Bruce Hornsby

Bruce Hornsby played over 100 shows as a member – a “floating member,” as Jerry called him – of the Grateful Dead as well as another 15, both before and after his floating member tenure, as a guest. And for most Deadheads, those shows that he was at were some of the best of the 90s. 

Whenever he was in attendance, Bruce not only propped up the band with his playing, especially his beautiful work on the grand piano, but he also pushed Jerry to greater heights. As Bruce described it, pushing Jerry “was sort of my self-imposed job description. I wanted to jack him up because I thought that sometimes he would just stick his head down and just kind of lose or ignore everybody. Sometimes he would just get deep into his own thing and not really be a part of the band.”

Bruce certainly succeeded. For instance, check out March 23, 1995 at Charlotte. Jerry had been struggling through the , and the band asked Bruce if he could stop in for a show. Bruce provided the spark, picking Jerry up and getting him into the music again. What resulted was one of the best shows of that final year. And Bruce was able to do the same thing night in and night out when he was a regular member.

Bruce also kept everyone else on their toes. He could push Scarlet Begonias into Victim Or The Crime before leading it all back into Fire On The Mountain as he did on August 16, 1991 at Shoreline. But it was the energy and chops that he brought to the table that really backed it all up, consistently sparking the Dead, helping to break through the ennui that comes with twenty-five plus years of playing night after night together. It also certainly helped that Bruce had studied jazz at the University of Miami, giving him a leg up on the Dead’s improvisational style and allowing him to fit in at the same time he was mucking up the old routine.

If you are looking to sample more of Bruce’s contributions and hear some of his best shows, check out the start of his more formal tenure with the Dead, the Madison Square Garden run in September 1990. He missed the first night of the six-show stand because he already had a solo gig lined up. From there he was just “winging it with no rehearsal at Madison Square Garden,” as Bruce described. And Bruce absolutely nails it, bringing the band to brilliant heights throughout the remainder of the run.

Of course, Bruce was already an accomplished musician by the time he started playing with the Dead. In 1986, the title track from – with his band, The Range – his debut album, The Way It Is, topped the charts. And the album itself quickly went multi-platinum, helped Bruce take home the Grammy for best new artist, and spawned two other top-15 hits, Mandolin Rain and Every Little Kiss.

In the midst of this success, Hornsby opened for the Dead at the Laguna Seca Raceway in Monterey in March of 1987. And he took the stage with the boys for the first time a year later, at Buckeye Lake on June 25, 1988, for Sugaree and Memphis Blues. Eventually, playing five more dates before Bruce became a floating member.

But Bruce’s connections to the Dead went back earlier, to his high school days when he was a Deadhead himself. What’s more is that back then he fronted, as much as one can from behind a Fender Rhodes, his brother’s band, Bobby Hi-Test and the Octane Kids. They played fraternity parties and covered a lot of Grateful Dead, some Allman Brothers and The Band, and a smattering of other folks.

By the time Bruce joined the Dead, he had a deep knowledge of jazz, bluegrass, and rock and roll, as well as an insatiable appetite for learning more. And this was the base of his friendship with Jerry. The two would often spend entire bus rides just talking music, Jerry tutoring Bruce on traditional music and the blues. 

Bruce and Jerry had such a good friendship that Bruce, as he described, “used to phone-prank him a lot.” Bruce’s favorite such incident was when, and we’ll just let him tell the story:

I had him thinking he was live on the air on New Orleans radio with Ernie K. Doe [best known as the singer of the song “Mother-in-Law”]. He used to have this incredible radio show: ‘Ernie K. Doe, K-DOE, live over the baddest motor scooter from New Orleans! Whatcha say Crescent City?’ Anyway, Garcia and I would listen to tapes of these shows; we played the hell out of them, so I knew this schtick pretty well. Maybe two or three years ago I called up Garcia around Christmas time and I used that voice: “‘Jerry Gah-cia? Ernie K. Doe! Live! WWOZ, 90.7 on yo’ radio dial, live from New Orleans! Whatchu got to say to New Orleans, Gah-cia?’ And Garcia says, ‘Um, well, I’d like to wish everybody happy holidays …’ and I’m thinkin’, ‘Oh man, I’ve got him!’ I said, ‘Gah-cia, Grateful Dead don’t play New Orleans. When Grateful Dead gonna come to New Orleans, Gah-cia?’ And he says, ‘Well, man, I really feel bad about that. We want to come sometime …’ So I kept winding him up: I said, ‘Ernie K. Doe and the Grateful Dead gonna jam, Gah-cia! When Grateful Dead gonna play ‘Mother-In-Law’? I never heard Grateful Dead play no ‘Mother-in-Law,’ Gah-cia!’ Finally I couldn’t take it anymore: ‘Hey Garcia, it’s me — Bruce!’ He goes, ‘You weasel!’ and he cracked up.

Since Jerry’s passing, Bruce continues to play with the surviving members, touring with The Other Ones and sitting in regularly, most famously at the Fare Thee Well shows. And Bruce has continued to record and tour solo (the mid-90s trio of Harbor Lights, Hot House, and Spirit Trail is particularly good) and with his band, The Noisemakers, as well as work on other projects such as recording two bluegrass albums with Ricky Skaggs – the first inventively titled Ricky Skaggs and Bruce Hornsby – and a jazz album, Camp Meeting. Hornsby has also had a long-time collaboration with Spike Lee that has resulted in Hornsby scoring six of Spike’s films and contributing to at least as many others.