The old playground Hornsby returns to his roots on ‘Big Swing Face’ album

Bruce Hornsby’s latest music incarnation represents a big swing from the piano-based melodies that have marked most of his 15 years near the forefront of the industry.

Not that the experimentation on “Big Swing Face” should come as a surprise. This veteran singer-songwriter has been nothing if not eclectic, featuring everything from bluegrass to pop, folk to soul.

And he’s never been shy about taking chances regardless of commercial consequences.

But with his eighth release for RCA Records, the motivation for a new tour that brings him to the State Theatre in Portland on Monday, Sept. 16, the 47-year-old Hornsby has truly reinvented himself musically.

Gone in this first release of new material in four years is the keyboard work that was the bedrock of such early efforts as 1986’s “The Way It Is,” which earned him a Grammy as Best New Artist.

There barely are keyboards at all, replaced by a brand of 21st century jazz-funk featuring drum loops, sampling, guitars and irreverent lyrics born on the street, including trash talk that returns Hornsby to his days as a high school athlete.

That latter element should come as no surprise, because throughout a career that has included a stint with the Grateful Dead, work as a session musician with the likes of Bob Dylan and Bonnie Raitt, co-writing hits for others (Don Henley’s Grammy-winning “The End of the Innocence” and “Jacob’s Ladder” by Huey Lewis and the News quickly come to mind), he always has maintained a link to his love of sports, particularly basketball.

One of his more unappreciated early compositions was the basketball-oriented “The Old Playground” from 1988’s “Scenes From The Southside.”

And today, among his good friends is Rick Carlisle, the former University of Maine basketball player who began developing his own piano skills while a resident of Hancock Hall on the Orono campus and who now serves as coach of the National Basketball Association’s Detroit Pistons. Hornsby’s Web site recently featured tracks from an impromptu concert he performed at Carlisle’s home that was secretly recorded by the former Boston Celtic.

“I was the only white guy on my basketball team,” said Hornsby, who moved from private school into a public high school in his native Williamsburg, Va. “I was thrust totally headlong into this rural black culture of my town, and it’s been such an influence on me all my life. I still talk … just like I learned from those guys, and a lot of [“Big Swing Face”] has to do with that.”

This rather urban departure by Hornsby does not suggest that the days of “Mandolin Rain,” “Every Little Kiss” and “The Valley Road” are gone forever.

In fact, he had planned to follow his 2001 live album, “Bring On The Noisemakers,” with a more “traditional” Hornsby effort featuring a song cycle about his twin sons, now 10. But when his A&R rep, David Bendeth, showed up to hear the new music and produce an “oddball little song” Hornsby had written, he was blown away by the quality of the music but a bit bored by Hornsby’s more-of-the-same offerings.

“So he listens to the stuff and he goes, ‘Great songs. Big … deal,'” Hornsby has said. “I go, ‘What do you mean?’ He says, ‘Well, it’s sorta like the same thing. The songs are really great. I think you’ve written some great things here. But it’s not, like, anything particularly new.’

“So he unloads this sort of vibe on me. Then we work on this other tune, and I loved what he did with it. I loved the way he made this other song sound.”

That song was “So Out,” which became the linchpin for “Big Swing Face.”

Hornsby decided to put the other album on hold – he plans to finish it in the near future – and follow this new path he acknowledges was both exciting and daunting.

“My whole approach is I just want to like it,” said Hornsby. “This is generally a very different, sort of quirkier record. Songwritingwise, I did have more fun. I didn’t drive myself crazy; I just wanted to write some funny [stuff].

“It just took me to a different place musically, which led me to a different lyrical space as well.”

It’s a feeling – and the next stage in his musical evolution – that Hornsby sums up in “Under The Sun,” one of the more critically acclaimed tracks on his new release.

“Trying this/Trying that/Changing every day/Where I’m at/Until I find my place.”

Bruce Hornsby and his band, featuring Steve Kimock, will perform at the State Theatre in Portland on Monday, Sept. 16. Special guest Leftover Salmon opens the concert at 7 p.m.