Bruce Hornsby & The Noisemakers brought Branford Marsalis onstage Saturday at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, folding a familiar musical partner into a set built around live dates supporting Indigo Park, which arrived April 3.
Marsalis sat in on “The End of Innocence,” “Prairie Dog Town” and “Way It Is” at the Fair Grounds, where Hornsby also invited Matt Perrine on tuba and Craig Klein on trombone for “Might As Well Be Me, Florinda” and “Way It Is.” The appearance gave the crowd a reminder that Hornsby’s current tour is not just about a new record; it is also about the relationships that have kept his songs elastic for decades.
The Hornsby-Marsalis link goes back through the Grateful Dead era. Marsalis first joined the band on March 29, 1990, at Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, N.Y., where a rendition of “Eyes of the World” later surfaced on the live compilation LP Without a Net. Brent Mydland played his last Grateful Dead show on July 23, 1990, and died three days later. Hornsby came aboard with Vince Welnick in September 1990, and by Dec. 31, 1990, at the Oakland Coliseum Arena, Hornsby and Marsalis had their first on-stage meeting.
That connection deepened beyond the Dead. Marsalis appeared on Hornsby’s fourth album, Harbor Lights, playing on “Talk of the Town,” “Long Tall Cool One” and “Rainbow's Cadillac.” The two later crossed paths again in 1995 for a National Anthem performance, then reunited in 2012 for “Hell in the Bucket” at All Good Festivals.
There was one telling wrinkle in the New Orleans set: Hornsby kept the focus on songs tied to his own history, but he opened the stage to other players who know the city’s brass-band language well. Perrine and Klein, both from the New Orleans Nightcrawlers, gave the performance a local lift that matched the festival’s setting and kept the guest spots from feeling like nostalgia alone.
For Hornsby, the Saturday appearance did more than fill a festival slot. It showed that the material from Indigo Park is being played in the company of musicians who helped shape his long arc, and it answered the question hanging over the date: the new tour is not a reset. It is a continuation.