“A folk song; very simple old-time Americana.”
Features: Bruce Hornsby (piano, vocals); Chris Croce (bass); John Mailander (violin); yMusic: Rob Moose (violin), Alex Sopp (flute), C.J. Camarieri (trumpet), Hideaki Aomori (clarinet), Nadia Sirota (viola), Gabriel Cabezas (cello) and The Staves (background vocals).
Both yMusic and the Staves have collaborated with each other extensively, and did so at Bruce’s Funhouse Fest in 2017. Absolute Zero was the perfect chance to do so again.
Bruce says of both, “So I’m listening to this British female vocal trio and Brooklyn chamber music group, going ‘Whoa, who is this? I loved the women, the chamber music group, the whole thing. What they were doing together was adventurous, a different sound.”
“Hornsby invited yMusic and The Staves to appear at (Funhouse Fest). “That’s when I met them,” he says. “We hit it off and became friends. I asked them to play on what became Absolute Zero. We did a session with yMusic in New York. We worked on six pieces; five ended up on the record. It just went from there. yMusic’s leader Rob Moose started doing some things on his own on some new songs that I would write. Rob arranging on his own – where he puts down twenty different string parts (“Give me another one! OK, there’s that. Another track! Another track!”) – is quite something to see, working his magic in the studio.”
“Should be sung by a trio. It’s a dysfunctional family song: the first verse is sung by the father, the second verse (where I go into falsetto) is sung by the mother, and the third verse is sung by the son. It’s me playing roles.”
Originally written for the SCKBSTD play.