(From left) Kevin and Michael Bacon (Photo by Jeff Fasano courtesy Devious Planet Media)
For nearly 25 years, brothers Kevin and Michael Bacon have been performing a mix of folk rock and soul as the duo The Bacon Brothers. Golden Globe-winning actor Kevin Bacon is known for his roles in television and films including “Footloose” and “Mystic River” and is currently starring in the Showtime original series “City on a Hill.” Michael Bacon is an Emmy-winning film and television composer who has written scores for productions including “Losing Chase,” PBS’s “Finding Your Roots With Henry Louis Gates Jr.” and the Matthew Bonifacio-directed “Master Maggie,” which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in April.
Playing what they call “Forosoco” (folk, rock, soul, country) music, also the title of their 1997 debut album, the brothers have nine albums under their belts and a new single, “Play!” that dropped in late June. We spoke with the brothers via three-way-conference call prior to their embarking on the Shakey Ground Tour, which stops at the Beacon Theatre in Hopewell on July 18.
Richmond magazine: The Bacon Brothers band has been making music for more than two decades; how often do you tour?
Michael Bacon: We don’t really have a big sort of outline plan that we’re following. It’s a little bit more like the band leads us around by the nose, and a lot of it depends on Kevin’s schedule, what kind of clubs and stuff want us, if we can make a tour work financially. There’s a lot of moving parts to it, so whenever there looks like there’s going to be some availability with a certain amount of lead time, then we try to put a little tour together and get out and play the new stuff.
RM: Going way back, why did you form this band?
Kevin Bacon: We started writing songs when I was a kid, and my brother was a little older and he was already a professional musician, but I was trying to follow in his footsteps and had some song ideas. And so we started writing stuff, and then when we write it, we usually demo it in some way, and we had maybe 10 songs or something like that that we had written together, and a friend of ours heard the demo and said, “You guys should come down to Philly — where we’re both from — and play a Bacon Brothers show,” and we hadn’t even thought of the name Bacon Brothers; [our friend] made the name up.
RM: Michael, you have a pretty extensive musical background; have you developed it in conjunction with The Bacon Brothers band?
Michael: Yeah, my career as a musician has always had sort of two sides. One would be the arts side, classical music, I started playing the cello when I was a very little boy, later the oboe, and then concurrently I always had a career in more popular music. I played the banjo when I was probably 9 or 10, all the guitars, the mandolins, all the folk instruments, keyboards, drums, so those two things have served me well as being a film composer, because when you’re a film composer, it’s not about what you want to write, it’s about what’s gonna fit the needs of the film. So if you have a very rich background in traditional composition and orchestration and music history you can draw on that, and if you also understand popular music then you’re not just a classical nerd kind of person and you can go back and forth between those two things.
RM: Kevin, people recognize you more as an actor, so have you had to hone your musical skills over the years?
Kevin: Oh, boy, have I ever. You know, when we first put the band together, I could play a little bit of guitar, but the only reason I picked up the guitar was really to be able to write songs, just so I had an instrument around which to write, and I never really took it all that seriously. … Mike was like, “You’re going to play guitar, and I was like, “No I’m not.” He said, “Well, you’re going to have to, because we can’t just have one guitar and a bass player, a percussionist, it’s gonna be weird.”
So, as usual, he’s had a lot of confidence in me as a musician ever since the beginning. That’s one of the great kind of gifts that I’ve gotten from him. So I started playing, and then I learned one song, and then a song would come around, and I’d say, “This is completely insurmountable. I’ll never believe I’ll be able to play this song.” And then I just worked on it [and] learned how to play. I still don’t consider myself much of a player, but I certainly have gotten better than when we first started playing. [Laughs] I hope I haven’t gotten worse in 25 years; I mean, I’ve definitely gotten a little better.
RM: Do you ever feel that the names tied to The Bacon Brothers band detract from people taking you seriously as musicians?
Kevin: Because of the acting?
RM: Yes.
Kevin: Yeah, I do I think it’s an albatross to a certain extent. I think that people keep music on a certain kind of pedestal, certainly in our culture, musicians and rock and roll artists and pop stars are like gods in a way. I think they’re gods in a way that actors really aren’t, and I think that when people see actors attempting to play music, they’re very resistant to that idea, which is good, it’s fine, I understand it. I feel the same way, I’m embarrassed to say. I’m very skeptical when I hear about another actor in a band, and I think that that’s been something that I’ve known from the very first show that I played. I never thought to myself, “Oh, they’re going to like my music because they saw me in 'Footloose,' " or something like that. That’s never been something I’ve counted on, and so what we try to do is we don’t pretend that it’s not there, but we also just don’ t focus on it that much. So we try to play the best show we can, write the best songs we can, get in the studio, and try to make [the albums] good and let people decide.
RM: Have any of your songs ever appeared in a film or television show that Kevin has starred in?
Kevin: Yeah, I did a movie called “Telling Lies in America,” and we had two songs on that soundtrack, if I remember correctly. One ... song actually we still sing. [It’s] a fairly simple but cool kind of R&B song.
RM: You also have a new single released June 27. Can you tell me about it?
Kevin: The single is a song called “Play!” that I wrote, which I would say has kind of a funk vibe, and I get the question a lot when doing press, “Well, how is it that I’ve stayed married so long given our careers and all that kind of stuff?” and it’s a question that I’m really deeply tired of. [Laughs] So the song is an answer to that, because people say, “Oh, it’s a lot of work … a marriage takes work,” and so this song is really about [how] it’s not really work, it’s play.
RM: When you’re here at the Beacon Theatre, what can people expect from your show?
Michael: Well, we have a six-piece band. I play acoustic guitar, electric guitar and cello and sing lead vocals on my songs and background vocals on Kevin’s songs, and Kevin does the same vocally, and he also plays percussion and guitar and harmonica. But the band is very versatile. We have an electric guitar player who is just a virtuoso who also plays mandolin and acoustic guitars. The keyboard player also plays saxophone, so it’s kind of all over the place. The stage looks pretty much like a music store. … With it being two writers in the band, we’re very different kind of writers, and you add the virtuosity of our players and the band and we can pretty much go [musically] wherever we want, and that’s what we do.
The Bacon Brothers perform at Hopewell’s Beacon Theatre Thursday, July 18. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. Tickets are $40 to $70. 401 N. Main St.
