BETHLEHEM, Pa. — In the more than 30 years that actor Kevin Bacon and his screen-composer brother Michael have performed as the music act The Bacon Brothers, they've done it their way.
“I don’t think that we’ve spent a lot of time in our career together as The Bacon Brothers planning," Michael Bacon said in a recent phone call.
"It’s more what can we make at the time, when we end up having 10 or 11 songs, after we make them all sound really good, rather than I think there’s another template for bands — ‘This is what our band sounds like, and let’s put the songs through that lens and have it sound'" a certain way.
That's why the duo's newest album, "Ballad of the Brothers," continues the pair's mix of folk, rock, soul and country music.
And why the pair are on a tour of smaller venues that at 6 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 7, brings The Bacon Brothers to Zoellner Arts Center's Baker Hall, 420 E. Packer Ave., Bethlehem.
Opening the show will be Lehigh Valley-area country singer Kendal Conrad. Limited tickets, at $50-$60, remain available at the Zoellner Arts Center website.
"We’ve never done that, mostly because we’re two very different writers and singers," Michael Bacon said from his home in the Philadelphia area that also included Kevin Bacon, who was calling from New York.
"But [we] also do have a commonality that people appreciate. So to me, when I’m looking to do a new record, I want to hear everything these people can do, all over the spectrum, not just staying in one particular vein.”
Going to Nashville to write
"Ballad of the Brothers" is the 12th album for The Bacon Brothers — Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild award-winner Kevin, and Michael, an Emmy Award-winning composer.
Among the changes for the new disc was that the duo worked with Nashville songwriters.
“I think it was kind of a scheduling thing," Michael Bacon said.
"Our management is in Nashville, and they felt like we should try to come down and write with some of them.
"And my career kind of started off as a staff songwriter in Nashville, so it was relatively a comfortable thing.
"It’s a weird thing to it down in a room with people you never met before and they’ll go, ‘Well, how would you feel about this,’ and you’ll have to expose your inner feelings to somebody you don’t even really know.
“But it also is a good … it’s very time oriented, so you’re not gonna spend three days working on a song. It’s going to be more like three or four hours.
"And every time we’ve written down there ... we’ve always been able to come up with something."
The sessions produced two songs — “Take Off This Tattoo" and "Losing the Night" — that not only are on the disc, but now are in the duo's live set, he said.
Another family connection
"Take Off This Tattoo" also has the distinction of being produced by Kevin Bacon's son, Travis, 35.
“It might have been Michael’s idea," Kevin Bacon said. "He’s got a different sensibility than we do in terms of being really good at building electronic tracks and kind of vibe and stuff, and bringing dark sensibility in terms of the music."
Kevin Bacon said the song was "written as a kind of a country song — just by the nature that you’re in Nashville and you’re writing on acoustic guitars."
But "what’s country and what’s not country anymore is a whole other question," he said. "Because I think there’s a lot of stuff on the radio that doesn’t fit into the country that I usually play.
So he said he and Michael Bacon "just kind of talked him over the track and he helped create that track."
They added Brian Fitzgerald, "who’s a friend of mine who we play with sometimes, who’s a multi-instrumentalist and whose first instrument is violin, and he is an absolute slamming violin player," Kevin Bacon said.
“But he has the ability to play very much like an electric guitar. So we put violin on that and treated it as just an absolute shredder," he said, laughing.
"And the track is a little bit of a nod to country, but much more of a rock vibe.”
Of his son's producing talents, Kevin Bacon laughingly said, "I’m definitely gonna keep him. I’m keeping him.”
Old song anew
In addition to alt-rock, "Ballad of the Brothers" also includes Motown-inspired soul ("Put Your Hand Up"), fingerpicked folk ("Let That Be Enough") and more.
"Live With The Lie," a slow-dance 1950s-rock song, actually was from the duo's first album, 1997's "Forosoco" and originally was written for Kevin Bacon's movie "Telling Lies in America."
"We always joke that we’ve written so many songs that have been rejected by movies," he said. "They were looking at songs that were for the band in the movie to play. The movie was about radio DJs in the early ‘50s.
“And so the song was written with the point of view of trying to write a song that we do early ‘50s R&B … very specifically written to sound like that.
"And we put it on the first record, and then many, many years later, I guess, into the [live] set and just gave it like a new point of view — just changed it up a little bit."
While putting together the new disc, the brothers "decided to try it live — just play it very old school, just standing around, see what we came up with" — and recorded it in New Jersey with their touring band.
“And I think we’re all proud of that, ‘cause it sounds real good, and we love playing it live," Kevin Bacon said. "Nice and fun and just a lot of fun to play.”
Music career 'luxury'
There's also a song on the disc, "Old Bronco," an acoustic country-pop diddy that addresses aging — appropriate, since Kevin Bacon now is 67 and Michael Bacon is 75.
And The Bacon Brothers now have been playing together “thirty-one (years) is what they tell us," Michael Bacon said.
"You know, it’s just part of reality," he said. "I suppose if your readers are seeing this and they go, ‘Wow, he’s in a band for 31 years. That must be some extra special amazing thing.
“But I think it’s more just the passage of both of our lives. I’ve been a professional musician since 1969, and the band kind of just goes along."
And that's precisely because The Bacon Brothers is able to do things its own way, he said.
"There’s a real luxury in that," he said. "In our other careers, speaking of myself, as a film composer, I’m part of a team of people that is gathered together to make whatever the visuals are a work of art.
“But my actual job is not art, it’s craft. And if the director said, ‘I don’t like that cue,’ I don’t say, ‘I don’t care if you like it or not,’" he said with a laugh. "No, I say, ‘Let’s redo it as many times as it needs to be.’
“But the band, we don’t have a person like that. Like our management, who are the greatest ever out of Nashville, they stay out of that.
"They don’t say, ‘This is what you gotta do’ and they take what we do naturally and they expose it in any way they can, but way short of saying, ‘This is what you should do.’"
Six degrees
Kevin Bacon, too, has another career — more than 70 feature films, starting with "National Lampoon's Animal House" in 1978, and including such notable movies as "JFK," "A Few Good Men" "Apollo 13" and "Mystic River."
Bacon has had so many, and so many notable, roles that a parlor game, "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon," has players connect Bacon to other famous people.
Bacon has embraced the joke, and in 2007 even started his own charitable organization, Sixdegrees.org, that "highlights non-profits across the country that are doing great work in the charitable space," he said.
"All kinds of things having to do with children and the environment and social justice and kind of a broad spectrum of charities, and we support them," Kevin Bacon said.
“As an actor, we have a lot of programs you can check out if you go to the site. The Bacon Brothers often will have [events] to benefit sixdegrees. It’s just something that I’ve had for a long time.”
The price of each ticket to the Zoellner Arts Center show includes $1 for Sixdegrees.org.
Continuing career
Bacon's other career also is continuing swimmingly.
A new movie, "The Toxic Avenger" — a remake of The Avengers franchise — came out last week, and he said he's now editing a film he co-directed with his wife, actress Kyra Sedgwick, called "Family Movie."
According to reports, the couple will be joined in the horror-comedy by Travis Bacon and their daughter, Sosie Bacon, 32.
He also recently won accolades for the Netflix series "Sirens." Asked whether there will be a second season, Kevin Bacon said the series' star, actress Milly Alcock, is in the movie “Supergirl,” scheduled for June 2026 release.
"So being Supergirl might take some of her time" he said with a laugh. "So I don’t know the answer.
"You know, I haven’t heard anything about another season [but] so many people have asked me about that. So, obviously, if there’s so many people asking me, chances are there’ll probably be a demand."
Kevin Bacon even was the subject of a viral TikTok posting recently, showing him and Sedgwick taking part in the "Footloose" challenge — named after his 1984 hit movie.
“I sometimes play around on social media," he said. "That particular one actually goes back to The Bacon Brothers, ‘cause we were on the road and someone dropped a gift off for Kyra.
"And when I opened it up, it was leggings with a bunch of pictures of me on them in ‘Footloose’ — with me kissing [actress] Lori Singer, I might add," he said, laughing.
“And I thought it was kind of a funny idea that my wife would like to walk around wearing leggings with me kissing Lori Singer.
"But anyway, I gave them to her and she was, like, ‘Oh my God, these are amazing!’ And it seemed like a natural fit.”
