Today’s Meeting Across the River entry has been covered by Bruce with so many other artists that I can’t choose just one to spotlight.
As for the song itself, it’s easy to see why Woody Guthrie’s “Blowin’ Down This Road” would appeal to Bruce. It’s a populist folk song of persistence and defiance that would have been right at home on the Seeger Sessions or Wrecking Ball tours.
But it took the prompting of Joe Ely, another artist prone to covering Guthrie in concert, to get Bruce to perform it when their tours intersected in Dublin. Bruce joined Joe at his show at Dublin’s National Stadium on the night of May 19, 1993, and the first song they played together–ever–was “Blowin’ Down This Road” in a beautiful acoustic/electric arrangement.
Bruce and Joe became fast friends that night, and before long Bruce invited Joe to join him at a benefit concert the following month in New Jersey. They played a few songs together that night, including Joe’s “Settle For Love” and Guthrie’s “I Ain’t Got No Home,” which Bruce had covered earlier that year.
But toward the end of a marathon encore set, Bruce and Joe decided to reprise their duet in Dublin on “Blowin’ Down This Road.” Perhaps that was a spur-of-the-moment decision though, or at the very least under-rehearsed, because it seems Joe’s vision for how to start the song differed from Bruce’s. In the recording below, you can hear Bruce start off at a brisk pace, only to slow down when he realizes that Joe intends to slow-walk the first verse. The performance is a bit sloppy overall (“A for effort,” Bruce remarks at the end), but the band finds its footing and turns in a decent performance.
Bruce and Joe covered “Blowin’ Down This Road” a few more times during Bruce’s 1996 solo acoustic tour, but Guthrie’s classic fit too well with Bruce’s set list to restrict its outings solely to Ely’s guest appearances.
On the evening of April 25, 1996, Bruce broke out a final encore of “Blowin’ Down This Road” when two of his other friends stopped by his London show: Elliott Murphy (a bit far afield from his home in Paris) and Joe Grushecky (very far afield from his native Pittsburgh).
Bruce played Guthrie’s song once more with Elliott at the tour finale, and then “Blowin’ Down This Road” went back on the shelf for good.
Or so it seemed, at least, until Bruce made a surprise appearance at the Austin Music Awards in 2012, joining Alejandro Escovedo on stage for four songs. Bruce wasn’t the only guest that night: Joe Ely and Garland Jeffries were there, too–and all of them were on stage together for Bruce’s last performance (to date) of “Blowin’ Down This Road.”
Blowin’ Down This Road
First performed: May 19, 1993 (Dublin, Ireland)
Last performed: March 14, 2012 (Austin, TX)
