Bruce Hornsby – HuffPost 8.29.14

Mike Ragogna: What advice do you have for new artists?

Bruce Hornsby: This comes from years of dutifully being nice and actually listening to aspiring musicians’ files and CDs and tapes that they’ve sent me, almost every time I say the same thing: I feel that stylistically they’re kind of generic, they’re not unique. I’m always prodding and encouraging people to take it a little out and find your own sound. Don’t take it as a compliment if somebody tells you, “Hey you sound like,” fill in the blank. You really want somebody to say to you, “You sound like nothing I’ve ever heard.” It’s really difficult to get to that point stylistically in your music where you sound totally unique, but that should be the aim, I think, to carve out your own niche in the scene.

MR: I’ve never heard it put like that before, nice.

BH: That’s just what I think. Your compliments regarding this solo concerts record fit right into this. For better or for worse you feel that this is a record that you’ve never heard before, stylistically. You, Mike, said that this is a record that nobody’s ever done. That’s the aim! My goal is to find things that inspire me and have them influence my music and take me to new places. If someone says that to me about this record that’s a high compliment and exactly what I would love to hear, to be perfectly honest with you. This is my version of this, but when I talk to someone who’s an aspiring artist I guess I would probably say, “You may not like this solo concerts record that I’ve done, but at the very least you would probably not say, “it sounds like so-and-so.” That’s what you want. That’s what I want. That’s what anyone should want.