Bruce Hornsby Teams With Bonnie Raitt
Bruce Hornsby debuted a new single featuring Bonnie Raitt from his April 3 album "Indigo Park." The project also includes contributions from Vampire Weekend's Ezra Koenig and the late Bob Weir, promising a blend of classic rock, roots, and indie influences. The collaboration highlights Hornsby's ability to bridge generations and genres in contemporary music.
The new song "Ecstatic" continues a long-running musical friendship between Hornsby and Raitt. Hornsby famously played the piano part on Raitt's 1991 Grammy-winning ballad "I Can't Make You Love Me," and she contributed vocals to his 1993 album, "Harbor Lights." Inspiration for "Ecstatic" came from an unexpected source: youth basketball. Hornsby developed the song around spirited chants he and his wife used to hear from other parents while attending their son's AAU basketball games in the early 2000s. The accompanying music video for "Ecstatic" extends the basketball theme, featuring members of the LSU Tigers women's basketball team. Hornsby's son, Keith, played for the LSU men's team and later joined the coaching staff as a graduate assistant. The album includes a posthumous appearance by the Grateful Dead's Bob Weir on the track "Might As Well Be Me, Florinda." Hornsby's ties to the Dead are deep; he toured with the band as a keyboardist from 1990 to 1992. Two songs on the new album were also co-written with late Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter. "Indigo Park" marks Hornsby's fifth album in six years, following a creatively fertile period that includes "Absolute Zero" (2019), "Non-Secure Connection" (2020), "'Flicted" (2022), and "Deep Sea Vents" (2024). He began writing the new record in 2024 as he was turning 70. The project's indie-leaning collaboration with Vampire Weekend's Ezra Koenig on the song "Memory Palace" is not their first. The two previously worked together on the single "Sidelines" from Hornsby's 2022 album, "'Flicted."
