The Bacon Brothers consist of Kevin Bacon and Michael Bacon. Kevin best known as an award-winning actor with over 80 films and television credits to his name, including Footloose, A Few Good Men, The River Wild and Apollo 13, to name only a few. And his brother Michael, an accomplished composer for film and television, also known for numerous awards including 2 Golden Globes and an Emmy for his original score for ‘The Kennedy’s.’ I had a chance to talk with this musical duo about their new single “Play!” and their upcoming Shaky Ground Tour.

I asked if they can tell me about their new single and Kevin said, “I do a lot of interviews by myself and with the band. And pretty much one of the main questions I get asked is about my marriage, which is a question I’m really truly sick of. ‘How do you stay married for so long in the business and everything?’ One of the things people always frame it with us, ‘I guess you really got to work at it. It’s got to be a lot of work.’ My attitude is, it’s not about the work, it’s about play. That’s really what the song is about. It’s my answer to that question. You’ve got to play!”

Michael tells me that the writing process for him has changed a lot over the years. He says, “When we first started writing songs, my guess would be Kevin was 10 or 11 years old. He didn’t play the guitar, and he really didn’t have any musical training. So, he would sing me the lead melody and the lyrics, and I’d help him structure it into a song. Maybe we just make this diversion at the chorus and this will be the bridge, that sort of thing. Then we would demo the songs that we liked in my studio. That went well for a long time, and then we wrote a bunch of stuff together. Then, when we put the band together in 1994/95, Kevin was playing guitar well. We started doing less writing, mostly because he really didn’t need me to help him anymore. Most of the time, we’re writing separately. However, in this particular bunch of songs that we’re in the process of demoing, ‘Play’ is the first one. We did collaborate on one song. I think the main thing is to have a structure where you come up with an idea and you can’t finish it. Then it’s really good to have someone that can help you with that. Every song that I’ve written over my career since I was 15, I’ve probably written 10 snippets of songs that are written on little pieces of paper and spread all over the house.”

Kevin tells me what fans can expect from this tour is, “We have a six-piece band, my brother and then four other people. It’s a lot of instrumentation, because a lot of people play a lot of different things. We’re going everywhere from loud electric guitars, to four ukuleles on the stage, to cello and accordion and saxophone. The songs are very varied, partly because we don’t really try to stay in one kind of style. ‘Play!’ for instance, is kind of a funk song. Other things we have are more rock and roll, a little bit more folky. Also, because we have two writers in the band, we kind of switch off between a Mike or Kevin song. Whoever’s doing the lead vocal is generally the writer of that song. We try to have a good time and put on the best show we can.”

I asked Michael who are some of his musical influences growing up and he said, “A lot of world music, folk music. A lot of classical music. I started playing the cello when I was about five and later switched to the oboe when I was in high school. But also concurrently, I played all the folk instruments. I started playing banjo when I was very young. My sister, Helga, taught me how to play the guitar when I was about 9 years old. My background in music is really eclectic, and it serves me very well as a film composer. You have to be able to write for an orchestra. You have to be well-versed in historical styles, but also with popular styles. So, the kind of music that our parents just had wafting through the house on this gorgeous old hi-fi system that my father installed in our house in Philly, I just heard such amazing variety of music.” I asked Kevin the same question and he said, “I was born in 1958, so probably a lot of British Invasion. That was some of the first stuff I was listening to. Beatles and the Stones. I was a big Motown fan. I was buying 45s and listening to a little AM radio. Philadelphia had great rock and soul and pop on the stations. My brothers and sisters are all quite a bit older than me, so they were into all kinds of music, starting with the British Invasion and eventually more acid rock or 70s singer-songwriters, which I was crazy about. My brother really was one. He’s really cut from that singer-songwriter cloth, so I heard songs when he was writing and they were a big influence on me as well.”

Micheal tells me that he teaches at two colleges in the city. He says, “One’s in the Bronx and one’s in Greenwich Village. I teach film and scoring.” I said, ‘How do you separate your time for doing all that and then being in a band with your brother?’ And Michael responded, “It’s a struggle for both of us. I think we both say we will never get any of this done, but somehow we’ve been able to make all the gigs, we get the records done and mix the album, and do interviews. It’s worked out so far.”

I asked Kevin if he prefers acting or playing music and he said, “It’s not really a thing where I feel I have to choose. I love them both. Some people say, ‘Well, you must play music because you need a break from acting,’ but the truth is that I love acting. I love acting more than I ever have. To me, the acting and the playing never gets old for me. I never tire of playing music. I never tire of the time between ‘Action’ and ‘Cut,’ playing characters. It’s the other stuff that comes with it that sometimes you get weary of, but I don’t look at them as I have to choose.”

I asked if there is a favorite song that they like to perform live and Kevin said, “I would say we tend to get a little bit more into playing the new stuff, because we’re very forward-thinking and it’s fresh. It’s fun for the band and we’re getting a chance to share it with everybody. I think probably one of my favorite songs to play right now is off the last record, which is a song called ‘Tom Petty T-shirt.’ The reason that I like playing the song is that we do well as writers and as a band’s dynamics. The song is one of those songs that kind of starts in a certain place and gets big when it needs to get big. Mike’s got a solo on it as well. It’s just kind of a fun, kind of rocking ballad to play.”

Last year they released, “The Bacon Brothers” album. I asked how do they go about choosing what songs go on an album, and Michael said, “I think it’s more like, “Do we have enough songs to make an album?” It’s kind of intuition. We did a gig with G.E. Smith, who’s a well-known guitar player. We did a gig out in the Hamptons, Long Island, New York and he heard this song that Kevin had wrote and said, ‘Boy, I’d love to produce that,’ So, we said, ‘Sure, let’s do it.’ We booked the studio and he came in and produced it and it was going well. We said, ‘Can you stay around for another day? Let’s cut four more things?’ I think we got it the next day. All the sudden, we kind of went from floundering around with four, five songs to having a completed record. We’re pretty old-fashioned. I mean, I looked at recording, my career, in terms of CDs. You have 10 or 12 songs and you record them and you’re waiting for the next 10-12. I’m not sure that’s a valid business model anymore. People tell me it isn’t. We’ll release ‘Play!’ and some how get in the studio, and probably cut a couple more things and stagger that release and just let it roll out one piece at a time. Right now, we’ve got the songs, we just haven’t been able to get in the studio to record them.”

I asked Kevin what does he consider as his greatest musical accomplishment as of now and why. He says,”I’d say just hanging in with the band and have the band stick around for as long as it has. I mean, for one gig, we cobbled together as many songs as we could that we thought we could play with a four-piece, kind of an acoustic duo in ’95 or ’96. The material that we did was probably over a 20 year writing span, along with some easy covers. The fact that we end up with six more records of original material, to me is something to be proud of. Because whenever you write a song, I always feel like it’s the last one. Like, ‘Okay, that was it. I’m tapped out.’ In my humble opinion, I think the songs have gotten better. I think they’ve gotten better for both of us. I feel like that’s an accomplishment.”

And as for Michael, he tells me, “Without a doubt, the cello concerto that I just finished. One thing that is really exciting is that we’re trying to amalgamate it with a Bacon Brothers show. The concerto is something that I never thought I would be able to do when I graduated from college in music school. It wasn’t really that long ago. My senior piece was such an unmitigated disaster that I said, ‘Well, I’m just not an art composer. I’m a film scorer, a songwriter, and a pop person.’ I’m a cellist. I think everybody who’s a composer and instrumentalist, their first dream is to write a concerto for your instrument. The concerto is a really great form, because it pits a single individual against an entire orchestra. As you’re writing it, at least for in my case, I always tried to imagine what that dialogue it was. Sometimes they were at odds with each other, sometimes they were perfectly matched, and every different kind of relationship between that. It took me 10 years to write and 3 years to get a decent demo of it. I’m also integrating that into this organization called El Sistema, which a group that provides instruments for kids K-12. I’ve written a piece for them, but it’s yet to be played. The cello concerto comes on and then we do a piece at the very, very end with everybody, which could involve over 100 kids on the stage and the band and the orchestra. I think I’m most excited just because it takes the two things that I love, which is singer-songwriter and also art composer, and mushes them together into something that I think is very, very exciting for me!”

Michael says the advantages of touring with your brother is, “This is a business. We have a lot of moving parts. And if you don’t treat it like a business, it’s very difficult to succeed, because there’s got to be money coming in, there’s always money going out. And if you hae a business with someone who you trust to the ends of the earth, then that whole aspect is erased, any kind of negativity associated with that, as being brothers. We totally trust each other. We have to take care of each other and I have an enormous respect for my brother’s writing. I just think his songs are incredible. I would be his partner whether he’s my brother or not.”

The Bacon Brothers will be performing in Ocala, FL on July 28th, at the Reilly Arts Center. Tickets are still available, make sure you don’t miss out on this great show!