The Desperate Confession of Springsteen’s Nebraska

I’ve always been interested in the phrasing Bruce Springsteen used during his writing explosion that produced his critical masterpiece Nebraska and the majority of his stratospherically popular Born in the U.S.A. record. The former will garner the attention of this blog.

The opening lines of the opening song (Title Track, Nebraska) lay the foundation for the underpinning confessional tone:

I saw her standin' on her front lawn just twirlin' her baton
Me and her went for a ride sir and ten innocent people died.

The title track is a narrative on the Charlie Starkweather / Caril Ann Fugate spree killing that took place during the late 50’s. Much of the imagery for the song is from the Terrance Malick film, Badlands, which is a fictional story inspired by the events.

What I find interesting and what perpetuates the unique confessional identity of this album is hidden right there in this opening stanza. It is the use of the word sir. By placing a singular person, a confessor, in the line it is not simply a story being told but a narrative of confession. A simple and powerful tool used with great purpose and effect by Springsteen.

As a listener the change is evident, the narrator of the story isn’t talking to the listener but instead the listener is given a third party pass to a personal confession changing the effect of the song entirely. The listener is now an eavesdropper on something sacred, freeing the listener from the need to respond, he/she only needs to tune in unfiltered.

This confessional device shows up time and time again. For this opening song the confessor is identified as a sheriff, maybe the one responsible for bringing Starkweather in, or the one set to preside over his execution. In this case the confessor is one of social authority, not spiritual.

The song ends in this same manner.

They declared me unfit to live said into that great void my soul'd be hurled
They wanted to know why I did what I did
Well sir I guess there's just a meanness in this world.

The last line is taken from Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” and there is that word sir slipped in again, infecting the narrative with the direct personal experience of the confessed. Stark and beautiful.

On the heels of Starkweather’s rampage Springsteen sets us on a course for the casino driven underside of Atlantic City. A story of a man who has struggled to do things the “right way” who has “got a job and put his money away” but who has “debts no honest man can pay.” This man’s confessor is a common one, a woman or more to the point the woman in his life. His confession blurs the line between right and wrong, Atlantic City is an absolute pillar of the Springsteen catalog.

The opening two stanzas set the tone of the environment this man and woman find themselves in.

Well they blew up the chicken man in Philly last night now they blew up his house too.

Gonna be a rumble out on the promenade and the gamblin' commission's hangin' on by the skin of its teeth.

The chorus of the song jumps in and propels this opening setting head long to the core of the confessional belief.

Well now everything dies baby that's a fact
But maybe everything that dies someday comes back
Put your makeup on fix your hair up pretty
And meet me tonight in Atlantic City

Desperation is often the motivation of confession, this man is backed up to the wall and then some, he had a hard decision to make, he wants his confessor, this woman to understand.

“Now I been lookin' for a job but it's hard to find
Down here it's just winners and losers and don't get caught on the wrong side of that line
Well I'm tired of comin' out on the losin' end
So honey last night I met this guy and I'm gonna do a little favor for him”

The listener doesn’t know the fate of the man and his favor or if the woman will follow. This scenario seems to have no good ending only varying degrees of tragedy.

As the curtain is closed on the Jersey Shore Casino we are taken to a hillside on the edge of town for Mansion on the Hill. Once again the confessor device asserts itself in the opening line.

There's a place out on the edge of town sir

Here there is a sin to be confessed, the wanting for what another possesses, envy. A have not reminiscing about his memories of a symbol of have. Also there is an assertion that this was fate; that his place was meant to be on the other side of the iron gates.

At night my daddy'd take me and we'd ride through the streets of a town so silent and still
Park on a back road along the highway side
Look up at that mansion on the hill

I’ve always tried to interpret who the sir is in Mansion on the Hill. I like to think of this character being interviewed about his retirement from the mill mentioned in the song by a young reporter from the small town newspaper. He is asked the standard questions but veers off to talk about evenings spent in the presence of the mansion on the hill.

In the summer all the lights would shine there'd be music playin' people laughin' all the time
Me and my sister we'd hide out in the tall corn fields
Sit and listen to the mansion on the hill

If your confessor is your judge then one better be ready to plead their case. And so it is for the man from track #4 Johnny 99.

Johnny lost his job to no fault of his own, couldn’t find work. Hits the bottle, gets crazy, kills a night clerk. Guilty before proven innocent. We find his confessor to be the Judge Mean John Brown. He’s gonna give Johnny prison for 98 and a year he has one question for poor Johnny:

Well son you got a statement you'd like to make
Before the bailiff comes to forever take you away

Confession time:

Now judge judge I had debts no honest man could pay
The bank was holdin' my mortgage and they was takin' my house away
Now I ain't sayin' that makes me an innocent man
But it was more 'n all this that put that gun in my hand

Well your honor I do believe I'd be better off dead
And if you can take a man's life for the thoughts that's in his head
Then won't you sit back in that chair and think it over judge one more time
And let 'em shave off my hair and put me on that execution line

“And if you can take a man's life for the thoughts that's in his head” this type of confession can rattle the rafters and demolish the foundation. As the eavesdropper the listener is left longing to have not been in on this exchange. The implications are just too foreboding. Johnny 99 was guilty but that isn’t what’s important it’s the reasons behind his guilt that are resonant, that tell the story. The live version of this song from “Bruce Springsteen Live 1975-1985” is devastating, imbued with the intensity that this confession demands.

The next song Highway Patrolman removes this confessor and speaks directly to the listener, while this very well could be the best single on the album I will move on to the song following Highway Patrolman, State Trooper.

Hey, we know this confessor! “Liscense, registration please.” “Well you see officer, I was on my way to my parents and..” “Have you been drinking tonight mam?” Simple enough right? Not totally, we are in a desperate landscape and our driver being followed here perhaps says too much, has to let his situation be known.

License, registration, I ain't got none but I got a clear conscience
'Bout the things that I done

Maybe you got a kid, maybe you got a pretty wife the only thing that I got's been both'rin' me my whole life
Mister state trooper, please don't stop me
Please don't stop me, please don't stop me

The song Used Cars comes next, no longer is the confessor a sir but a mister, reflecting a less respectful if not more defiant tone of desperate confession.

We find ourselves on the corner lot on automobile way. The salesman with hungry eyes, making judgments on his prey. The whole family is there for this is an American notion of family. The car as another living breathing member of the progeny. Little sister with an ice cream cone, ma in the back seat all alone.

Now, mister, the day the lottery I win I ain't ever gonna ride in no used car again

The lottery as savior, the confessor as the enemy, a grim story indeed. Our character here has found his life to be worse than dead end. It is a grid of streets that just lead you back and forth, to work and home in that old used car. He is poisoned with the knowledge of what this means, whoever this mister is he wants to ring his neck.

Open All Night follows with a man rushing to get to his woman, in the lunar landscape of the late night Jersey Turnpike. Propped up and propelled Open all Night sends us blasting into a seminal song for Nebraska, My Father’s House.

Father and Son confessional, God and man confessional, reality stripped to where it may only exist in dreams.

Last night I dreamed that I was a child out where the pines grow wild and tall
I was trying to make it home through the forest before the darkness falls

I heard the wind rustling through the trees and ghostly voices rose from the fields
I ran with my heart pounding down that broken path
With the devil snappin' at my heels

I broke through the trees, and there in the night
My father's house stood shining hard and bright the branches and brambles tore my clothes and scratched my arms
But I ran till I fell, shaking in his arms

There are some regrets, some mistakes that endanger the soul, that shake it with fear and trembling. Here is one of those stories, one in which the listener treads lightly with face turned fearful of the end.

I awoke and I imagined the hard things that pulled us apart
Will never again, sir, tear us from each other's hearts
I got dressed, and to that house I did ride from out on the road, I could see its windows shining in light

Once again our confessor comes in, that inevitable sir. Even he too is now unstable and wobbling from the weight of this displaced son confession.

I walked up the steps and stood on the porch a woman I didn't recognize came and spoke to me through a chained door
I told her my story, and who I'd come for
She said "I'm sorry, son, but no one by that name lives here anymore"

My father's house shines hard and bright it stands like a beacon calling me in the night
Calling and calling, so cold and alone
Shining 'cross this dark highway where our sins lie unatoned

Heart breaking, unpardonable conclusion. A son lost in the world unable to atone to his father. Could the confession of this save him?

And so what of all this here confessin’ brothers and sisters. Does it do any good, does it sway the mansion on the hill or change the face of the used car salesman? Does it leave us with hope for our man on a back street in Atlantic City? Will the State Trooper show mercy? I suppose Springsteen was wondering the same thing and we find in this our closing song Reason to Believe. Somehow in the faith of this confession people find some reason to believe.

Take a baby to the river Kyle William they called him
Wash the baby in the water take away little Kyle's sin
In a whitewash shotgun shack an old man passes away take his body to the graveyard and over him they pray Lord won't you tell us
tell us what does it mean
Still at the end of every hard earned day people find some reason to believe

Nebraska is a masterpiece of desperate confession.

Reverence for the Hillbilly Dust

Thoughts on the live recording “At the Ryman” by Emmylou Harris and the Nash Ramblers

Emmylou Harris is a keeper of the key, a true believer in the songs that she loves. It is at the center of her highly influential career. Her music when at it’s best tells you, convinces you that the songs mean everything; it is her faith and religion. “At the Ryman” is her greatest confession of this belief and just so happens to be my all time favorite live record.

All 16 tracks are written by other artist, mostly giants, prophets in her old and new testament of song. Bill Monroe, Bruce Springsteen, Stephen Foster, Steve Earle, Jack Clement, Nanci Griffith, and John Fogerty among others are given their turn at the wheel, all given their propers somehow with the grace and integrity they damn well deserve. It takes a lot of guts and belief to deliver that kind of set.

Venue is integral, you can’t deliver a sermon on the mount not on a mount. Between songs Emmylou says of the Ryman that she has played in a ton of places from multi million dollar arenas that sound terrible to one place in Lake Charles, Louisiana where the only way you can get on stage is through a window and that the Ryman is the best. The mother church of country music, the Ryman was the long time home of the Grand Ole Opry the single most important and influential disseminator of American music that ever was. This record at the time of its release was a major instigator in the refurbishment of the Ryman Auditorium; there goes Emmylou key keeping again.

The title is actually: Emmylou Harris and the Nash Ramblers Live at the Ryman. Members of the Ramblers are stars in their own right with players such as Sam Bush on mandolin and Roy Huskey, Jr. on bass that accompany a little, stand out a little, and are smoke ass on fire just about the whole time. Particularly stunning are the vocal arrangements.

Track 1: Guitar Town –

“Hey sweet daddy are you ready for me it’s your good rockin’ momma down from Tennessee.”

Hell of an opening line for one hell of an opening song. Earle writes hard edged songs earned the hard way and this cover of an early hit of Earle’s is a calling card. The music here is acoustic, with soft drums, and gorgeous vocals while managing to drive and throttle at the same time. The resonator guitar fills between verses emphasizes the “here I am, take it or leave it” phrases in the song. The title itself is an ode to Nashville.

“Everybody told me you can’t get far on 37 dollars and a Jap guitar. Now I’m smoking into Texas with the hammer down and a rockin’ little combo from the guitar town.”

“Well I gotta keep rocking while I still can got a two pack habit and a motel tan.”

When someone as lovely as Emmylou, with a voice even lovelier delivers lines like these it can do things to a man, most importantly make him listen.

Track 2: Half as Much –

Written by Curley Williams but everyone knows this as a Hank Williams song. It was obligatory for there to be a Hank Williams song for this set. This fact should not be downplayed. Hank is the omni-spirit that floats over the music Emmylou believes in. His performances haunt the very stage this recording was made on and his spirit drifts like Luke in the stain glass that illuminates the Auditorium.

The performance is a good one, really part of a one two punch with the opening Guitar Town. The harmonies introduce themselves and you start to get the feeling you are listening to something pretty darn special. It warms you up and gets you ready.

Track 3: Cattle Call –

A definitive cowboy song written by Tex Owens and popularized by Eddy Arnold. Emmylou has fun with this and the vocals are up front and center, it is her way of showing how a place should sound, you can hear the Ryman acoustics in the harmonies.

Track 4: Guess Things Happen That Way –

This is one of a number of hits penned by Cowboy Jack Clement. The Man in Black had a hit with this, and in the hands of the Ramblers really transforms into a toe tapper. Lines that you just don’t see anymore:

“God gave me that man (woman in original) to lean on then he put me on my own.”

This song closes out what I like to think of as the warm up. The tone so far has been light and playful and has your attention, now the focus and depth comes in.

Track 5: Hard Times –

“Many days you have lingered all around my cabin door, Oh’ hard times come again no more”

Stephen Foster’s Hard Times is an American masterpiece from the pen of “The Father of American Music”. Covered an insurmountable amount of times it is a crying for the poor and down trodden, a reminder to those who have of the connection with those who do not.

All voices, with but the faintest of a strum, a moving and devastating version given here. A lethal dose of humanity, a callous heart softener, a calling sung with enough conviction to change the listener that is tuned in.

Track 6: Mansion on the Hill –

From Foster to Springsteen we travel through the landscape of American voices. Emmylou being a key keeper again. This is my favorite cover of a Springsteen song. Shown time and time again covering Springsteen is a difficult task, his music being so much about him and his devotion and belief in what is being transmitted. One off tracks of his like Pink Cadillac can work but rarely do songs from the Book of Bruce work in another’s hands, I mean who would dare to do Darkness on the Edge of Town?

The connection between Emmylou’s belief and faith in the song allows her to convincingly deliver a Springsteen song that is all about belief in its own statement. She somehow manages to voice that belief in her singing, her love is so deep for the song that the reverence shines through. When I listen to this I know she loves the song as much as I do. That is an astounding accomplishment.

Track 7: Scotland –

An instrumental piece by the Father of Bluegrass Mr. Bill Monroe. Lovely, lovely, lovely. At the end Emmylou says while short of breath, “The things I have to do to get a date with Bill Monroe. I had to promise him I would dance to his song and I did.”

Damn! She was dancing, I should have gotten off my ass and danced too.

Track 8: Montana Cowgirl –

Continuing on the heels of Scotland The Ramblers keep driving with this song reflecting the western theme of Cattle Call. A lot of fun to listen to, a song about going home.

Track 9: Like Strangers –

Emmylou gives credit to the Everly Brothers recording of this song written by Boudleaux Bryant part of the songwriting team with his wife Felice Bryant. These two wrote Rocky Top, All I Have to do is Dream, and Bye Bye Love among many others.

Another stunning vocal arrangement, a call for peace and forgiveness among lovers. This record has really sunk in now and attention is undivided as the whole of it is coming into focus.

Track 10: Lodi –

What may seem like an out of place selection actually is a highlight. John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival fame is underrated in his place in songwriting history. Take his best 12 songs and stack em’ up against anybody and you will be doing O.K. I mean the man wrote Proud Mary.

This calls back to the spirit of Guitar Town, finds that same person later on driven down and beaten by the road and the performing. Resonator guitar driving this feeling home with mandolin in accord.

“If I only had a dollar for very song I sung. Every time I had to play while people sat there drunk. You know I’d catch the next train back to where I live. Oh Lord stuck in Lodi again.”

Heads are shaking now, we need a drink.

Track 11: Calling My Children Home –

The high point emotionally for the record, singing so fine you are hoping that drink is a stiff one. A song of a parent’s love and sacrifice. The tears are coming now, you almost need the record to stop. I have to post the lyrics:

Those lives were mine to love and cherish.
To guard and guide along life's way.
Oh God forbid that one should perish.
That one alas should go astray.

Back in the years with all together,
Around the place we'd romp and play.
So lonely now and oft' times wonder,
Oh will they come back home some day.

I'm lonesome for my precious children,
They live so far away.
Oh may they hear my calling...calling..
and come back home some day.

I gave my all for my dear children,
Their problems still with love I share,
I'd brave life's storm, defy the tempest
To bring them home from anywhere.

I lived my life my love I gave them,
to guide them through this world of strife,
I hope and pray we'll live together,
In that great glad here after life.

I'm lonesome for my precious children,
They live so far away.
Oh may they hear my calling...calling.. and come back home some day.


Track 12: If I Could Be There –

This one lets you breathe, another beautiful song about longing.

Track 13: Walls of Time –

Now they are ready to drive you home. Emmylou takes the restraints off of the Ramblers and lets them have at it. We didn’t dance earlier now we have to. They take this second Bill Monroe song and set it on fire, burn baby burn. A common theme in old bluegrass of a lover waiting to be buried beside their love and to see them in the great afterlife bye and bye.

Track 14: Get Up John (Or How Sam Bush Kicked my Ass) –

This is simply one of the greatest live bluegrass recordings ever. The groove lick that Bush plays drives and drives as your volume knob turns up and up. You instantly wish you could play like that, while Emmylou’s voice matches the intensity. Explosive and propulsive twang.

Track 15: It’s a Hard Life Wherever You Go/ Abraham, Martin, and John

Back in your seat/sofa/chair/ floor for a two fer with a 60’s era peace movement theme. The first song is a great one from Nanci Griffith a contemporary of Emmylou. All about being a hypocrite and knowing better. No punches pulled.

“Cafeteria line in Chicago, a fat man in front of me. He’s calling black people trash to his children but he’s the only trash here I see. I am thinking this man wears a white hood in the night when his children should sleep but they will slip to their window and see him and think that white hood is all they need.”

“It’s a hard life wherever you go. And if we poison our children with hatred then the hard life is all that they’ll know.”

The second part of this is a song written in memorial of John F Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. calling back to Abraham Lincoln as icons of social change cut down in their prime.

Track 16: Smoke Along the Track –

A train song about hitting the trail. A perfect bookend to Guitar Town and an excellent choice to close out the record. The rhythm stays with you and keeps cycling in your head long after the disc has stopped spinning.

“I’m gonna leave you crying in the smoke along the tracks.”


The key keeper, Emmylou Harris, loves these songs. When you listen to this performance that fact is undeniable, and there is a real good chance you are going to love them too.