“The New Timer” is a sleeper that will keep you up all night, just like its protagonist. Narratively one of the strongest songs on The Ghost of Tom Joad, it often goes overlooked and undiscussed by both fans and artist alike.
That may be in part because of the quiet it requires–“The New Timer” demands one’s full attention or none at all. A thematic companion piece to “Nebraska” (much as their respective albums are as well), “The New Timer” is perhaps more story than song. In fact, if you listen closely, you’ll notice that most of the couplets only roughly rhyme. It’s the narrative that’s important here.
Let’s take a listen:
The term “new timer” comes from Dale Maharidge’s 1985 book, Journey to Nowhere: The Saga of the New Underclass. Bruce read it and was inspired by it to write both “Youngstown” and “The New Timer,” both stories of middle-class workers slipping perilously down the ladder and becoming working poor. He also contributed the introduction for a new edition of the book, published in 1996.
Here’s an interview with the author, featuring extended clips of Bruce discussing why the book resonated so strongly with him.
Lyrically, “The New Timer” is a master class in taut storytelling. Let’s take a look at how Bruce skillfully weaves his tale:
He rode the rails since the great depression
Fifty years out on the skids
He said you don’t cross nobody
You’ll be all right out here, kid
Four lines in, and we’ve established time, place, and circumstance without ever making direct reference: Bruce is singing about a hobo riding the rails–but not back in the 1930s. It’s fifty years later, which puts us in the mid-eighties (exactly when Maharidge wrote and published his book).
Left my family in Pennsylvania
Searching for work I hit the road
I met Frank in east Texas
In a freight yard blown through with snow
Two verses in, and Bruce has thrown his first curve ball: this isn’t just the story of Frank the hobo (notice how the scene suddenly crystallizes into specificity)–there’s another migrant worker here as well, and it’s our point-of-view character.
From New Mexico to Colorado
California to the sea
Frank he showed me the ropes, sir
Just till I could get back on my feet
Twelve lines in, and much time has passed–enough for Frank and our protagonist to travel across the west, the older man teaching the younger how to survive, the younger man still clinging to the belief that this is all only temporary, a brief economic downtown.
I hoed sugar beets outside of Firebaugh
I picked the peaches from the Marysville trees
They bunked us in a barn just like animals
Me and a hundred others just like me
Line fourteen has a nice reference to peach-picking, notably one of the menial jobs that the Joads performed in order to survive in Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, the inspiration for the album’s title track. We’ve now established an indirect but distinct connection between the displaced migrants of the 1930s and the homeless working poor of the 1980s.
And in the next two lines, we see how Frank and his mentee and their scores of fellow workers are dehumanized, housed like animals.
Time passes, and the story takes a turn:
We split up come the springtime
I never seen Frank again
‘Cept one rainy night he blew by me on grainer
Shouted my name, disappeared in the rain and the wind
The new timer is on his own now–he catches a glimpse of his father figure only once, fleetingly, before being separated from his adopted family forever:
They found him shot dead outside of Stockton
His body lying on a muddy hill
Nothing taken, nothing stolen
Somebody killed him just to kill
And here, “The New Timer” becomes connected to “Nebraska” as well: Frank is dead, killed by an unknown murderer who didn’t even have the decency to rob him, killed just for the sake of killing, as if “there’s just a meanness in this world.”
More time passes before we learn the impact that discovery had on the new timer.
Late that summer I was rolling through the plains of Texas
A vision passed before my eyes
A small house sitting trackside
With the glow of the saviors’ beautiful light
A woman stood cooking in the kitchen
Kid sat at the table with his old man
Now I wonder does my son miss me
Does he wonder where I am
These are beautiful passages–not just for their religious imagery and poignant power, but because we can’t quite know the significance of this house, this family.
Remember that we are back in Texas, where the new timer first met Frank. Is this a random family evoking such longing in our protagonist? Probably. But the location can’t be a coincidence–Bruce is too careful for that. Perhaps this family bears some relationship with Frank? Might they have been significant to him? We don’t know, and we won’t know, but the power of the vision and the power of the place are enough to stir some inner turmoil in our hero.
Tonight I pick my campsite carefully
Outside the Sacramento Yard
Gather some wood and light a fire
In the early winter dark
Now we’re in Sacramento, California–a stone’s throw from Stockton, where Frank’s body was found. Again–Bruce is too careful for coincidence. The fact that the new timer returned here matters.
Wind whistling cold I pull my coat around me
Heat some coffee and stare out into the black night
I lie awake, I lie awake, sir
With my machete by my side
That repeated line–“I lie awake, I lie awake”–we can almost envision the new timer sitting, wrapped in his coat, rocking, chanting those words, remaining on guard–why? To protect himself from being preyed on, we assume. But:
My Jesus your gracious love and mercy
Tonight I’m sorry could not fill
My heart like one good rifle
And the name of who I ought to kill
And there we have it. The new timer has lost everything. His home, his family, his career, his sense of place, his dignity. And finally, at the end, he’s lost the one person who helped him at his lowest, who saw him for who he was, who rendered him visible when no one else would acknowledge him except to thieve from him or harm him.
And he’s turned a corner. He can’t live up to his religious teachings. His heart is cold and hardened like a steel rifle. And that last line–that curious ungrammatical phrasing–leaves us wondering: does he know who murdered Frank? Or does he crave to know? And that word “ought…” does that convey intent to avenge, the opposite, or simply a wish? We don’t know and won’t know, because the story ends on this note of anger, bitterness and impotence. It’s left for us to decide where the new timer goes next.
Bruce doesn’t perform “The New Timer” very often. In fact other than a handful of appearances on each of Bruce’s solo acoustic tours, he hasn’t played it at all. And honestly, the studio arrangement is so spare–it’s just Bruce and his guitar–that it’s difficult to re-arrange and while preserving its narrative power.
On the 2005 tour, however, Bruce took a crack at it, arranging it for the autoharp instead of the guitar–and to my mind, the song works even better–the meanness of the lyrics offset by a heavenly arrangement. Here’s a clip of the very last time Bruce performed the song, late on the Devils and Dust Tour:
“The New Timer” is based on a book written in the mid-eighties; Bruce wrote the song in the mid-nineties. It was still relevant and resonant when he performed it live ten years later, and it’s still timely more than a decade on still. We can but hope and work toward a day when it will sound as dated as it ought to.
The New Timer
Recorded: March-August, 1995
Released: The Ghost of Tom Joad (1995)
First performed: November 30, 1995 (Berkely, CA)
Last performed: November 19, 2005 (Hollywood, FL)
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