Roll of the Dice: Matamoros Banks

“We need nothing more right now than a humane immigration policy.” — Bruce Springsteen, April 25, 2005

In a more just world, “Matamoros Banks” would be widely regarded as one of Bruce Springsteen’s finest songs.

In an even more just world, Bruce would never needed to have written it at all.

Closing out Bruce’s similarly under-the-radar 2005 album Devils & Dust, “Matamoros Banks” played a similar role nightly on Bruce’s solo acoustic tour that year, closing the main set every night.

Yet despite its prominent placement and Bruce’s nightly PSA-by-way-of-explanation, “Matamoros Banks” has all but disappeared from discussion while its relevancy has sadly peaked.

It’s unclear when Bruce wrote “Matamoros Banks,” but good money would stake out a bet on The Ghost of Tom Joad era from the mid-nineties. Certainly, “Matamoros Banks” serves as a tragic sequel to Bruce’s gorgeous, hopeful “Across the Border” from his 1995 album.

“Across the Border” is a dream of soon-to-be-reunited love, sung by a Mexican migrant on the evening before his attempted border crossing; “Matamoros Banks” tells the story of the crossing itself, as the dream gives way to a nightmarish reality. Or perhaps more accurately, the reverse.

Let’s take a listen–and if you can, use headphones so that you can appreciate the delicate, subtle orchestration and ornamentation that elevates the song above its heart-breaking lyrics.

On the rare instances where you’ll hear or read discussion of “Matamoros Banks,” it will almost certainly be the song’s reverse chronology that gets first mention. And yes, “Matamoros Banks” is notable for that innovative story-telling device.

But it’s far, far more than a gimmick. The narrator of “Across the Border” and the second half of “Matamoros Banks” is hopeful to the very end, and Bruce pays tribute to him by allowing the song to end on a hopeful note as well.

This serves to heighten our sense of tragedy, too–because we know exactly what fate awaits our long-separated lovers, our heart aches and breaks at the beauty and faith that steadily builds as the song regresses.

Let’s take another listen, and this time I’ll point out some of my favorite moments and touches along the way.

The song’s first two verses are told by our hero’s love on the northern side of the border. This is the only time in the two songs in which we hear from her, and the reason why is immediately made clear.

For two days, the river keeps you down
Then you rise to the light without a sound
Past the playgrounds and empty switching yards
The turtles eat the skin from your eyes, so they lay open to the stars

Two things to note right off the bat: the first is the way Bruce abandons all metaphor when he wants to ground a song in reality. Bruce has used this device many times before, but here it’s especially effective–not only is the first verse (and the second below) devoid of metaphor, there are barely even any adjectives. This is the simple, stark narration of a mourning lover who–unlike her lost one–harbors no illusions about the nature of dreams.

The second thing to note is my favorite moment in the entire song: the way Bruce tenderly inflects the word “stars” with just a hint of a vocal trill, penetrating our narrator’s stoicism for a fraction of a second to let us know that despite the hard shell of her words, her heart lies unprotected just below. It’s just a fleeting moment, but there’s no question in my mind that it’s a deliberate moment of empathy between songwriter and character.

Your clothes give way to the current and river stone
‘Till every trace of who you ever were is gone
And the things of the earth they make their claim
That the things of heaven may do the same

We’re about to leave our narrator behind, but before we do: take note of that last couplet. It’s a gorgeous example of Bruce’s ability to convey spirituality while constrained to plain earthly language. The imagery of turtles eating the eyelids of the deceased should by all rights horrify us; but because the narrator focuses on the way her loved one’s eyes are filled with stars as as result, neither she nor we recoil the way we might be expected to.

Similarly, she observes the creatures of the earth and the river eating away at her beloved, but she focuses on its necessity for his soul to be freed to rise to heaven.

Our narrator says goodbye to her love (and to us) by thanking God for the time they shared and reprising (we’ll soon learn) their promise to each other to meet again someday on the banks of the river that separates them.

Goodbye, my darling, for your love I give God thanks
Meet me on the Matamoros
Meet me on the Matamoros
Meet me on the Matamoros banks

And with this introduction of the Matamoros as the metaphorical divide between life and death, we travel two days backward in time, rejoining our hero from “Across the Border” as he crosses the desert to the river, where his love awaits on the other side.

Over rivers of stone and ancient ocean beds
I walk on twine and tire tread
My pockets full of dust, my mouth filled with cool stone
The pale moon opens the earth to its bones

I long, my darling, for your kiss
For your sweet love I give God thanks
The touch of your loving fingertips
Meet me on the Matamoros
Meet me on the Matamoros
Meet me on the Matamoros banks

Notice the transition here. Our narrator notes the grim reality of his surroundings, but he’s buoyed by his love and his dream, and he can’t help but view the arid desert through a lens of beauty.

Bruce gently introduces strings in this verse to ease us from lonely reality to romantic idealism. We also hear faint backing vocals in the chorus for the first time. It may just be Bruce in falsetto, but it represents our hero’s sustaining memory of his love awaiting him.

As night falls, our hero is hopeful. His dream is so close he can almost taste it.

Your sweet memory comes on the evenin’ wind
I sleep and dream of holding you in my arms again
The lights of Brownsville, across the river shine
A shout rings out and into the silty red river I dive

With a new life in sight, he sets off into the river to reunite with his love. The strings are prominent now, and their beauty fills and break our heart simultaneously–because we know how this story ends.

I long, my darling, for your kiss
For your sweet love I give God thanks
A touch of your loving fingertips
Meet me on the Matamoros
Meet me on the Matamoros
Meet me on the Matamoros banks

Our lovers will indeed meet again on the river banks one day, but tragically, today’s not that day.

Bruce performed “Matamoros Banks” nightly on his 2005 solo acoustic tour, always preceding it with an impassioned plea for empathy and action.

But as the tour went on, the emotional impact of “Matamoros Banks” diminished as fans seized the opportunity afforded by the near darkness at the end of the nightly set-closer to rush the stage.

On audience-recorded bootlegs, you can often hear the rush of footsteps during Bruce’s quiet falsetto. When the lights would come up for the encore, casual fans in the front rows would be astonished to discover a throng of hardcore fans who had suddenly and without warning appeared in front of them after making their own unauthorized crossing of the show floor.

Read into that whatever irony you will.

So in lieu of another concert video, I’ll leave you with my favorite live performance of “Matamoros Banks”–the one from the DVD side of the DualDisc version of the Devils & Dust album. It features Bruce’s live arrangement (complete with falsetto ending), filmed in quiet reflection and contemplation–the way the song is meant to be heard.

Updated January 5, 2020:

Shortly before Christmas, Bruce unexpectedly and without fanfare published a new concert video of “Matamoros Banks” to his official site, with the following explanation:

More than 2,500 asylum-seekers are living in a state of intense danger on the streets of Matamoros, Mexico. Many of the most vulnerable people fleeing danger and persecution in Central America and the Caribbean end up in Matamoros because of the widespread belief that the crossing at that point is relatively easier than desert ports of entry. The majority of people waiting at the makeshift refugee camp on the river’s edge are single mothers with multiple young children seeking to reunite with their extended family in the United States. This problem is worsening, as more than 100 new migrants arrive each day and are forced to remain (potentially for up to two years) pursuant to new US government policies. Grassroots groups in the area are the only organizations currently providing support, but their resources are limited, and they are overwhelmed by the growing scope of this crisis. Project Adelante seeks to provide support for families and youth by bringing together professionals across disciplines (refugee camp management, law, medicine, mental health, child development, and religion) to evaluate and address the range of needs, working with existing partners in both Mexico and Brownsville when possible, to effectively respond to the crisis in Matamoros. 

The footage hails from (we believe) one of Bruce’s solo acoustic shows in Boston in 2005, and it finally does justice to this beautiful song with a superbly filmed performance.

Matamoros Banks
Recorded: 2004 (strings); uncertain (core recording)
Released: Devils & Dust (2005)
First performed: April 21, 2005 (Asbury Park, NJ)
Last performed: November 22, 2005 (Trenton, NJ)

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