On Record Store Day 2014, Springsteen fans flocked to their local music shops to pick up Bruce’s new American Beauty EP.
But that wasn’t the only special vinyl release that day with Bruce’s music on it: Emily Barker and the Red Clay Halo dropped an EP of their own, Songs Beneath the River.
Each side of the album was recorded in a single take–no editing, not even a break between songs other than the five-second gap that separates the tracks. The tracks themselves are all covers–Tom Waits, Patti Smith, and Aretha Franklin all get the Red Clay Halo treatment.
And Bruce, of course. Barker’s cover of “Tougher Than the Rest” is one of my very favorite Springsteen covers, and there are some mighty fine ones even for just that song.
Take a listen:
On the album’s liner notes, Barker wrote about how her appreciation for Bruce’s Tunnel of Love album only deepens with age–hers, not the album’s.
My dad bought the Tunnel of Love record back in 1987 when it was released and it immediately became the family’s most played album on long car journeys. If you live in Australia, car journeys are often pretty epic, so it wasn’t long before my siblings and I knew every word to every song on this record. And what a record it is! Strangely, I forgot about it for years until, by fated coincidence, I recently went on a car journey with my brother, Joel. We were travelling down the very same road we used to travel down as kids (in the back of the 1968 Peugeot 504 Estate on our way to the Southern Ocean for a camping trip) and Joel put Tunnel of Love on the car stereo. Suddenly I was struck, again, by the power of this record. As an adult, I found the lyrics spoke to me in a way I didn’t comprehend as a child. Springsteen is a fabulous storyteller, with ‘Tougher Than the Rest’ being a perfect example. He has inspired the way I try to tell my own stories.
Barker’s experience mirrors that of so many Bruce fans. Tunnel is an album that requires life experience in order to fully appreciate.
