When people tell you they remember exactly where they were when JFK was shot, they don’t often add that the room erupted in cheers and shouts of: “Hooray! Nixon can take over!” Speaking via Zoom from his home in Williamsburg, Virginia, one of the oldest towns in the US, Bruce Hornsby shrugs and says: “Well, that was my experience!” It was the day before his ninth birthday and the whoops of delight came from his classmates, all of which is recalled on an impressionistic track from his new album Indigo Park: “I was really alarmed and confused / Watching the children parroting parents’ views.”
Until now, Hornsby has rarely written autobiographical lyrics, so people don’t know all that much about him. His biggest song, The Way It Is, was a piece of social commentary, the product of a liberal upbringing in the segregated south. Hornsby’s aunt was a prominent voice in support of integration in the 1960s, when most local white communities were still battling against it.
