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Live review: Bruce Hornsby and The Noisemakers at Hill Country Conservancy benefit
Following an impassioned, unsettling, darkly humorous and inspiring speech by environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Friday night, Bruce Hornsby and The Noisemakers took the stage at ACL Live to provide a bit of musical release from the stark realities laid out by Kennedy at the Hill Country Conservancy’s Earth Day benefit.
Hornsby kicked off his set with the brooding and booming “Cyclone,” a song replete with references to the natural world that he co-wrote with Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter. Though he acknowledged his second song, “This Too Shall Pass,” had nothing to do with the environment, it did express a hopeful note while highlighting the band’s soaring harmonies and drummer Sonny Emory’s incredible ease and unbelievable rhythm on the kit.
As a nod to the Lone Star State, Hornsby brought out Shawn Colvin for a duet of “The End of the Innocence.” Though the rendition of the song he co-wrote with Texas native Don Henley came off a bit choppy and unrehearsed, like the rest of the evening, it felt honest and vulnerable, with Hornsby communicating openly with Colvin on stage, unembarrassed by a missed line here or there.
The Virginia native chatted with the audience - split between HCC donors at tables on the first floor and loud, sloshy Hornsby fanatics in the balcony - throughout the 90-minute performance, as he bounced around his catalogue displaying his versatility with slashes of colorful zydeco, flourishes of classical and straight-ahead pop phrasing. The charming pro even went to his songbook to indulge a fan’s request for “Jacob’s Ladder” —
The set was heavy with anticipation, as it seemed many in the audience wanted to hear one of their favorite Hornsby hits from the 80s or a Grateful Dead tune (Hornsby served as the legendary group’s keyboardist for a time). Late in the show, the energetic band leader pierced the bubble of expectation with a spare, Latin jazz version of “The Way It Is” and a quiet-then-soaring cover of the Dead’s underappreciated “Standing on the Moon,” a song of love that evokes images of the planet, a fitting coda for the night.
Image of Hornsby not taken from Friday’s performance.
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