“Every Little Kiss”
Bruce Hornsby & The Range
The Way It Is
1986, RCA
This Exit: From Williamsburg, Virginia, Bruce Hornsby’s melding of rock, blues, and bluegrass traditions, accented with jazz and jam-band improvisations (Hornsby was an unofficial member of The Grateful Dead from 1990-1992, sitting in with the band at over 100 performances during that period), was coined “The Virginia Sound.” There were a handful of albums by mainstream pop-rock songwriters released in the 1980’s who were singing about small towns, agriculture, and civil rights, and 1985’s Scarecrow by John Cougar Mellencamp, 1989’s Full Moon Fever by Tom Petty, and Bruce Springsteen’s The River, Nebraska, and Born In The U.S.A. trilogy from 1980, 1982, and 1984, respectively, are certainly the “Roots-Rock” classic stand-outs. By today’s post-O Brother, Where Art Thou? standards, though, each of those records are also perhaps the closest thing that 1980’s mainstream pop came to delivering what would now be considered a classic “Americana” album. Hornsby’s debut, then—1986’s The Way It Is—should most certainly be considered another. Forgive the overall “synth-pop” production and allow his mournful vocals, masterful phrasing, and ability to tell a story by hinting at the details (“Don’t tell me she don’t love me/The money’s just a mere formality,” he sings in Down The Road Tonight) get to the heart of these wonderful songs.
