsby found something new.
It was several minutes after he’d blown past the first verse and a couple choruses of “The Way It Is,” a song so indelibly stamped into Hornsby’s public identity that headline writers still can’t resist the urge to employ the turn of phrase atop stories about him, some 23 years after the song was the biggest radio hit of the year.
Hornsby and his ever-tight, five-piece band locked into a theme based on the outlines of the song’s chorus. They rode it through several passes before isolating a few guidepost notes, further breaking down the song into a series of syncopated bursts of sound. At Hornsby’s cue, the band kicked back into an uproarious restatement of the end of the chorus, all thundering drums and soaring guitar.
It wasn’t a unique moment in the annals of live Hornsby—in fact, it followed the pattern of other recent live performances of this song. But it felt entirely vital, and the obvious joy on the bandleader’s face—as he rarely broke eye contact with his rhythm section of drummer Sonny Emory and bassist JV Collier, and occasionally stood up at the piano mid-phrase as if to emphasize a musical point—made it clear there was no show biz sleight of hand at play here. Just a musician taking a song that could have been as stale and clichéd as a 1980’s haircut, and finding a way to make it fresh.
“This is not a stroll down memory lane. We placate the soft-cores and we play these songs,” he quipped after, with a wee dose of self-congratulation, “but we hope they still recognize them.”

Bruce Hornsby at the Mahaiwe. Photo: Stephen G. Donaldson Photography
The moment came near the end of Hornsby and The Noisemakers’ two-hour set. The show was loose but controlled, jazzy but rocking, obscure but familiar.
Hornsby’s piano playing was the clear centerpiece throughout, whether in an absolutely gorgeous solo delivery of “Harbor Lights,” an encore take on the new, fuzz-guitar-laden rocker “Space Is The Place,” or deep amidst a series of jammy showcases.
He left plenty of room in the arrangements for excursions up and down the keyboard of his grand piano, with his band by turns laying back to make room for him and then swooping back in, to punctuate an open-feeling jam by tying everything up with a neat musical bow.
A luxurious, expansive take on “The End of The Innocence,” the collaboration with Don Henley that stands as Hornsby’s other greatest radio triumph, wandered into an apparently spontaneous reprise of “Here We Are Again,” a delicate song (from the recently released record “Levitate”) performed earlier in the evening. A big and bright strut through “Look Out Any Window” dallied with a short jam on the Rolling Stones’ “Tumbling Dice.” “Gonna Be Some Changes Made” evolved into a delightfully chaotic outro duet, with Hornsby’s increasingly dissonant note clusters matched by Emory’s quick-wristed jazz fills.
In each of these songs, the musical tension was resolved by a friendly return to the big chorus. After a few variations on this theme, it felt a bit formulaic. But that’s a quibble, really. Though Hornsby played with the godfathers of rock improvisation over one hundred times, this wasn’t a Grateful Dead concert. It was a night of liberated pop—loose enough to feel spontaneous, but sufficiently contained so as to skirt any real sense of danger.
Hornsby led his band and his audience down no blind allies; the musical destination was never entirely obscured from view. But along the way, every contour of the ride felt fresh. And that’s a feat that never gets old.
__________________________________________
Hornsby’s piano playing was the clear centerpiece throughout, whether in an absolutely gorgeous solo delivery of “Harbor Lights,” an encore take on the new, fuzz-guitar-laden rocker “Space Is The Place,” or deep amidst a series of jammy showcases.
He left plenty of room in the arrangements for excursions up and down the keyboard of his grand piano, with his band by turns laying back to make room for him and then swooping back in, to punctuate an open-feeling jam by tying everything up with a neat musical bow.
A luxurious, expansive take on “The End of The Innocence,” the collaboration with Don Henley that stands as Hornsby’s other greatest radio triumph, wandered into an apparently spontaneous reprise of “Here We Are Again,” a delicate song (from the recently released record “Levitate”) performed earlier in the evening. A big and bright strut through “Look Out Any Window” dallied with a short jam on the Rolling Stones’ “Tumbling Dice.” “Gonna Be Some Changes Made” evolved into a delightfully chaotic outro duet, with Hornsby’s increasingly dissonant note clusters matched by Emory’s quick-wristed jazz fills.
In each of these songs, the musical tension was resolved by a friendly return to the big chorus. After a few variations on this theme, it felt a bit formulaic. But that’s a quibble, really. Though Hornsby played with the godfathers of rock improvisation over one hundred times, this wasn’t a Grateful Dead concert. It was a night of liberated pop—loose enough to feel spontaneous, but sufficiently contained so as to skirt any real sense of danger.
Hornsby led his band and his audience down no blind allies; the musical destination was never entirely obscured from view. But along the way, every contour of the ride felt fresh. And that’s a feat that never gets old.
__________________________________________