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\n\tBruce Hornsby<\/a> says the \u201corigin story\u201d of his new album Indigo Park<\/em> is \u201cvery clear.\u201d And interesting \u2014 especially since he wasn\u2019t even planning on making it.<\/p>\n \n\tOut today, April 3, Indigo Park<\/em> follows, and is now part of, one of the most prolific stretches of a recording career that dates back 40 years to Hornsby\u2019s triple-platinum debut (and title track signature hit) The Way It Is<\/em>. From 2019 he\u2019d released five albums in six years, including Absolute Zero,<\/em> built from unused instrumental pieces Hornsby composed during his time scoring for Spike Lee, and two collaborations with the New York chamber troupe yMusic.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI was trying not<\/em> to write songs,\u201d Hornsby tells Billboard<\/em> via Zoom from his home in his native Williamsburg, Va. \u201cI\u2019d been so feck and so fertile creatively, so I was kind of burnt with all that \u2014 not just with the writing process but burnt with the recording and producing. So I was ready for a break from it all.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tBut a new song idea \u2014 which became Indigo Park\u2019s<\/em> reflective and autobiographical title track \u2014\u00a0 interfered with that plan.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cIt just wouldn\u2019t let me go,\u201d Hornsby recalls. \u201cI kept giving it the Heisman, giving it the stiff-arm, but to no avail. After about four or five months into trying to not deal with this and having it come roaring into my head at three in the morning, four in the morning, I finally succumbed to the insistence of this idea and decided, \u2018OK, I\u2019ll take a deep dive and write this song.\u2019<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI was getting chills while I was writing it and recording it, and that\u2019s telling you something because you can\u2019t force chills. It either happens or it doesn\u2019t, but when it does happen you need to listen to that. You need to follow the chills.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAnd when Hornsby\u2019s opinion of the song was confirmed by his \u201clittle coterie of like-minded nerds and geeks whose opinions I trust\u201d \u2014 including his brother and onetime lyricist John Hornsby \u2014 \u201cit made me go, \u2018OK, motherf***er, I guess you have to write nine more.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tWith guest appearances from Bonnie Raitt<\/a>, Vampire Weekend\u2019s Ezra Koenig and Blake Mills, songwriting collaborations with Robert Hunter and one of the last recordings by Bob Weir<\/a>, Indigo Park<\/em> is among Hornsby\u2019s most ambitious and stylistically far-reaching of his 22 studio releases. That\u2019s saying something in a catalog that\u2019s played hopscotch between\u2026well, just about every genre imaginable, from pop to contemporary classical and all points in-between. And while he\u2019s at his piano throughout its 10 tracks, the album also finds Hornsby playing a Rickenbacker 12-string guitar \u2014 \u201cIt\u2019s my Bruce McGuinn\u201d record, he quips, referencing the Byrds co-founder who made the instrument famous \u2014 on six of the tunes.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI\u2019m just interested in pushing the norms and forms of the popular song and make a sound that I haven\u2019t heard before,\u201d explains Hornsby, who co-produced Indigo Park<\/em> with Tony Berg and Will Maclellan and recorded mostly at legendary Sound City in Van Nuys, CA. \u201cI know that sounds pompous, maybe, but I hope that every third song or so there\u2019s something that\u2019s hopefully gonna bend your ear and take you to a new and adventurous place where you may not have dealt with in the basically white-not universe we live in in popular music.\u201d<\/p>\n