That’s just the way Bruce Hornsby is

Bruce Hornsby & The Noisemakers brought a full crowd to their feet at the Tabernacle in Oak Bluffs with a range of classic hit songs, like “That’s Just The Way It Is” and new, experimental tracks off of their new album, “Indigo Park,” which was released this June. 

The concert, on Tuesday, August 4, was part of Hornsby’s album release tour. As he jumped across the keys of a grand piano, The Noisemakers showed their skills on guitars, bass, drums, and a brief stint on the accordion and violin. The throughline of their performance was remembrance through experimentation. 

His new album is a soulful reckoning with his past and an embrace of the present, and the stories he told on stage were along that same theme. Hornsby has remained an active part of an ever-evolving music scene, and has risen with the change in his own singular way. Instead of sticking with the classic rock sound, Hornsby has intentionally and frequently experimented with new genres. 

“I piss off a lot of my old fans who want me to make the same record every year, like so many of my singer-songwriter friends do,” Hornsby said in a description of his album on his website. “I love these [artists], but they basically, stylistically, mine the same area. They’re not adventurous on a musical level at all, on a harmonic level. They’re not pushing that at all. They continue to lead a white note life.”

Instead of the “white note life” Hornsby discusses, he was all over the piano keys on Tuesday, improvising solos and standing up to play harder when the rise of the song demanded it. 

Hornsby performed some revised versions of film compositions, adding lyrics to the sweeping scores. “This is a movie cue, and we turned it into a weird a** song,” he said before launching into one of his originals. 

The crowd was also hanging on to his stories before songs, where he described casual collaborations with some of the most influential musicians in the world. Hornsby’s humor, casual curse words, and clear love for his craft all shone through his performance. 

Aside from his 23 albums with The Noisemakers and his former band, “The Range,” he’s a composer for films, mainly with director Spike Lee, who Hornsby has worked with for decades. Most recently, he scored the 2019 Netflix series “She’s Gotta Have It,” a revamp of the classic film from 1986. Hornsby is a three-time Grammy award winner, and has worked with bands like The Grateful Dead and Bon Iver. His songs have also made an appearance on Hip Hop and Rap tracks, like “Changes” by Tupac, which used the piano part from “That’s Just The Way It Is.”