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August 19, 2025 EDITOR'S NOTE: In 1973, a young rock critic by the name of Jon Landau - who at the time also happened to be married to a young music/film critic named Janet Maslin - reviewed Bob Dylan's soundtrack album for Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid , the '73 Sam Peckinpah film in which Dylan also acted, alongside James Coburn and Kris Kristofferson. "True to its soundtrack genre," wrote Landau in Rolling Stone , "much of the record is made up of instrumental music never intended to stand on its own and useless on an album." Ouch, the irony! What exactly would young Mr. Landau think of Bruce Springsteen's Faithless , a "lost album" of soundtrack music (including instrumental music) for another western film - a "spiritual western," at that - but a film that, to date, doesn't even exist? The world can never know, of course, but that's okay with us here at Letters To You. In any case, we're much more interested in knowing what our friend and occasional contributing writer Joe Amodei - the veteran filmmaker, astute movie buff, and longtime Springsteen fan - thinks of Faithless . Take it away, Joe... When I was asked to pen a review of one of the seven albums in Bruce Springsteen’s epic  Tracks II: The Lost Albums   release, I was hesitant. The album that was offered to me was Faithless . I knew going in that this album was not a typical well-written, epic Springsteen record release. This was a totally different path the rock star had taken, a path that as a fan, I always had wondered why it hadn’t been traveled previously. This was a score, a soundtrack to what was to be a major feature film. Of course, Bruce has written and contributed original songs to several films over the years, most famously with his Oscar-winning "Streets of Philadelphia" for Jonathan Demme's Philadelphia , and he's even done a bit of interstitial and prelude scoring for both his "Hunter of Invisible Game" and Western Stars films that he co-directed with Thom Zimny. Nevertheless, he's never taken on the task of scoring an entire film before, and therefore I've never before written about a soundtrack album containing - presumably - the full Springsteen-composed score for a feature film. I would not be diving into many songs, lyrics, and music that tell their own stories, as Bruce so poetically gives us in almost all of his albums. That would be done by the folks who inherited the jobs of reviewing the other six Tracks II albums. Lucky them. This would be the opposite thing, entirely. This time the music and the songs would go hand in hand with a story already written by someone else. The source material would not be Bruce. And the music I would be listening to would be written to take us deeper into that story, and to dig deep into that emotion that would be on the big (or little) screen on which we'd be watching the film. Pretty heavy stuff, and quite a different adventure for this longtime Springsteen fan. Oh, and I forgot the most important thing... The unknown mystery. The MacGuffin that I could not use because... well, it didn’t exist. There is no movie I can watch with this music in it. There isn’t even a script I can read as I listen to the music. As most if not all readers of this review will know, the score was written and then recorded before a frame of film ever was shot. And then the movie was never made. And we are not 100% positive what that movie is. And of course, no one is talking. (Well, as I would come to find out there actually was one person "talking," but more on that later.) So, I did some digging anyway, and here is what I found. Throwing just a bit of caution to the wind, I’ll go slightly out on a limb here and write that Faithless definitely would have been the score for a film based on a Tom Eidson western novel entitled St. Agnes' Stand . This is the book that some folks have spoken about online as the one that might have been the film's source material. (Springsteen only has gone on record so far as to tell Rolling Stone 's Andy Greene that he composed and recorded the music on Faithless using both "a book" and "a screenplay.") Having now read St. Agnes' Stand myself, I have no doubt at this point. And I have another pretty good source, to boot; Bruce Springsteen himself told me. Actually, he told all of us; he just didn’t say it out loud. I’ll explain below. But first, some more on St. Agnes' Stand . Published in April 1994, this western saga tells the story of a shot-up, weary cowboy with a bullet in his leg, who goes by the name of Nat Swanson. Nat's on the run, being pursued across the desert towards California by a group of men intent on killing him. He comes across a wagon train that has been attacked by an Apache tribe out for blood in the worse fashion. Upon approach, he finds an elderly nun named Sister St. Agnes, still alive, who takes him to a hidden cave where two other nuns, along with seven young children, are sheltering in place. Sister St. Agnes believes that Swanson has been sent by God to save them. Swanson is not the believer Sister St. Agnes wants him to be, but he knows he is their only hope as the marauding Apache are getting closer and closer to discovering and infiltrating their hiding place. The book was a somewhat hot property, and optioned by Dreamworks to be made into a feature film that was to be directed by Martin Scorsese. There are also reports that at one point Sydney Pollack was in the mix to direct, as well. But as we know, none of this ever happened; the film was never made. Eidson’s novel has a spiritual bent to it, as the elder Sister St. Agnes truly believes that the Almighty has reached down and sent this man to save them, a la Homer Smith in the wonderful Sidney Poitier film Lilies of the Field ("gonna build me a chapel") or the long-running hit show Highway to Heaven , starring Michael Landon. But that’s as far as the spirituality goes in St. Agnes' Stand . The book contains nightmarish pages of brutality committed by the Apache that would most likely have been toned down at least somewhat for the film adaptation. The novel's depiction of the Apache is not the fair and accurate portrayal one would hope we'd see today. So the question remains: Is Faithless the unused score that was written for a cinematic adaptation of St. Agnes' Stand ? At this point it’s still left completely up to you, but there are some big clues that Springsteen himself gives us via the liner-notes and the book The Lost Albums included with vinyl-LP/CD versions of Tracks II . Along with Bruce referring to the film as “a spiritual western," there are lines in the lyrics of “Where You Goin', Where You From” that refer to a crossbow and a Hawken gun. These are the weapons of choice used by Nat Swenson in St. Agnes' Stand . In the same song, we find the lyric “I’ve got me a home on the other side of this storm." St. Agnes' Stand contains a sequence with a torrential life-threatening storm and flood that the characters fight to survive. Also, Swanson carries with him a deed to a home in California, and that is where he is headed if he can survive. And there is more. Let’s look at each track on the album... Track 1 - “ The Desert” (Instrumental) - As Bruce says in the book The Lost Albums , this is basically “interstitial music” that speaks to the images on the screen. It sets a tone and in this case, it could be the opening of the film, following Swanson as he heads into the sprawling desert, evading capture. Track 2 - “Where You Goin’, Where You From” - Swanson is on the road now, and has eluded capture. Not sure where the road is heading but, as the lyrics say, it’s “on the road to kingdom come” and “I've got a round in my Hawken gun,” which, as stated above, happens to be the gun that Swanson carries throughout St. Agnes' Stand . Further evidence is the line  “Black powder on my thumb.” As we learn in the novel, Swanson has fired the gun before the story begins, which would have blackened his thumb. Also appearing in this song's lyrics is the line “I've got a quarrel in my crossbow.” Again, this is Swanson's main go-to when fighting the Apache, presumably the "devil" Bruce refers to in the song. For me, this is one of the highlights of the album. Backed on vocals by his sons Evan and Sam, along with Patti Scialfa, it sounds like a nice little almost-folksy song, but the lyrics are deadly serious and talk of danger behind and ahead. The song ends with a moody instrumental piece that is as haunting as it is beautiful. Track 3 - “Faithless” - This is the story of Nat Swanson. A lone cowboy with no faith but the barrel of his gun who, as the song says, “walked 'neath the eves of the garden” and “in the valley 'neath an endless sky,” beaten and alone, but for the desert in front of him and the stars above. And then in a moment of acceptance comes the line “Then I found you.” God? Maybe. More likely it's Sister St. Agnes, but it clearly spells out that this lost man has found something meaningful. As a stand-alone song, this character could be anyone, and that is what makes this song one of the main reasons why the album has been called a spiritual journey. Track 4 - “All God’s Children” - With an obvious nod to the children being sheltered and hidden away from the Apache, this gospel-church-clapping, knee-slapping song is the most raucous one on the album. As loud as it is lively, and with the “Glory Hallelujah” chorus, this could be one song to make it on stage at a Springsteen concert. (Coincidentally, Eidson also wrote and published a 1996 novel entitled All God's Children .) Track 5 - “A Prayer By The River” (Instrumental) - This is where the score begins to soar. As background music, this would work just about anywhere, but I believe this would have been used throughout the film during its most serious and spiritual moments. With the Morricone-style angels providing the choral backdrop, this passage perfectly fits into what the movie would be saying. Track 6 - “God Sent You” - Wow! Another title or subtitle could be “Sister St. Agnes' Theme," as it personifies all that she is wishing for and is asking for help from God. This is one of the most beautifully written and sacred songs Bruce has ever given us. More hymnlike than anything else he has written, it is one that grabs your heart and reaches into your soul. This one actually brought tears to my eyes with its beauty and soulfulness. It could stand away from the score and have different meanings to different folks but in particular for those who believe in the word of God. It is my favorite piece from the album. (Interesting point of speculation... Why the apparent "last-minute" lyric change - and clearly modern overdubbed vocal by a much older-sounding Springsteen - from the line "His inner light is my patience" as printed on the album's lyric-sheet, to “Through His inner light, forsake temptation?”) Track 7 - “Goin to California” - Almost like a companion to “Where You Goin’, Where You From” in its wistful rendering by Bruce. This could be in the beginning or the end of the film. Not a whole lot to it, but in the frame of the score it would work well, and it does have some rip-roaring banjo. Track 8 - “The Western Sea” (Instrumental) - Moody, atmospheric and once again leaning towards the spiritual side of things. Purely written for the score. Track 9 - “My Master's Hand” - Another song that could take the stage at any Springsteen show, and one that possibly brings some of Bruce’s own spirituality into the film. This could be played over end credits or leading up to the exciting climax. Nat Swanson, at this point in the story, is all in and will do anything, including dying, if it means saving the nuns and the children. This is where he becomes what Sister St. Agnes has prayed for. He is the miracle she asked God for, and in these lyrics he surrenders to Him. This is more like a Springsteen song than any other on the album. One wonders if this is a description of Swanson, or of Bruce himself, as he sings “I’ll live in the love of my master's hand.”  Or is it a combination of both? It is interesting to think about this, especially given the continued ambiguity and ambivalence around how Springsteen publicly discusses his perspectives on religion and spirituality.   Track 10 - “Let Me Ride” - This could have been featured on a few of Bruce’s previous albums, and while the lyrics could fit somewhat into the story of St. Agnes' Stand , I’m not sure how well it works both as a piece of the score and as a one-off. I like the vocals, and in particular the chorus, but feel this is one song that didn’t belong on this album. Track 11 - “My Master's Hand (Theme)" - This instrumental version of "My Master's Hand" is, again, a piece that could also be played throughout the film, broken up to compliment the action taking place, as well as over the closing credits.   Faithless would be the perfect score to any film adaptation of Eidson's novel. Each piece carries with it the feel of the spiritual journey the characters undertake. This journey takes them along the desert and mountainous terrains that can be found in classic John Ford westerns. It's interesting that Bruce composed a score without ever seeing any images of a completed film. We all have seen pictures of famous composers in front of a full orchestra in a recording studio, looking up at a screen while the action is right in front of them. Bruce did not have that advantage. Bruce loves the music of composer Ennio Morricone. I wonder if he knew that for the films that Ennio made with his frequent collaborator Sergio Leone, this is how the great Maestro often worked. He wrote much of the score for films like The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly and Once Upon a Time in America before the film was shot. Master meets master. Many critics and fans have placed Faithless at the bottom of the seven-albums set we now know as Tracks II: The Lost Albums .  But for what it is, and, more important, what it was recorded to be , I think it belongs up there with the best. Someone out there should make this film. You already have a score.

August 8, 2025 I was drawn to Inyo , first, because of the apparent ways it speaks to The Ghost of Tom Joad and especially its tour. Tom Joad was a startling break from what Springsteen had released before, even Nebraska , because much of the music seemed little more than ambient orchestration for the words. I remember struggling to hang on as I played it over and over again in my living room. But less than two weeks after its release, I was lucky enough to see one of the early shows on the Joad  tour in the Rosemont Theater outside Chicago, and I could not have imagined one person with a guitar conjuring up a more moving performance. The musical heart of the songs became apparent, and when Springsteen dipped into the back catalog, new dimensions appeared. Using his guitar as percussion for an acapella “Promised Land” close, I could swear that a twister rolled around the darkness of the theater. Regarding this newly released collection recorded around the time of that tour, Joad ’s live “Across the Border” offered a glimpse of what we hear on Inyo . At the place in “Border” where the “hope in our hearts” takes the migrant’s imagination, a place he can only dream of because it hasn’t yet been reached, Springsteen kept singing wordlessly after the lyrics, a high keening sound in a register I certainly didn’t know he had. It was a falsetto in a sense common in regional Mexican music, a leap that reached beyond what seems possible in search of something the heart feels sure is true. It was a haunted and haunting sound, as if the singer were actively trying to find and hold onto that place in the song where “pain and memory will be stilled.” We hear Springsteen using that kind of vocal again here, almost serving the same purpose on the album’s most beautiful song, “El Jardinero (Upon the Death of Ramona).” Every note on the guitar is a tender struggle like the daily details of the gardener’s work as he tries to find his lost daughter in the beauty that surrounds him. Each step is a deeply convicted effort. The character worries that his grief may itself be a sin of indulgence, and he trims branches to allow the breezes he associates with Ramona’s spirit to blow freely. He works for his living son, and he works for his wife, yet he finds himself asking, “how will my heart ever mend?” At the end, he’s left crying wordlessly again, layer upon layer of those vocals over deliberate steps of guitar, that high head voice blending with shimmering keys as if the father’s and daughter’s ghosts have aligned. On one level, Springsteen is at his most Woody Guthrie on this record—as with “Tom Joad,”  “1913 Massacre,” and “Deportee,” telling stories that have been told before in his own way, telling stories heard along the beloved Mother Road, Route 66, the bulk of it in the desert Southwest, and telling stories he read in the newspaper. The title track uses the Owens Valley water wars to lay a deep foundation for the ongoing California water crisis and the region’s ongoing fires, not to mention water wars and fires that rage nationwide. In that song, the Paiute who were pushed off the land are only mentioned briefly, but it’s not long before the album’s hard focus becomes the lives of the Indigenous peoples of that Southwest that take up most of the record—those here before the Spanish and here before northern Europeans gave the whole thing a Southern European name while attempting to drive the Spanish-speaking peoples across the Southern border. In fact, while the actual protagonists of “Indian Town,” “Our Lady of Monroe,” “One False Move,” and “When I Build My Beautiful House,” may not explicitly be Indigenous or Mexican American characters, they just as easily could be. It’s hard to miss the parallel between “Monroe’s” “little brown-eyed girl shootin’ cans in the river” and the revolutionary warrior “Adelita,” who “stood above us firing her rifle till the gunpowder turned her hand black.” As with much of the best of Springsteen’s work, this is a story about who we are as Americans and intentionally blurs the lines between that question and who we once were in hopes of connecting us around who we might be. For such reasons, I’m not only thankful for the great musical leaps provided by mariachi bands on “Adelita” and “The Lost Charro,” but I find these songs career triumphs. The trumpet and harp on both songs are thrilling, and the great vocal percussive notes on “Adelita” call to mind Ennio Morricone’s beautiful western orchestrations. Surprisingly, Springsteen’s creative use of synth (that sounds a lot like ethereal vocals) and Curt Ramm’s trumpet create a similar cinematic effect on “Ciudad Juarez.” Regarding the falsetto mentioned earlier, “The Lost Charro” uses such vocal leaps in repeated refrains as a now-migrant worker remembers his lariat. It’s a kind of playful grace note that manages to evoke the painful yearning in the memory. Not incidentally, it also calls to mind Roy Orbison and his own ranchera influences. In some ways, this music is, in fact, also about all those lonely dreams Orbison sang about, where they came from and how they bind us together. Though not numerous, among the more prominent and welcome nods to Guthrie and the folk tradition are the singable choruses here. “Inyo” itself may have pretty-much-unsingable verses, but the “ain’t you feeling dry” chorus invites Soozie Tyrell to chime in vocally as does the chorus of “When I Build My Beautiful House.” The “Godmother when I die” refrain of “The Lost Charro” takes on rowdy choral backing as it builds. “When I Build My Beautiful House,” as a folkie closer, calls to mind “My Best Was Never Good Enough” in its simplicity, but its tone is very different: an earnest dream of something beyond the ephemera, in that sense more like “Across the Border.” In fact, “When I Build My Beautiful House” actually was written and recorded before “Across The Border,” as was “Blue Highway” from Somewhere North of Nashville , both of which contain variations of the same house-on-a-hill-where-pain-and-memory-have-been-stilled phrasing/imagery that ended up in “Across The Border.” The origins of another album closer also glimpsed here is a twinkle of “We Are Alive” in “The Aztec Dance.” A deceptively slight-sounding piece, “The Aztec Dance” relies on sustained synth and whispery guitar arpeggios for accompaniment, eventually accented by a smattering of bright notes on piano. In this case, Springsteen seems most concerned that the music does not get in the way of the words at all. If anything, the sounds are there to add a slight patina to this portrait of young boys with machetes and young girls in satin dresses doing traditional folkloric dances. The song is after the universal in the specific. By the end of the first stanza, it’s focused on one dancer in particular, Teresa, and her mother who is fixing her hair, helping her get ready. She complains to her mother about the ways strangers talk about her people, and her mother tells her about the Edenic world before the Europeans arrived and enslaved her ancestors. “City gone and left in ruins, they cry bitter tears in another world,” the mother explains just before the tenderest and most powerful of affirmations, “But here in this world, my daughter, they have you." With that line, a mother hands her daughter a sense of connection, dignity, and purpose, perhaps what all of us need most in today’s climate so hostile to such beauty. -- Danny Alexander is a Kansas-based writer, teacher, and activist. He is also the author of Real Love, No Drama: The Music of Mary J. Blige (available for purchase here and here ,) and the co-editor (with Daniel Wolff) of Kick Out the Jams: Jibes, Barbs, Tributes, and Rallying Cries from 35 Years of Music Writing by Dave Marsh . Click here to connect further with Danny and his work at his Substack platform.

August 1, 2025 Somewhere North of Nashville is, as its title suggests, a traditional Nashville country record laden with echoes, metaphor, and callbacks. There are song titles that tie back to other songs with similar titles (“You’re Gonna Miss Me When I’m Gone,”) song titles that are the same as those of other people’s records (“Tiger Rose,”) and songs that refer to books or films (“Tiger Rose,” “Repo Man,” “You’re Gonna Miss Me...,”) or bands (“Blue Highway.”) There also is plenty of just plain country and popular music standard imagery: bluebirds, endless highways, echoing footsteps, lonesome train whistles. It pushes all the right buttons sonically and lyrically, but does it hold up in terms of quality? The answer is... well, sort of. The record is cohesive in sound, but the material is, at best, uneven. And what stands out is not heretofore unreleased or unfamiliar material, but a well-placed cover and a couple of alternate versions of previously released tracks. The other originals, while they are serviceable and align thematically with the album as a whole, are, for the most part, not particularly memorable. The overall sound, as well as the musicianship, is solid, with standout performances throughout from familiar faces like E Streeters Dan Federici, Garry Tallent, and Charlie Giordano, alongside studio vets like drummer Gary Mallaber and pedal steel guitarist Marty Rifkin. It’s hard to find fault with the record’s polished, professional Nashville sheen, which is more difficult to pull off than it sounds. And much of the upbeat material - a virtual bonanza of country two-step rockers - deserves recognition for its clever lyrics and catchy melodies and arrangements. Leadoff track “Repo Man” is just such a two-step. It’s a first-person account in the rocking vein of “Stand on It” that features a powerful Springsteen vocal, and one of several compelling story songs that would not be out of place on a Chuck Berry record. Though the title refers to what might not be a common term in most folks’ daily lexicon, country radio listeners are no doubt all too familiar with the notorious "repo men" (automobile repossession workers) who haunt lower middle class neighborhoods, hounding folks who are behind a payment or two for a secondhand junker on which they made a bad deal. So kudos to Bruce for introducing a possibly unfamiliar topic to a wider audience. Its opening riff instantly grabs your attention, and it’s definitely worth repeat listenings. Another two-step, the rockabilly standout “Tiger Rose,” originally saw the light of day on Arkansas roots rocker Sonny Burgess’ 1996 eponymous album. It’s a cheating song that would have done well as a rabblerouser towards the end of a Springsteen set or a late night club jam, and it’s a shame it hasn’t popped up in a set list here or there. It’s practically impossible to do a bad version of Johnny Rivers’ “Poor Side of Town,” and it’s not difficult to see why Springsteen included this particular song, given its title and subject matter: the possibility that love might just have the power to lift folks out of poverty. His childhood was far more hardscrabble than most folks realize, and the hopeful note at the tail end of the song must surely resonate. It’s a lovely cover, and the type of material he really ought to explore more often. “Delivery Man” is a humorous story song - and another two-step - about a guy who drives a delivery truck filled with crated chickens (which you’ve most likely seen if you’ve ever driven on the Delmarva Peninsula). It’s a working man’s song that one might easily hear on country radio, but the visual of caged chickens on a speeding semi truck, feathers flying everywhere, is most likely not a welcome one for the animal lovers in Bruce’s audience. Nonetheless, it grabs your attention with a forceful lead vocal and playful lyrics about how things can go wrong rather quickly out there on the road. “Stand on It” is an all-out roots rock barnburner that showed up at Stone Pony jams in the late 1980s and later in a couple benefit performances in the 1990s. It’s a can’t-miss track that instantly gets folks moving, and it’s another song that has been shamefully overlooked by both rock and country artists in search of material. The Nashville arrangement suits its driving backbeat, but most folks will probably still prefer the original “Glory Days” B-side. This is another song that should show up in a set more often. Several songs on the record have very similar titles: “Repo Man”, “Delivery Man” and “Detail Man.” There is no way any official release would include all three of these song titles, regardless of their quality. And others - “Blue Highway,” “Silver Mountain,” “Under a Big Sky” - while thematically coherent and well-executed, just aren’t particularly memorable. "Under a Big Sky," for example, doesn't pack as much of an emotional wallop as the officially released track that it later morphed into and became: the heartbreakingly beautiful epic "Chasin' Wild Horses" on Western Stars . A similar criticism can be made of the alternate version of Western Stars ' "Somewhere North of Nashville," recorded just within the past decade or so and tacked onto this collection of mostly mid-1990s material as its "lost album" title track. “Janey, Don’t You Lose Heart,” like “Stand on It,” was another gem of a B-side that was issued during the Born in the U.S.A. period. It’s strong lyrically and meshes well with the album’s mood and tone, but the pedal steel and country arrangement suck the life out of the song. One misses the Roy Bittan piano fills and Nils’ tag vocal at the end, and its slick feel just lacks the urgency and romance of the original. And “You’re Gonna Miss Me When I’m Gone” is just a disappointment all around. If you choose a title of such import and resonance, you owe your audience a song that delivers a punch, and while this Springsteen track is of a piece with the record in terms of its subject matter - cheating, loneliness, heartbreak, regret - it just doesn’t go anywhere. The song, which echoes the traditional “When I’m Gone” - a Carter Family staple - is a first-person narrative that bemoans a love interest who just doesn’t appreciate the singer, who’s halfway out the door. Unfortunately, its mostly forgettable lyrics and melody pale in comparison to the stark authenticity of the Carters at their best. The best songs on the record are more fully realized as rockers than country two-steps. And the release, while impeccably produced, just does not have that catchiness that makes you want to immediately play it again as soon as the final track fades. Overall, while Somewhere North of Nashville contains some of the best material of the seven "lost albums" in Tracks II , it’s also not difficult to hear why many of its tracks were not previously released in some fashion. At one point in time, “throwaway” songs like these often became outstanding B-sides (“Janey...," “Stand on It”) or circulated as essential bootlegs. Now, unfortunately, it seems the vaults are being emptied simply to empty the vaults.

July 18, 2025 "The conventional wisdom," writes Erik Flannigan in the section of the hardcover Bruce Springsteen: The Lost Albums book included with the physical Tracks II box-set, about the period of home-recording that Springsteen did in 1983, "is that [after releasing Nebraska ] Springsteen was feeling a gravitational pull towards a rock album with the E Street Band. His fans expected it. But what L.A. Garage Sessions '83 reveals... is that he felt a growing and ultimately more powerful draw towards making more music alone, outside of a band dynamic." The notion that L.A. Garage Sessions '83  is some type of revelatory release that newly dispels "conventional wisdom" about this period of Springsteen's career, however, is itself dispelled by the fact that the existence and significance of what is contained on L.A. Garage Sessions '83  - including Springsteen's serious consideration of releasing an album of material like this instead of Born in the U.S.A. - already was covered extensively in Dave Marsh 's second Springsteen biography, 1987's Glory Days: Bruce Springsteen in the 1980s . It's not like Marsh's book was read by only a handful of the most devoted Springsteen fans, either. Glory Days spent two months on The New York Times Book Review 's Best Sellers list, staying in the Nonfiction top-10 for all but one of its eight weeks on the list, peaking at Number 6. Furthermore, more than half of the tracks on L.A. Garage Sessions '83 have been available widely for years now via bootleg versions; gaining access to hear many of them eventually became as easy as performing a YouTube search. At least Flannigan acknowledges the previous existence and availability of those bootlegged tracks, albeit ever so briefly and parenthetically, in his essay on L.A. Garage Sessions '83 . Nevertheless, it should be readily acknowledged that none of the bootlegs can hold a candle to the stellar mastering work on L.A. Garage Sessions '83 performed by Bob Ludwig and Rob Lebret, no doubt working with the best available lowest-generation versions of the original session recordings. Even a track like the beautiful "County Fair," which already received an official release on The Essential Bruce Springsteen back in 2003 (with overdubbed drumming by Max Weinberg that is not on the Tracks II version,) sounds so much cleaner and clearer here. At least for me, "County Fair" is the true standout on this set. While some have been reading more into the song in light of Chapter 45 ("California") of Springsteen's Born to Run memoir , you really don't need to know a thing about that "event" to experience and appreciate the song's essential greatness: its moving, brilliantly detailed, and metaphoric meditation on the fleeting qualities of life's greatest moments, and our own inevitable mortality. It's all right there in the song itself, from the name of the band set up at the north end of the field (James Young and the Immortal Ones) to the song's closing lines where the singer/narrator thinks to himself, "I wish I'd never have to let this moment go." The perfect track to follow it on any playlist? Richard & Linda Thompson's "Wall of Death," of course. And speaking of beautiful female voices, it's a crying shame that whoever sang those gorgeously eerie yet soothing wordless vocals at the end of "County Fair" has yet again gone uncredited. My money remains on the mystery singer being Ruth Davis, the former spouse of the late, great Bruce Jackson . (Davis also was the credited backing-vocalist - credited as "Ruth Jackson" at the time - on the Born in the U.S.A. version of "My Hometown.") As for the rest of L.A. Garage Sessions '83 ... meh, I'm not that impressed. Being a longtime fan of both Elvis and Bruce, and more than a bit obsessed with all of their various connections/intersections, I think it's nice to finally have an officially released '83 garage-sessions version of "Follow That Dream," though I also think the live 1981 arrangement - as captured beautifully on this officially released recording , for one - is much better. And even the live version of "Follow That Dream" from the 1986 Bridge School benefit - also released officially - utilized the same melody as the  L.A. Garage Sessions '83 version, but greatly improved upon it by ditching those odd drum-machine/synth flourishes and - very important/significant - altering the phrase "every man..." to "every one ." On the other hand, the L.A. Garage Sessions '83 version of "Johnny Bye Bye" is both good and unique in comparison to previously released versions, though I'm not sure just how many folks other than Elvis/Bruce freaks like myself will be interested in yet another officially released version of "Johnny Bye Bye"/"Bye Bye Johnny"/"Come On (Let's Go Tonight.)" Meanwhile, the L.A. Garage Sessions '83  versions of "My Hometown" and "Shut Out The Light" are nowhere near as good as the originally released 1984 versions of these songs (the version of "My Hometown" on Born In The U.S.A. and the version of "Shut Out The Light" originally released as the B-side of the "Born in the U.S.A." single and later included in the original Tracks box-set.) Each of them contain extra words and verses that do nothing to improve or enhance the respective song's essential points; in fact, leaving those words/verses out greatly improved each respective song. And the hoarse-whispering style Springsteen employed for the L.A. Garage Sessions '83  version of "My Hometown" doesn't fit the mature perspective of the song's narrator in his mid-thirties, as he soberly relates undeniable realities, anywhere near as well as his singing style on the Born in the U.S.A. version. (Just a few lines of Born in the U.S.A. 's "My Hometown," by the way, do a much better job of conveying the insidiousness and complexities of racism than all of "The Klansman.") Most of L.A. Garage Sessions '83 seems... interesting, at best, to me. But interesting in much more of a "roads not taken" way than in a "Wow! Can't believe this didn't make the cut!" way. In his Glory Days interview with Dave Marsh, Chuck Plotkin summed up this period of Springsteen's recording activities by saying, “It looked for a long time like we could end up with Nebraska II .” And I think that also sums up exactly the problem with much of this music. It feels like Bruce, armed with a much more sophisticated and advanced home-recording device than his now-famous TEAC Tascam PortaStudio 144, set out to try to recapture what he did with the recordings that became Nebraska . But he failed to do so, primarily because anybody who sets out to consciously make an album like Nebraska - even if their name happens to be Bruce Springsteen - is bound to fail. Nebraska truly was such a "happy accident" (despite the emotional tone of the album being about as far from "happy" as you could get) that the idea of purposefully making an album that's "like" it is a fool's errand. Furthermore, none of the Nebraska -styled material on L.A. Garage Sessions '83  comes close to having the same emotional impact as the greatest material on Nebraska like "Highway Patrolman," "State Trooper," "Used Cars," "My Father's House," and "Reason To Believe." A lot of the mannerisms remain - the connections to Appalachian ballads, the Suicide influence, etc. - but it all still comes off feeling like just a shell of what it's trying to emulate/expand. The trio of lightly rocking tracks - "Don't Back Down On Our Love," "Little Girl Like You," and "Don't Back Down" (and yes, the repetition of phrases in the lyrics of these demos is even more prevalent than in those that ended up becoming Nebraska ) - might have had some potential if given the full E Street Band treatment in a professional recording studio. Nevertheless, here they sound like they still have a long way to go before approaching the quality-level of any of the rock tracks released on Born in the U.S.A. More important, whether Bruce Springsteen himself thinks so or not (and the book accompanying Tracks II makes it clear that he still straddles on this point even now,) releasing Born in the U.S.A. after Nebraska was the correct choice to make. Springsteen arrived at what would become the height of his stardom, visibility, influence, and popularity with something very important to say and offer to anyone willing to listen. He also got there after having first assembled a strong team of friends, collaborators, and supporters who would help to ensure as much as possible that neither he nor his essential messages would get lost in all of the noise, potential isolation, and distractions that can accompany such stardom. "My Born in the U.S.A. songs were direct and fun," he wrote in his Born to Run memoir, "and stealthily carried the undercurrents of Nebraska . With my record greatly enhanced by the explosiveness of Bob Clearmountain’s mixes, I was ready for my close-up." Furthermore, the album's hard-rocking title track, for all of the unintentional and intentional distortions of its meaning over the years, still most accurately captures all of the mournful bitterness, anger, confusion, and tragedy of the Vietnam War, both for the soldiers who fought it and for their loved ones. Yes, there were - and are - some who didn't/don't "get it," but many of us did, and do. In the end, as Dave Marsh wrote somewhat prophetically - not in Glory Days , but in the introduction to the reprint of his review of Nebraska in his Fortunate Son anthology - it's very good indeed that Bruce Springsteen's next officially released album after Nebraska "didn't show that Bruce had become an eager eccentric after the fashion of Neil Young. Springsteen's ability to assert his right and need to make some personal, idiosyncratic statements is something to celebrate, especially since it coincides with an especially traumatic time in our country's political system. But that achievement would mean much less if in the process Springsteen lost his balance and fell, not from a state of grace neither he nor any other pop star has ever known anyway, but out of touch with the very people who lent his work meaning in the first place." Of course, your mileage may vary. At least now any interested fan can pull the L.A. Garage Sessions '83  material out of the garage and take it for a spin of their own, whenever they choose to do so.

photo by Terry Wyatt/Getty Images for the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum - used w/ permission July 29, 2025 Happy Birthday, and best wishes for many more happy birthdays ahead, to the E Street Band's "First Lady of Love," Ms. Patti Scialfa! This year we're celebrating Patti's birthday by continuing to celebrate her welcome return to the stage just last week, when she joined Rodney Crowell, Emmylou Harris, Bernie Leadon, James Taylor, and Trisha Yearwood in Nashville at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum’s CMA Theater for a special concert event saluting Linda Ronstadt and the Los Angeles country-rock scene of the 1960s through the 1980s. Click here to read (or re-read) our full report on last week's special concert. Please enjoy these additional photos, courtesy of our friends at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, as we look forward to seeing - and of course hearing - Patti and friends in the professionally-filmed version of last week's concert, set to debut next month on The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum’s website  and YouTube channel . photo by Terry Wyatt/Getty Images for the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum - used w/ permission We at Letters To You look forward to sharing more details with our readers about the filmed version, as they become available, and we also look forward with continuing hope that 2025 will be the year all of us Scialfa fans finally will get to hear Patti's long-awaited next solo album. Again, Happy Birthday, Patti. It's so great to see - and soon be able to hear - you back in action. photo by Terry Wyatt/Getty Images for the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum - used w/ permission

July 25, 2025 So what exactly is the deal here? Springsteen fans who've been paying enough attention for long enough have known about the legendary hip-hop-influenced "loops album" for years... decades, even. We also have heard repeatedly about just how close it was to being released in the spring of 1995. "I finished it," says Bruce Springsteen himself in one of his latest versions of a fairly frequently told story, this one featured in Thom Zimny's short film Inside Tracks II: The Lost Albums , "Bob Clearmountain mixed it... and I didn't put it out," he adds with a chuckle. So if this indeed is that album at last, released in the same complete form that was intended for release thirty years ago, why on Earth would it have been called Streets of Philadelphia Sessions , yet not include a version of the hit 1994 song "Streets of Philadelphia" on it? And if the plan truly was to release an album entitled Streets of Philadelphia Sessions without "Streets of Philadelphia" on it, why would the album packaging have used no photography other than a set of Neal Preston's shots from the 1993 filming of the "Streets of Philadelphia" music-video? Instead, this 2025 release feels very much like a retitled, shortened, and/or otherwise altered version of what was intended for release back in Spring 1995. That wouldn't be such a big deal, of course, if folks in the Springsteen camp, including Springsteen himself, hadn't repeatedly indicated that we fans finally would get to hear his full "loops"/"relationship" album in what was intended to be its finalized 1995 version, as - to quote Springsteen archivist Erik Flannigan in the book The Lost Albums included with vinyl-LP/CD versions of Tracks II: The Lost Albums - "a cornerstone of The Lost Albums ." In any case, and more important, what is on Streets of Philadelphia Sessions just doesn't sound as groundbreaking or exciting as it might have sounded decades ago, if it ever did. First off, those legendary loops are prominent parts in only half of the tracks on this version of the album: "Blind Spot," "Maybe I Don't Know You," "We Fell Down," "Between Heaven And Earth," and "Secret Garden." And it's actually only on "Blind Spot" where the looping - combined with the sound of a male shout repeatedly sampled à la Rob Base and DJ EZ Rock's 1988 hip-hop classic "It Takes Two" - still feels like a radical rhythmic departure from most, if not all, of Springsteen's other musical moves. On the remaining tracks, the loops simply provide synthesized drumming beds that aren't that different from the drumming sound and the role it has played on many other Springsteen tracks. In "Maybe I Don't Know You," for example, there's not much sonic distance between that track's drum sound and the one to be found on, say, "Brilliant Disguise." This album's version of "Secret Garden," which remains one of Springsteen's most beautiful, moving, and mature "relationship" songs, doesn't sound anywhere near as fully realized - or as good - as the 1995 E Street Band version recorded for Greatest Hits , featuring Clarence Clemons' gorgeous closing sax solo. Clearly the choice to make that version the first officially released one was correct, especially since it eventually became Bruce's final top-40 hit in the U.S. to date, peaking at number 19 on Billboard 's Hot 100, with renewed interest in the track after it was featured in the soundtrack of the film Jerry Maguire . (Incidentally, although Shane Fontayne is credited for his guitar work on the Streets of Philadelphia Sessions  version of "Secret Garden," after repeated listenings I have yet to hear any evidence of it.) While the lyrical perspective here often maturely explores the darker and more complex aspects of love - and a few do it rather well, leading to effective, at least artistically and musically interesting tracks like "Blind Spot," "Waiting On The End Of The World," and "Between Heaven and Earth" - it's not like Springsteen wasn't doing that already on previously released material like Tunnel of Love , Human Touch , and Lucky Town , the three officially released albums that directly preceded his work on this material. And something like the beautifully heartbreaking and soulful Human Touch outtake "Trouble In Paradise," co-written with Roy Bittan and featured more than a quarter-century ago on the first Tracks box-set, goes just as deep and dark lyrically as this long-anticipated material, even without layers of foreboding synthesizer sounds attached to it. It's just more than a bit ironic and amusing that some who seemed so cool to such emotionally mature material in the past now appear so gaga over what's to be found here on Streets of Philadelphia Sessions . It's also rather mind-boggling that in 1995 "Bruce, Inc." came so close to officially releasing an album in which Bruce Springsteen sings a line comparing a relationship to being "like... a disease" not once, not twice, but thrice in separate tracks among only ten such selections presented here: "Blind Spot," "Waiting On The End Of The World," and "The Farewell Party." It's one thing to have left alone the repeated "deliver me from nowhere" line (in both "State Trooper" and "Open All Night") on Nebraska , especially since attempting later to alter a sung line in the demo source recordings that became Nebraska would have been extremely difficult if not impossible to pull off successfully, given the technology involved. But the recording technology that Springsteen was using for the material on Streets of Philadelphia Sessions , more than a decade after the recording of Nebraska , would've made it very easy to add a different phrase or line to a song, avoiding such heavy repetition. I guess Bruce just thought that "like...a disease" phrase was among his best songwriting accomplishments ever. (Sorry, Boss; it isn't.) Ironically, the biggest standout for me on Streets of Philadelphia Sessions is a track that has absolutely no drum loops or any other kind of hip-hop influence. "One Beautiful Morning" is instead a rocker about the tragic death of a beloved woman (coincidentally with yet another lyrical reference to another unnamed "disease,") and how those she left behind will carry on without her. I wouldn't be surprised at all if, like "Streets of Philadelphia," the spirit of Kristen Ann Carr also lives in this song. I would be equally unsurprised to learn that Bruce pulled the "promises to keep" phrase in "One Beautiful Morning" from the "promises to keep" phrase that he added to the closing line in his version of Harry Chapin's "Remember When The Music." In any case, "One Beautiful Morning" is one beautiful, moving, and powerful song, among the finest that Bruce Springsteen has ever written and recorded, and I'm so glad that it's been released officially at last. Play it... loud .

photo by Terry Wyatt/Getty Images for the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum - used w/ permission July 23, 2025 It's great to see that Patti Scialfa was back onstage singing last night, and even better to learn that we Scialfa fans will be able to watch a professionally filmed online broadcast of her performances, beginning next month! Patti joined Rodney Crowell, Emmylou Harris, Bernie Leadon, James Taylor, and Trisha Yearwood in a special concert event saluting Linda Ronstadt and the Los Angeles country-rock scene of the 1960s through the 1980s. The concert took place in Nashville at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum’s CMA Theater. photo by Terry Wyatt/Getty Images for the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum - used w/ permission Trisha Yearwood co-produced the event with the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, in connection with the museum’s major exhibition Western Edge: The Roots and Reverberations of Los Angeles Country-Rock . The exhibit, which will conclude its nearly three-year run on September 16, explores the L.A.-based communities of visionary singers, songwriters and musicians — including Linda Ronstadt — who created and shaped the musical fusion “country-rock” and made a lasting impact on popular music. “I’m not exaggerating when I say that Linda Ronstadt is THE reason I became a singer,” Yearwood said. “Celebrating Linda and her fellow L.A.-based musicians alongside some of my biggest musical heroes is a lifelong dream come true for me.” The concert benefited the nonprofit museum and its educational mission. It was filmed professionally and will be released next month on the museum’s website and YouTube channel . photo by Terry Wyatt/Getty Images for the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum - used w/ permission Scialfa joined Yearwood and Emmylou Harris in performing the Phil Spector song "To Know Him Is To Love Him," which Ronstadt recorded with Harris and Dolly Parton for their 1987 album Trio . Patti then sang her own composition "Valerie" with Emmylou Harris. Harris recorded a version of "Valerie" with Ronstadt for their 1999 album Western Wall: The Tucson Sessions , which also featured their version of Bruce Springsteen's "Across The Border." photo by Terry Wyatt/Getty Images for the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum - used w/ permission Trisha Yearwood then returned to the stage to join Harris and Scialfa in singing Neil Young's song "Birds," which Ronstadt recorded in a live version for her self-titled 1972 solo album. At the end of the evening, Patti Scialfa returned to the stage to join the evening's entire ensemble of performers for a group performance of the traditional song "The Water Is Wide," which Ronstadt recorded with David Sanborn in 1985. Their version later was released on the 1995 Sanborn compilation Love Songs . Below is the evening's complete setlist: 1.     "Silver Threads and Golden Needles" – Trisha Yearwood 2.     "Long Long Time" – Trisha Yearwood 3.     "To Know Him Is to Love Him" – Trisha Yearwood, Emmylou Harris and Patti Scialfa 4.     "Valerie" – Emmylou Harris and Patti Scialfa 5.     "Birds" – Trisha Yearwood, Emmylou Harris and Patti Scialfa       6.     "You're No Good" – Trisha Yearwood 7.     "Louise" – Trisha Yearwood 8.     "Desperado" – Trisha Yearwood with Bernie Leadon on guitar 9.     "Blue Bayou" – Trisha Yearwood       10.   "Love Has No Pride" – Trisha Yearwood 11.   "Try Me Again" – Trisha Yearwood 12.   "It's So Easy – "Trisha Yearwood 13.   "What Kind of Love" – Rodney Crowell 14.   "I Can't Help It If I’m Still in Love with You" – Trisha Yearwood and Rodney Crowell 15.   "When Will I Be Loved" – Trisha Yearwood 16.   "Hey Mister, That’s Me Up on the Jukebox" – James Taylor 17.   "I Think It's Gonna Work Out Fine" – James Taylor and Trisha Yearwood 18.   "The Water Is Wide" – Trisha Yearwood, Rodney Crowell, Emmylou Harris, Patti Scialfa, and James Taylor photo by Terry Wyatt/Getty Images for the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum - used w/ permission The band for the evening was led by Dan Dugmore (pedal steel and electric guitar,) and featured Robert Bailey and Vicki Hampton (backing vocals,) Steve Mackey (bass,) Rob McNelley (electric guitar,) Greg Morrow (drums,) Mike Rojas (keyboards,) and Bobby Terry (acoustic guitar.) We at Letters To You look forward to sharing more details with our readers on the upcoming online streaming options for the professionally filmed version of last night's event on The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum’s website  and YouTube channel , as they become available. Stay tuned!

July 16, 2025 Summer's here and the time is right for... getting online and learning more about Springsteen-connected stuff with various authors, as well as your fellow fans. The Bruce Springsteen Archives & Center for American Music (BSACAM) at Monmouth University continues to offer interesting - and free! - monthly online interactions with authors and scholars about various Springsteen-related topics. Below for easy reference is the complete/updated schedule of BSACAM's Conversations with our Curator series (including registration links) through not only Summer 2025 (beginning with tonight's online session about the first-ever Springsteen-focused Little Golden Book,) but also through the rest of the year. And check out next week's special additional online session inspired by Ryan Coogler's excellent film Sinners , presented by BSACAM in conjunction with Monmouth University's History and Anthropology Department: Each of the Conversations with our Curator  and other events listed below will begin promptly at 7pm ET on the respective date. BSACAM Curator Melissa Ziobro's online conversation with each author will be followed by an audience Q&A session. Registration to attend any of these online events is free and open to the public. Individual links for each author's book and/or to register for each author's event are available below, as well. Tonight, Wednesday, July 16 - Laurel Snyder , author of Bruce Springsteen: A Little Golden Book Biography - Click here to register. Wednesday, August 13 -   Ricky Riccardi , author of Stomp Off, Let's Go: The Early Years of Louis Armstrong  - Click here to register. Wednesday, September 10 -   WP Tandy , editor of Beach Badge  - Click here to register. Wednesday, October 15 -   Allison Bumsted , a uthor of TeenSet, Teen Fan Magazines, and Rock Journalism: Don't Let the Name Fool You  - Click here to register . Wednesday, November 19 -   Jay Sweet , author of Ray Brown: His Life and Music  - Click here to register. Wednesday, December 10 -   John Morrison , author of Boyz II Men 40th Anniversary Celebration: Unauthorized & Unofficial  - Click here to register. SPECIAL ADDITIONAL PROGRAM IN CONJUNCTION WITH MONMOUTH UNIVERSITY'S HISTORY AND ANTHROPOLOGY DEPARTMENT - Thursday, July 24 - Sinners of the Pine Barrens - Music plays a haunting role in Ryan Coogler’s 2025 horror hit Sinners , where sound serves as a conduit not just to the divine, but to something far darker. But long before the film’s release, the Pine Barrens of New Jersey had its own tale of supernatural music. In this talk, Pine Barrens historian Paulie Wenger explores the life and lore of Sammy Giberson, the legendary fiddler whose talent was said to rival (and perhaps even outmatch) the Devil himself. Join us for a journey through backwoods ballads, ghostly gigs, and the enduring power of music to stir both the soul and the shadows. - Click here to register. ---------- All past Conversations with our Curator  events also are archived at BSACAM's YouTube channel, so you always can catch up on any event that you might have missed, or re-watch any event. Click here to view the Archives' Conversations with our Curator   YouTube playlist.

July 11, 2025 EDITOR'S NOTE: Below is the first-to-be-published of our promised summer deep dives into each of the seven albums that comprise Bruce Springsteen's latest release, Tracks II: The Lost Albums . But as Joyce Millman herself notes below in her review of the Twilight Hours album, it's actually presented as the sixth album in the seven-albums box-set . No matter. At first we considered reviewing the Tracks II albums in the same rough chronological order in which the box-set presents them. But then we remembered that the Faithless album, consisting almost entirely of music created and recorded in 2005-2006, falls in the Tracks II presentation sequence between an album of music recorded in 1994 and one recorded in 1995. And of course the set's presentation closes with the Perfect World album, which is all over the place in terms of timeline, consisting of material ranging from the mid-1990s through 2018. Therefore, rather than worry so much about following any particular order of listening/reviewing/publishing, we thought it'd be more interesting (and maybe even a bit fun) to just let our team "mix things up" somewhat in what you, Dear Readers, get to read about first, second, third, etc. So without further ado, right now we are very pleased and honored to present Joyce Millman's insightful take on what is definitely one of Tracks II 's best "lost" albums, Bruce Springsteen's Twilight Hours . Enjoy! Of all the surprises revealed in Bruce Springsteen’s seven-album box set Tracks II: The Lost Albums , the sixth album, Twilight Hours, might be the biggest. Confronted with this record, a listener might be tempted to ask, “Why did Bruce Springsteen record an album of largely melancholy pop ballads that Frank Sinatra could have sung?” But the real question is, “What took him so long?” It’s not hard to figure out the Boss’s appreciation for the Chairman of the Board, his New Jersey compatriot. Bruce is of the age and geographic place where Sinatra’s records were almost a natural resource, like the air or the ocean. And Springsteen had an Italian mother who was crazy for big-band and pop tunes, making it all but inevitable that Sinatra would play a part in his musical life. In the chapter “King of New Jersey (Hollywood Days)” from Springsteen’s memoir Born to Run, he recounts how he and Patti Scialfa received an unexpected invitation to an L.A. party being held in Sinatra’s honor in 1995. That led to other invitations from the man himself. In December of that year, Springsteen appeared on Sinatra’s nationally televised 80th birthday celebration, where he nervously spoke a tad too long in tribute, opening with an early childhood anecdote about hearing Sinatra’s voice on a jukebox in a bar where he and his mother Adele had gone to fetch his father home. On the special, Bruce described Sinatra’s voice as conveying “a bad attitude, life, beauty, excitement, a nasty sense of freedom, sex, and a sad knowledge of the ways of the world…The deep blueness of Frank’s voice affected me the most.” And then Springsteen sang the Sinatra standard “Angel Eyes” in the softly raspy, intimate voice he had used on songs like “If I Should Fall Behind” from 1992’s Lucky Town , “Secret Garden” from the 1995 Greatest Hits  album and much of The Ghost of Tom Joad  (also 1995), accompanying himself on amplified acoustic guitar. Years later in a 2021 appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert , Springsteen was asked during the “Colbert Questionert” segment, “You get one song to listen to for the rest of your life. What is it?” He chose, without much deliberation, “Summer Wind” by Frank Sinatra. The premise of the sultry “Summer Wind” – an abandoned lover lost in memories as the autumnal present blows in around him – echoes through much of Twilight Hours . But long before this album, Bruce had mastered writing bittersweet songs looking back at golden moments when all was right in the narrator’s world, before life and circumstance and time did what they always do. That sentiment is there in the soft infested summer drama of “Backstreets,” the Eden-before-the-Fall imagery of the naked lovers in “The River,” and the fog of disappointment that thickly hangs over “Racing in the Street.” He built the Broadway show, the Letter to You album, and the E Street Band’s 2023-24 world tour around a storyline of wistful remembrance, creeping mortality, and gratitude. Sinatra sang “It Was a Very Good Year.” Springsteen called it “Last Man Standing.” Frank Sinatra, of course, didn’t write any of his songs of lonely love; they were the work of some of the greatest writers of the American Songbook era. But Sinatra’s voice – " The Voice" – was so expressive and open that he made you believe he had lived every word. As a singer, Springsteen will never approach Sinatra’s satiny perfection. But, like Ol’ Blue Eyes, he has an extraordinary ability to inhabit the emotions and characters of his songs. Still, the sophisticated “middle of the road” (Springsteen’s own description of the album’s style) songs on Twilight Hours  call out for a particular style of singing to do justice to the album’s concept. As sweet as his attempt at “Angel Eyes” was on that 1995 birthday special, his voice and interpretation remained firmly within the parameters of rock and folk. The songs on Twilight Hours  demand a crooner’s smoothness, enunciation, elongation; the revelation of the album is hearing Bruce achieve those qualities. But, then, it’s not as if his pop crooner voice came out of the clear blue. It has been a work in progress for years, occasionally peeking out from behind the beefy rock and soul shouting of the "BRUCE" persona cemented into public consciousness by Born in the USA , or the dusty twang he uses on Nebraska , Tom Joad , and so many individual songs. We first heard him attempt the pop crooner voice on the moody, theatrical “Meeting Across the River” from Born to Run , stretching the ends of lines (“a meeting with a man on the other siiiiide”) out in his full-chested baritone. You can hear him going for it again on “The River.” And then, finally, he cracks the code of the pop crooner voice (or maybe he had a singing coach) with his big, smooth, easy-breezy lead vocals and multi-tracked Beach Boys-style harmonies of “Girls in Their Summer Clothes” and “Your Own Worst Enemy” from Magic  (2007,) and the glorious love songs “Kingdom of Days” and “This Life” from 2009’s Working on a Dream . Springsteen the Crooner is given free rein on the 2019 solo album Western Stars , a record that mainly drew inspiration from songwriter Jimmy Webb’s 1960’s AM-radio countrypolitan pop songs for Glen Campbell, but also from the early work of Kris Kristofferson and Harry Nilsson. There are a couple of up-tempo songs on Western Stars , “There Goes My Miracle” and “The Wayfarer,” that sound like they might even have been in Sinatra’s swinging ‘70’s wheelhouse. Bruce, Ol’ Brown Eyes, reaches peak mellow grooviness on these two tracks, making them the epitome of Easy Listening, and that’s meant as a compliment. Most of the songs on Twilight Hours were recorded off and on from 2010 to 2018 as part of the sessions for what became Western Stars . (Full disclosure: If you read my blog review of Western   Stars , you know I had issues with Springsteen making his first studio release of the Trump era such a non-political record. But the record has grown on me over time and, besides, Bruce has made his anti-authoritarian anger rousingly clear since then.)   In the hefty book accompanying Tracks II , Springsteen explains that at one point all of these songs were to be released as a double album, before he decided to separate out the country-flavored tracks of Western Stars . It was the right move to separate them. Western Stars  was a Technicolor, widescreen album set in the American West, its songs depicting stereotypes of strong, silent manliness limping off into the sunset, put out to pasture by age and a changing world. By contrast, Twilight Hours  is a black-and-white, midnight in the rain, big city kind of record. Its guiding spirit, thematically, is the Sinatra of Sings for Only the Lonely  and In the Wee Small Hours , while also taking a cue from the complex melodies and plush string and horn arrangements of the pop hits that Burt Bacharach and Hal David wrote and produced for Dionne Warwick in the ‘60’s. Not that Twilight Hours is carefully-assembled retroism. Rather, Springsteen captures the essence of those Bacharach-David records in small, astute touches: a muted trumpet here, a bit of bossa-nova there. Twilight Hours  mostly coheres into a deliciously romantic set of songs for lovers, lonely or otherwise. The only outlier here is “I’ll Stand by You,” written for consideration in a Harry Potter movie and sung as a lullaby from parent to child. Bruce’s singing voice is more tender and obviously younger; while the song is pretty in that heart-tugging movie soundtrack way, it has no place here, like a G-rated preview shown before an R-rated movie. For an interesting exercise, try imagining which song from Western Stars  would fit better in this slot. My vote goes to “There Goes My Miracle.” If you want to get even more DIY about the sequencing, Springsteen’s high lonesome falsetto on “Sunliner” from Twilight Hours  would sound as at home in the world of Western Stars  as a coyote’s howl. Twilight Hours  features some of Springsteen’s loveliest melodies, starting with the elegant opener “Sunday Love,” a perfect backdrop for his supple crooning. The chord structure and mantra-like repetition on the chorus (“I never had, I never had, I never had a Sunday love”) is pure Bacharach-David, while Patti Scialfa, Soozie Tyrell and Lisa Lowell’s period-appropriate upper-register backing vocals shimmer like a choir of dream girls. Patti also arranged the backing vocals for four of Twilight Hours ' tracks, which is not surprising at all if you're familiar with this part from that "King of New Jersey" chapter in Springsteen's Born to Run memoir about Bruce and Patti's night at the Sinatras' home for Frank's birthday party: "Sometime after dinner, we find ourselves around the living room piano with Steve [Lawrence] and Eydie Gormé and Bob Dylan. Steve is playing the piano and up close he and Eydie can really sing the great standards... Patti is a secret weapon. She can sing torch like a cross between Peggy Lee and Julie London (I’m not kidding.) Eydie Gormé hears Patti, stops the music and says, 'Frank, come over here. We’ve got a singer!' Frank moves to the piano and I then get to watch my wife beautifully serenade Frank Sinatra and Bob Dylan, to be met by a torrent of applause when she’s finished." On the exquisitely orchestrated “Late in the Evening,” Springsteen’s vocal is all manly heartache, starting on a soft wobble and swooping up to the height of longing on lush lines like “I sleep ‘neath dark and empty skies/I listen to the night whisper ‘alone, alone’ …” Shoutout to Max Weinberg’s drumming here, falling suavely into rhythm beside the staccato piano riff; Springsteen is apparently not the only E Streeter with a soft spot for the middle of the road.    The most ambitious track, and the centerpiece of the album, is “Lonely Town,” a long, almost musical-theater-style number awash in romantic disillusionment. The song opens on a picture of isolation, the deep blueness of Springsteen’s vocal and the funereal orchestration introducing us to a place where “if love has let you down, there’s always a room to be found/ Here in Lonely Town.” Then the tempo abruptly turns sprightly as the narrator drifts into a memory of a once-happy family: “Bicycle bell comes ringing down the sidewalk/ I look and nothing’s there/ The crack of a bat in the late summer heat/ Leaves an echo in the air.” I don’t know if Springsteen intended the kid’s bicycle in that verse to hark back to the “bicycle spokes spinning round” in “Girls in Their Summer Clothes,” but it does. “Girls” depicted an evening walk along streets alive with bustling humanity, a setting where even Springsteen’s lovelorn character could find the possibility of happiness. But back in “Lonely Town,” those empty, rainy streets are the ghostly flipside of Blessing Street and Magic Avenue, the dream dissolving into gray. “Lonely Town” gives way to the unabashedly operatic, Roy Orbison-conjuring “September Kisses.” The lyrics embrace the memory of past love, as Springsteen’s richly seasoned vocal, one of his finest on the record, takes flight over a heady, dramatic swirl of strings, kettle drum, piano and deep twanging guitar, with Curt Ramm’s flugelhorn wafting through the mix like cigarette smoke. On “September Kisses” and all of Twilight Hours , Springsteen sounds comfortable in both his singing and his skin. The style may be different, but the voice is still recognizably Bruce, with the warmth and honesty that has been a constant throughout all of his unexpected musical journeys. As with those previous stylistic divergences from being "BRUCE," Twilight Hours  is a leap of faith, or, perhaps, a trust fall. Maybe it won’t be accepted by every fan in the spirit in which it was made. But after all this time, Bruce Springsteen has earned the right to say, “I did it my way.”

April 4, 2025 Whew, what a week! And it's not quite over yet, Springsteen fans... Although the initial teaser-announcement dropped on Tuesday, which was April Fools Day 2025, by yesterday morning it was crystal-clear that Bruce Springsteen wasn't foolin' around at all. As per the official press release , Tracks II: The Lost Albums will be released worldwide on Friday, June 27. The original Tracks box-set, released back in 1998, consisted mainly of outtakes from Springsteen's sessions for his first eleven albums. This second Tracks set, however, will contain seven full-length albums that haven't been released previously for various reasons - "...full records," says Bruce himself in the press release, "some of them even to the point of being mixed and not released... I’ve played this music to myself and often close friends for years now. I’m glad you’ll get a chance to finally hear them. I hope you enjoy them.” Tracks II: The Lost Albums  will be released in digital/streaming form (apparently at no extra cost to certain music-streaming-service subscribers) and in deluxe boxed sets consisting of seven CDs or nine vinyl LPs, accompanied by a 100-page cloth-bound, hardcover book featuring rare archival photos, liner notes on each lost album from essayist Erik Flannigan and a personal introduction on the project from Springsteen. There also will be an abridged twenty-tracks highlights collection, Lost And Found: Selections from The Lost Albums , released in one-CD/two-LPs formats on June 27. Click here for various pre-ordering options. Here's some more information on each of the seven albums (consisting, as per the press release, of eighty-two previously unreleased tracks and seventy-four previously unheard songs) in Tracks II: The Lost Albums : L.A. Garage Sessions '83 (1983) Tracks: 1. Follow That Dream 2. Don’t Back Down On Our Love 3. Little Girl Like You 4. Johnny Bye Bye 5. Sugarland 6. Seven Tears 7. Fugitive’s Dream 8. Black Mountain Ballad 9. Jim Deer 10. County Fair 11. My Hometown 12. One Love 13. Don’t Back Down 14. Richfield Whistle 15. The Klansman 16. Unsatisfied Heart 17. Shut Out The Light 18. Fugitive’s Dream (Ballad) Streets of Philadelphia Sessions (1994) Tracks: 1. Blind Spot (update for April 17, 2025: This is now the second track from the collection to be released as an advance single. Click here to listen. ) 2. Maybe I Don’t Know You 3. Something In The Well 4. Waiting On The End Of The World 5. The Little Things 6. We Fell Down 7. One Beautiful Morning 8. Between Heaven and Earth 9. Secret Garden 10. The Farewell Party Somewhere North of Nashville (1995) Tracks: 1. Repo Man (update for May 14, 2025: This is now the fourth track from the collection to be released as an advance single. Click here to listen. ) 2. Tiger Rose 3. Poor Side of Town 4. Delivery Man 5. Under A Big Sky 6. Detail Man (*Check out the Facebook video below, posted by John Stamos back in 2020. It's a complete performance of "Detail Man" performed in 1995 at John Fogerty's 50th-birthday party, featuring Fogerty on backing vocals and Stamos on drums performing with Fogerty's band:) 7. Silver Mountain 8. Janey Don’t You Lose Heart 9. You’re Gonna Miss Me When I’m Gone 10. Stand On It 11. Blue Highway 12. Somewhere North of Nashville Inyo (1996-1997) Tracks: 1. Inyo 2. Indian Town 3. Adelita (update for May 29, 2025: This is now the fifth track from the collection to be released as an advance single. Click here to listen. ) 4. The Aztec Dance 5. The Lost Charro (*Below is a screenshot of since-deleted video of Springsteen recording "The Lost Charro" with Mariachi Real De Mexico . It was posted on Patti Scialfa's Instagram page back in 2014:) 6. Our Lady of Monroe 7. El Jardinero (Upon the Death of Ramona) 8. One False Move 9. Ciudad Juarez 10. When I Build My Beautiful House Faithless (2005-2006) Tracks: 1. The Desert (Instrumental) 2. Where You Goin’, Where You From 3. Faithless (update for May 1, 2025: This is now the third track from the collection to be released as an advance single. Click here to listen. ) 4. All God’s Children 5. A Prayer By The River (Instrumental) 6. God Sent You 7. Goin’ To California 8. The Western Sea (Instrumental) 9. My Master’s Hand 10. Let Me Ride 11. My Master’s Hand (Theme) Twilight Hours (2010-2011) Tracks: 1. Sunday Love (update for June 12, 2025: This is now the sixth track from the collection to be released as an advance single. Click here to listen. ) 2. Late in the Evening 3. Two of Us 4. Lonely Town 5. September Kisses 6. Twilight Hours 7. I’ll Stand By You 8. High Sierra 9. Sunliner 10. Another You 11. Dinner at Eight 12. Follow The Sun Perfect World (newly assembled from various tracks from the mid-1990s through 2018) Tracks: 1. I’m Not Sleeping 2. Idiot’s Delight 3. Another Thin Line 4. The Great Depression 5. Blind Man 6. Rain In The River (This is the first track from the collection to be released as an advance single. Click here to listen. ) 7. If I Could Only Be Your Lover 8. Cutting Knife 9. You Lifted Me Up 10. Perfect World Note: While many Springsteen fans already are familiar with the versions of "Idiot's Delight" and "Another Thin Line" recorded and officially released by Joe Grushecky, far fewer fans seem aware that a version of "Perfect World" was recorded by John Mellencamp and released on his 2023 album Orpheus Descending . Click here to listen. A special website for this project, LostAlbums.net , also was launched this week. At the top of the homepage, visitors are advised to "return to LostAlbums.net weekly for newly-released music and content." As we noted at the beginning of this report, it indeed has been quite a week filled with some very exciting and interesting news for fans of Bruce Springsteen's music. And the best possible way to close this report is, of course, with another newly released recording featuring Springsteen... While it's certainly understandable that there won't be a "First Friday" archival Nugs live-recording release this week due to the big announcement/first-single release, there is nevertheless another new record featuring Bruce Springsteen that has been released officially today. It's "Ten Years Gone" by The Waterboys featuring Bruce Springsteen, from their newly released album Life, Death and Dennis Hopper , available on Sun Records in the U.S. (the first official Sun Records release for both The Waterboys and Bruce.) "Ten Years Gone" is a searing, electric-guitar-laden meditation on Hopper's enduring influence, with Springsteen delivering a killer spoken-word part at the end. Listen for yourself below. To our ears, in its own way it's just as powerful and moving as the spoken-word part he provided for Lou Reed's "Street Hassle" back in '78.

photo by Eric Meola - used with permission July 10, 2025 The Bruce Springsteen Archives & Center for American Music has announced the ticket-sales date for this September’s multi-day Archives celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the release of Springsteen’s landmark album Born to Run . Tickets will go on sale on Wednesday, July 16, beginning at 12pm ET. On that date and at that time, you'll be able to click here to purchase tickets to any or all of the ticketed events listed below. Tickets for the main event, a full-day symposium that will take place on Saturday, September 6 in Monmouth University’s Pollak Theatre, will cost $150. The symposium will feature panels, presentations, and interviews with members of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, as well as with journalists and historians, music industry legends, and special guests. “ Born to Run is one of rock’s great masterpieces,” said Robert Santelli, the Archives/Center's Executive Director. “Just a few blocks from where the symposium will take place is where Springsteen wrote the album. To revisit the making of the album and to examine Born to Run ’s place in American music history is a great honor, and a quintessential example of the way The Bruce Springsteen Archives & Center for American Music works to deliver unique insights about, and preserve the legacy of, our cherished American music genres and artists.” The Archives' Born to Run celebrations also will include: A special presentation of Tuesday Night Record Club on Tuesday, September 2 at Monmouth University’s Great Hall Auditorium and online via Zoom. As the Archives' official press release states, "it’s just like book club, but with albums! Get together with other music enthusiasts to discuss Born to Run ." This event will be free and open to the public, but in order to attend - either in person or online - you must register in advance by clicking here. A special viewing of rare footage from the making of Born to Run and from Springsteen’s 1975 Born to Run tour, hosted by filmmaker Thom Zimny. This screening will take place on Friday, September 5, at Monmouth University’s Pollak Theatre. Tickets for this event will cost $50. A new exhibit celebrating the photography of Eric Meola, whose iconic photo of Springsteen and saxophonist Clarence Clemons graces the Born to Run album cover. The free exhibit will be open to the public in Monmouth University’s Rechnitz Hall DiMattio Gallery from Saturday, September 6 through Thursday, December 18, 2025. An academic conference on Sunday, September 7 in Monmouth University’s Pozycki Hall, featuring close to 100 interdisciplinary papers from scholars across the globe. The conference will end with a special live performance of select songs from Springsteen’s iconic Born to Run , reimagined by the students of Blue Hawk Records, Monmouth University’s own student-run label . Their Born to Run Reimagined EP will be released on Friday, September 5. Tickets for this daylong event, co-sponsored by the Monmouth University Wayne D. McMurray School of Humanities and Social Sciences, will cost $100. Walking tours of the West End section of Long Branch, where Springsteen lived in 1974 and 1975 when he wrote the songs that comprise Born to Run . The September 7 tours, which include the chance to view Springsteen’s rented West End cottage, will take place at 11am and 2pm. Tickets will cost $40.

July 7, 2025 This just in... We are EXTREMELY pleased and excited to announce that permission has been granted for this Wednesday's special Newtown Theatre "Movie Club" screening of John Sayles' 1983 film Baby It's You ( the first major film to license Bruce Springsteen's music for its soundtrack) to be presented on the big screen in its newly and beautifully restored 4K edition. If you'll be in the Newtown, PA area this Wednesday, you do NOT want to miss this special opportunity to see this fully restored version of the film in a rare theatrical screening. Read below for more information on the film and how to get your tickets . Special thanks to Fun City Editions for allowing us to present its 4K restoration of Baby It's You the way it originally was meant to be seen... on the big screen! Click here to purchase the Fun City Editions Blu-ray of the 4K restoration , featuring a new, exclusive essay by film scholar and Letters To You contributor Caroline Madden , who'll be presenting Wednesday night's special screening with her fellow Letters To You contributors, filmmaker Joe Amodei and editor/publisher Shawn Poole. Letters To You contributor and filmmaker Joe Amodei  recently launched a monthly "Movie Club" screening/discussion series in partnership with The Newtown Theatre  in Newtown, PA. Next month's screening will be writer/director John Sayles ' great 1983 film, the nostalgic teen-romance drama Baby It's You , which also was the first major film to license Bruce Springsteen's music for its soundtrack. The Asbury Park, NJ of yore is portrayed in the film, as well, in a sequence where the main characters visit the legendary town and even spend some time at the now-demolished Palace Amusements building, which still stood and was in operation when Baby It's You  was filmed. About a year-and-a-half after the film's release, Sayles would begin working with Springsteen on the filming of several of his music-videos. (See the vintage image below.) from the World Tour 1984-85 tourbook - shots of filmmaker John Sayles directing the "Glory Days" music-video - Sayles also directed the music-videos for "Born in the U.S.A." and "I'm On Fire." All Letters To You readers who'll be in or near Newtown, PA are invited to attend this special event this Wednesday, July 9, beginning at 7:30 p.m. After screening the film, Joe will be joined by Letters To You contributing writer and film-scholar Caroline Madden , as well as editor/publisher Shawn Poole, for an audience discussion/Q-and-A about the film and its enduring significance. We hope that you can join us for this special evening. General-admission tickets are only $12 each, and your ticket-purchases will help to support the continued restoration and maintenance of the historic Newtown Theatre. Incidentally, all members of The Newtown Theatre get free admission to Baby It's You , as well as free admission to all other "Movie Club" screenings, along with other membership benefits. Click here for information on how to become a member of The Newtown Theatre. Click here for more information on the Baby It's You screening,  and to purchase tickets as a non-member of The Newtown Theatre.  See you this Wednesday!