Bruce Hornsby

Bruce Hornsby

From Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond by Pushkin Industries

May 5, 2026 · 56 min · Season 6 · Episode 207

About this episode

Bruce Hornsby discusses his musical journey and influences with host Bruce Headlam.

The magic of Bruce Hornsby isn't just that he's one of American music's great piano stylists — or that he wrote one of the most unlikely pop hits of the 1980s, a song about racism with two improvised solos that nobody at his label thought should be the single. It's how relentlessly he's kept moving, long after he had any commercial reason to. Hornsby grew up in Williamsburg, Virginia, and got discovered playing a steak and ale joint across from the Hampton Coliseum by Mike McDonald. He scored his first big hit in 1986 with "The Way It Is. What followed was a long, restless second act: teaching himself two-handed independence by scheduling benefit concerts just to give himself a hard deadline, making jazz records with Jack DeJohnette and Christian McBride, bluegrass records with Ricky Skaggs, and going deep into Shostakovich fugues that now shape everything he writes. On today’s episode Bruce Headlam sat down with Bruce Hornsby at the piano to talk about all of it. But they started somewhere unexpected: a steak and ale restaurant in Hampton, Virginia, in the fall of 1978. You can hear a playlist of some of our favorite songs from Bruce Hornsby HERE . Time-coded…

People in this episode

Host: Bruce Headlam

Guest: Bruce Hornsby

Topics covered

  • Bruce Hornsby
  • musical influences
  • improvisation
  • collaborations
  • musical growth
  • jazz
  • bluegrass

Keywords

  • Bruce Hornsby
  • The Way It Is
  • improvisation
  • jazz
  • bluegrass
  • musical influences
  • collaborations
  • musical growth

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: The Way It Is

Places: Williamsburg, Virginia, Hampton Coliseum

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