Catching Up With... The Bacon Brothers

Actor/musician Kevin Bacon and his brother, film-and-TV composer Michael Bacon, have been playing music as The Bacon Brothers for 14 years. Together, they’ve released a half-dozen polished, eclectic albums quoting everything from country, folk, blues and rock to reggae, swing and soul—particularly, the soul of the town where they grew up, Philadelphia.  

Paste recently had a chance to catch up with both Bacon Brothers, whose latest album, New Year’s Day, is now on shelves. 

Paste: How does being brothers affect your musical communication when you’re jamming or writing or performing? Do you think it makes a difference that you’re brothers? 

Kevin Bacon: Well, I think that—even though we have different singing styles and different voices—there’s a nice blend when it comes time to harmonize. I think that you take that as a metaphor for the rest of it. We have very, very different opinions about a lot of stuff, and when you bring those two opinions together there’s something underlying that’s similar, and that creates the blend.

Paste: Do you ever go back and listen to other brother groups like The Louvins—people who have that close singing bond? 

Michael Bacon: I listen to the Everly Brothers a lot. I think they’re the ultimate blend of voices. 

Paste: You have a new album out, your sixth, called New Year’s Day. Tell me about the sessions for this one and the significance of the title. 

KB: “New Year’s Day” is a song on the record, and New Year’s Eve is, in some ways, a tough night because everyone tries to make it the best night of the year.  

Paste: Always a let down because of the build-up? 

KB: Always a let down. New Year’s day, on the other hand, can be a day of being hopeful, moving forward—picking up the pieces of your broken head. I guess, in a way, that’s a little thematic in the record. When times gets tough, you have to hope for New Year’s Day around the corner, and you can almost forget the year that went by and start trying to plow ahead.  

Paste: That title track sounds like it could be an autobiographical tune. Do you think—given that your profession is acting—that when you get to the band and writing songs, do you not want to inhabit characters as much? Do you want to be more open and confessional, to talk about yourself more? 

KB: Yes. I think that’s true. There is definitely an element to songwriting, especially for us, that’s confessional. We don’t tend to pick a title and then try to write a song around it. I think that’s kind of a different style.  

MB: Well, we used to do that a lot, and we weren’t very good at it.  

KB: Every once in a while we still give it a shot, but it doesn’t always work out that well. But “New Year’s Day” is not a hundred percent autobiographical in that my parents weren’t Mummers, or my father wasn’t a Mummer—back in my father’s day there were no female Mummers, or I guess maybe there still aren’t.  

MB: There are, by the way. 

KB: Oh, there are. But, yeah, there is something about "you can take the kid out of Philly but you can’t take Philly out of the kid." 

Paste: On the new record, there’s a soul vibe—probably coming from your Philly roots. There’s even kind of a reggae thing going on in places, but it’s all underpinned by this rootsy element—Michael plays mandolin on some songs. What do you think it says about the group that you’re synthesizing all of these disparate influences? 

MB: If we have a philosophy for the group, we pride ourselves on being songwriters first. I think a lot of groups would get together with a certain sound in mind, but we never did that. We started out with two acoustic guitars, electric bass and a percussionist, and we tried to play rock ’n’ roll within that format, which is really a folk-music format. Always, though, we let the songs say what the arrangement is gonna be. For instance, you mention that reggae thing. Kevin wrote that while on vacation down in the Caribbean, and it just worked with an islandy kind of feel. When you’re in a band, it’s fun to play different kinds of music. The guys [in the band] know a lot about all different forms. You know, a song like—the rock song, Kev, what’s the real hard rock song on the record? 

KB: “Wildlife.” 

MB: Yeah, “Wildlife. There’s a song that is pretty edgy rock ’n’ roll, and it’s loud and it’s all electric guitars. You could take any of those songs any way, but we let [the songs] decide how we’re going to go after them. 

Paste: You’ve been playing with a lot of the same guys, if not entirely the same guys, since you started the band 14 years ago. Tell me a bit about the other members of the band who aren’t here with us today. What do they bring to the project and what kind of relationship do you have with them? Are you guys pretty close? 

MB: I’ve known most of these guys for almost 25 years. When I first moved to New York, they were kind of the young rhythm-section guys who were on their way up. People were really drawn to them because they weren’t your traditional studio guys; they were a little edgier. When we put the first band together, I went with two of those guys who I’d known for years. They were actually the backup band for Tom Rush. As the band grew, the drummer, Frank Vilardi, he was on the first session I ever did in my film-scoring career in New York. The keyboard player I’d used in sessions for years. The electric guitar player I’ve known about for years. So they’re the guys that were available and wanted to spend some time on the road, and wanted to be part of a creative process where they’d be given a lot of freedom, and a lot of responsibility. On this last record, they produced a lot of the songs—we farmed out a couple to each guy. What’s great about them is that they bring an enormous amount of experience to the table—they’ve been around for a long time. They’re incredibly versatile, they’re very, very fast. We can teach them a song at sound check and play it that night without a single problem. If there’s a problem, it’s going to be with Kevin and I, not with them. So I think we’re really lucky, and we get along pretty well. It’s a family and we travel together and live together for long periods of time, and there are always issues, but we don’t treat them like hired hands; we treat them like they’re all part of the band.  

Paste: Kevin, we talked earlier about writing more personally, but you also have some songs like “Go My Way.” The song has this working-class protagonist. Do you also enjoy writing characters, since you’re an actor? Do you think that helps? 

KB: Yeah, every once in a while it’s fun to write through someone else’s perspective and think of it as a character exercise. That’s definitely something I do every once in a while. I find a real strong connection to performing songs, in the same way that I approach playing a character. In other words, if I forget what a song is about, then I’ll stop performing it well. I have to remind myself, emotionally, what the connection was and what brought me to writing it. But again, “Go My Way”—my theory about acting is that you use yourself and then you lose yourself. You try to use as much of who you are in creating the character, and then you try to lose yourself in that person’s shoes, so that in the time between action and cut you don’t feel like Kevin, you feel like somebody else. So “Go My Way,” while it’s not my life right now, it’s very much what my life was like when I first moved to New York in ’77. I’m sort of channeling who that kid was and what that world was like to me. There were no iPods back then. You know, so it’s different—it’s not me, but there are certainly parts of  myself that I used for that. 

Paste: So while not autobiographical, it’s still drawing from personal experience? 

KB: Absolutely, yeah. 

Paste: Michael, since you spend so much time composing, how is it different for you to get out there in a rock and soul band and bring it down to more of a populist level? 

MB: It’s a completely different experience. My work as a composer is kind of solitary. Whoever I’m working with or collaborating with, they’re working for me; I’m paying them. I’ll do an orchestra session and as soon as the take is over, half of them are reading books or going to catch a smoke. It’s just a different dynamic. In a lot of ways, there’s a lot more pressure because it all has to come from me. There are a lot more deadlines. With the band, if we don’t get something mixed or whatever, we can float for a little bit, but when I go out on the road it’s a much more intuitive kind of thing. All of the training, all of the years I’ve spent studying and getting my craft in order really goes out the window, doesn’t make any difference. Many of the really successful musicians—rock musicians, pop musicians, folk musicians—I’ve worked with can’t even read music. And to me, that’s a nice thing to be a part of because I really believe you don’t have to be trained in music to be a great musician. My brother is a really good example of that. The whole rock ’n’ roll thing is something I gave up 25 years ago when I had a kid, because it didn’t seem feasible that being a confessional songwriter during the disco era was really going to put any money on the table. So when we put the band together, it was kind of like, “Wow it’s back again.” I just never thought I’d ever get back to it. I credit the Rolling Stones with being a model of the fact that you can play rock ’n’ roll for a long time in your life. When I first started playing rock ’n’ roll, it was, “30 years old, forget it.” There was nobody over 30. You were dead if you were over 30. I feel really lucky that the world has changed and adapted to make it possible for me to do both of these things.  

Paste: You were even playing back in the ’60s, right? 

MB: My first record was on Columbia. I think we signed in 1968, 1969 or something like that, and I’ve been doing this ever since.  

Paste: What was the group back then; what was the sound? 

MB: It was called Good News, and it was this crazy ’60s anomaly. It was an old friend of mine who had been in a lot of rock bands in Philly and myself, and in the background there was this guru, who was basically trying to take over the world with his religious teachings. So we were his oracle—he wrote all of the lyrics. I didn’t know what the hell we were talking about, and he was very controlling. You had to do these lyrics and you couldn’t change any words, or you had to go beg permission to change anything, and it was a really bizarre thing. [The band] ended up blowing up, because the guy, I really didn’t have that much respect for him. 

Paste: That’s wild, man. 

MB: Yeah, that’s the ’60s. 

Paste: Kevin, during this period, what was it like for you? Did you ever go see your brother play? What was it like for you to see him up there on stage—did that influence you in any way? 

KB: Yeah, it was great. My earliest memories were of sitting on the steps to our little basement in Philly, and Mike was down there with his jug band—he had a washboard and someone playing washtub bass, and blowing in a jug, and I guess Mike was playing—what, banjo? 

MB: Banjo, guitar, singing, instruments we invented. All sorts of stuff. 

KB: I was probably about 3 and Mike was 10 or 11. Then later on, when I was a little older, he was playing in coffeehouses, playing with Good News. And I would sit out there and just be in awe—you know, jealous and envious of what  that experience must be like, to hold an audience in the palm of your hand and to be able to share music with them. Performance in general was something that I was very, very drawn to, whether it was music or theater or whatever. I’m a born performer. Before I even knew what an actor or a musician was, my earliest memories were of walking into a room and wanting people to look at me. So to see Mike accomplishing that was obviously very influential. 

Paste: Being people who, essentially, do their art—film acting and composing—more or less isolated, what’s it like for you to be out there and see that direct, real-time response to the music you’re making? 

MB: What you do live is what you’re always trying to get in the studio. Because when you’re really hitting on all eight cylinders, and you look around at the guys and everybody’s just happy and feeling really good and the audience likes it—I mean, that’s what you’re always trying to get. It’s an illusion you try to create once you’re in the studio, because you’re not [there with an audience], you’re working very separately and basically alone. But I think live is always the standard, at least for this band, of what we’re trying to get to.