Bruce Hornsby reflects on his musical journey with latest album ‘Indigo Park’ blending simplicity and complexity.

rd “lub-dub-dub-dub-dub-dub” in the middle of a melody, as Hornsby does in the middle of the ethereal “Opium in the Clouds.” Or decides to add distinctive mariachi horns to a song about gun violence, as in “Flat Out.”
“Indigo Park” manages to balance darkness and light, easily switching between the profound, the chatty, the humorous, and the nonsense. Hornsby says he’s interested in combining the Weimar Germany theatrical songs with a new genre that he calls “conscious vaudeville.”
One of the highlights on the album is his duet with James Mercer from The Shins on “My Resolve” with a classic Hornsby opening piano signature. Koenig jumps in on “Going to See the King.” Weir helps deliver the Raitt-assisted “Shit’s Crazy Out Here.” The beautiful “Prairie Dog Town” is in the latter stages of Alzheimer’s “in a new key.”
Hornsby, who along with his Range released three albums in the late ’80s and early ’90s, has since widened his musical trajectory, diving into bluegrass, jazz, and pop. He’s become mainstream via Lady Gaga, played with the Roots at Bonnaroo, and collaborated with everyone from Ornette Coleman to Tupac Shakur, Sammy Hagar, Fleetwood Mac, Ricky Skaggs, and DeYarmond Edison.
Leading a couple of Zoom listening parties ahead of this month’s release, the 68-year-old Hornsby shared behind-the-scenes details on the making of “Indigo Park,” recorded with his touring band, the Noisemakers, during protracted soundchecks over two-plus years.
Of “Entropy Here,” a pulsating, explosive track about the decay of love, Hornsby notes his brother, the late Bobby Hornsby, wrote the lyrics “a good year into a four-year Alzheimer’s death spiral.” “I’ll remember the pain I was in when I wrote this song,” Hornsby told participants during a recent private listening.
Playing tracks for friends before they are released is a cherished rite for Hornsby. “It’s like it’s not real,” Hornsby muses. “It’s just an idea to people until it’s out there. But it’s very real to me.”
Hornsby says the death of Tom Petty in 2017 weighed heavily on him and was the catalyst for “Might As Well Be Me, Florinda,” a song about their friendship. “It made me innately reflective,” Hornsby says. “A lot of these songs are driven by my brother’s Alzheimer’s or Tom Petty dying or my first time voting for a Democrat for president. These are the unresolved chord changes in my life.”