Tour a labor of love for Bacons: Brothers Kevin and Michael continue lifelong duet

BALTIMORE — The actor Kevin Bacon and his Emmy Award-winning composer brother, Michael, named one of their annual series of live musical performances “The No Food Jokes Tour.”

So, we wouldn’t dream of characterizing the duo’s four concerts next weekend at Rams Head On Stage in Annapolis as “bringing home the Bacon.”

It would be wrong to describe their quirkier, more lighthearted tunes — a blend of folk, rock, soul and country music that the brothers have termed “forosoco” — as ham on wry.

And any mention of the actor and composer as porcines of interest would be pure hogwash.

Over the phone, the brothers radiate a genial good humor.

They say they are looking forward to returning to Rams Head, where they have performed previously, looking forward to continuing the engrossing musical conversation between them that began six decades ago in a tall, skinny Philadelphia town house.

“We’ve been writing songs together since I was 8 or 9 years old,” Kevin Bacon, 64, said in an interview with The Baltimore Sun alongside his brother.

Added Michael, 73: “Kevin has been playing percussion in my band as long as I can remember.”

The brothers grew up in a home that, in Michael’s words, “valued creative expression more than anything else.”

Their father, Edwin Bacon, was an urban planner whose portrait ran on the cover of Time magazine in 1964. Their mother, Ruth, taught elementary school and was an urban activist.

“The six of us kids were a sort of self-contained family,” Michael said.

“By the time Kevin was born, my parents were kind of done with parenting. They were going to Greece and my father was writing books, so the duties of parenting fell on the older children.”

Kevin remembers that as a toddler “when my mother was in the kitchen, she would just put me down on the floor. At the bottom of the stove was a drawer that held pots and pans. She’d give me a spoon, and I’d start banging away.”

From the beginning, Kevin said, Michael was his hero, the brother who was nine years his senior and who taught him how to play the guitar. Michael fell in love with the cello when he was in grade school — a passion that continues to this day — and by the time he was in his teens, his musical gifts were obvious.

“I knew that I’d never be a great guitar player or great singer,” Kevin said. “My dream was to wake up one day and be able to play like him.”

But when Kevin was in middle school he took his first acting class and discovered his calling.

“I became an actor because I wanted to not be myself,” he said. “The first time I walked into class, we closed our eyes and pretended to be a fox. It was really freeing. Playing another role was a great release. It allowed me to walk in someone else’s shoes and take on another persona.”

One of Kevin’s earliest breakout roles was in the director Barry Levinson’s 1982 film ode to adolescence, “Diner.” The first of Levinson’s semi-autobiographical “Baltimore trilogy,” the film endeared Charm City to a nationwide audience. Though Kevin wasn’t born here, he and the film’s other young stars took on the status of Baltimore’s adopted sons.

“In some ways, songwriting is more personal than acting,” he said. “When I write a song, I take something that has actually happened to me. I can take the way I feel and I put it into a melody.”

The brothers formed their band in 1994. For nearly three decades, they have set aside time every year for about 40 tour dates in North America and Europe. They have recorded 11 albums, the most recent of which is the five-song “Erato,” which is named in honor of the Greek goddess of erotic poetry.

Michael says the Rams Head concerts will likely contain some songs from “Erato,” which was released last summer. But the brothers mostly plan to perform new material.

“We’ve written six new songs, and we want to start testing the waters with audiences,” Michael said.

One song, written by Michael, is called “The Ballad of the Brothers.”

“It’s a story of two nerdy guys from Philadelphia who drive Edsel station wagons,” he said. “In their middle age, they decide to take a tour of the country and end up at the oldest dance hall in Texas.”

The song requires the brothers to sing slow-tempo falsettos.

‘It’s really challenging,” Michael said.

The band tours are a labor of love. Both men are juggling demanding careers. In addition to his film and television credits, which include an Emmy for composing the score of the PBS documentary, “The Kennedys,” Michael’s songs have been recorded by such artists as Jerry Lee Lewis and Peter Yarrow of “Peter, Paul and Mary” fame. He also is an associate professor of music at New York’s Lehman College.

Kevin has at least two films coming out in 2023. “Space Oddity,” directed by his wife, Kyra Sedgwick, was released in March. “Leave the World Behind,” which co-stars Julia Roberts and Ethan Hawke, will be released in December.

So it’s not as if they tour because they need the money. The brothers say the band is the only time they get final say over an artistic project.

“With the band, we control the whole thing,” Michael said. “If we say ‘no,’ it’s no. If we say ‘yes,’ it’s yes. After 50 years in the music business, to have that experience is really rewarding.”