The cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “Somewhere North of Nashville” album.
Bruce Springsteen has released the fourth single from his upcoming Tracks II: The Lost Albums boxed set: “Repo Man,” an upbeat, gritty, hard-rocking honky-tonk song from the set’s Somewhere North of Nashville album. Springsteen sounds like he’s having a great time on this song, working with a full band in the studio.
According to a press release:
“Somewhere North of Nashville” features much of the core band at the heart of those sessions — including Danny Federici, Garry Tallent and Gary Mallaber. Adding elements like pedal steel from Marty Rifkin (later a member of The Sessions Band) and fiddle from Soozie Tyrell, “Somewhere North of Nashville” saw Springsteen spontaneously cutting material live in the studio with a full band, not unlike what he had done for the recording of “Born In The U.S.A.” a decade earlier. Fittingly, the tracklist for “Somewhere North of Nashville” includes two songs originally planned for that album, “Stand On It” and “Janey Don’t You Lose Heart.”
“What happened was I wrote all these country songs at the same time I wrote ‘The Ghost of Tom Joad.’ Those sessions completely overlap each other. I’m singing ‘Repo Man’ in the afternoon and ‘The Line’ at night. So the country record got made right along with ‘The Ghost of Tom Joad,’ ” Springsteen recalled. “‘Streets of Philadelphia’ got me connected to my socially conscious or topical songwriting. So that’s where ‘The Ghost of Tom Joad’ came from. But at the same time I had this country streak that was also running through those sessions and I ended up making a country record on the side.”
Here is the song:
The boxed set’s first single, “Rain in the River,” was released on April 3. Its second, “Blind Spot,” came out on April 17, and its third, “Faithless,” on May 1.
The complete boxed set will be released on June 27. For information, visit lostalbums.net.
Springsteen’s Tracks, a four-CD boxed set released in 1998, includes rarities and previously unreleased material recorded between 1972 and 1998.
Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band, whose last concert was in November, are returning to the road today, with a show at Co-op Live in Manchester, England.
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