Roll of the Dice: Across the Border

“This is a song about how even after the world reveals itself, people keep on going. We return to faith and hope and belief in love, because that’s all there is.”  –Bruce Springsteen, London, April 27 1996

If there’s a song in Bruce’s catalog that we all need right now, it’s “Across the Border.”

Almost certainly inspired by Freddy Fender’s “Across the Borderline” (written by John Hiatt, Jim Dickinson, and Ry Cooder from the 1982 film The Border, Bruce’s song takes a far more hopeful approach to the tale of a would-be Mexican immigrant preparing to make the dangerous and desperate journey northward.

The optimistic bent of “Across the Border” is intentional. In the March/April 1996 issue of Mother Jones, Bruce told interviewer David Corn, “I got to the end of the [The Ghost of Tom Joad] record, and there had been a lot of mayhem. I wanted to leave the door open, so I wrote ‘Across the Border.’ That song is a beautiful dream. It’s the kind of dream you would have before you fall asleep, where you live in a world where beauty is still possible. And in the possibility of beauty there is hope.”

And that’s why “Across the Border” endures as one of Bruce’s most sublime songs: it’s about our ability to stubbornly cling to faith and hope even when our brain tells us the odds are almost hopelessly stacked against us.

For most of its lyrical length, “Across the Border” leads us to believe the narrator’s journey is imminent: Tonight my bag is packed; tomorrow I’ll walk these tracks. By the end of the song, though, we suspect that tomorrow is always a tomorrow away, and that “Across the Border” is a grown-up lullaby the narrator sings to himself and to his distant corazon (who has already made the journey) each night before he drops off to sleep,

Musically, “Across the Border” feels like a lullaby, too, with Bruce gently accompanying himself on acoustic guitar before his small band (Danny Federici on keys and accordion, Marty Rifkin on pedal steel, Jennifer Condos on bass (in her sole Springsteen catalog appearance), and Garry Mallaber on drums) quietly carries us to dreamland.

Tonight my bag is packed
Tomorrow I’ll walk these tracks
That’ll lead me across the border

Tomorrow my love and I
Will sleep ‘neath auburn skies
Somewhere across the border

We’ll leave behind, my dear
Pain and sadness we found here
And we’ll drink from the Bravo’s muddy waters

Where the sky grows gray and wide
We’ll meet on the other side
There across the border

Notice the craft with which Bruce paints the scene: the first stanza (like most of The Ghost of Tom Joad, “Across the Border” does not follow a verse/chorus format) is the narrator’s mission statement; the second begins to paint a vision with the first selection from an entire palette of colors–earth tones at first (auburn, muddy brown, gray) then pastoral (grassy green and gold) as the band kicks in and we drift off to slumber.

For you I’ll build a house
High up on a grassy hill
Somewhere across the border

Where pain and memory
Pain and memory have been stilled
There across the border

And sweet blossoms fill the air
Pastures of gold and green
Roll down into cool clear waters

And in your arms ‘neath open skies
I’ll kiss the sorrow from your eyes
There across the border

We’re reminded of the moment in The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy surrenders to her dream: the waters are no longer muddy but cool and clear, the skies blue and open rather than gray and wide. Even the dry pastures are golden rather than brown.

But there’s a recurrence of pain as well that suggests that our narrator isn’t just dreaming of a better life–he’s dreaming of escape from a hard one. Bruce’s harmonica solo here is a wistful one, our first hint that perhaps the singer’s dream isn’t as within reach as we’d hope. But our narrator redoubles his resolve, filling the following stanzas with his longing.

Tonight we’ll sing the songs
I’ll dream of you my corazon
And tomorrow my heart will be strong

And may the saints’ blessings and grace
Carry me safely into your arms
There across the border

From this point forward, “Across the Border” takes flight, our hero’s resolute faith carried skyward by Soozie Tyrell’s violin (recorded in multiple takes, all of which Bruce uses, interweaving them to dreamlike effect).

And then comes the final stanzas, featuring what is surely one of Bruce’s finest lyrics: for what are we without hope in our hearts?

For what are we
Without hope in our hearts
That someday we’ll drink from God’s blessed waters

And eat the fruit from the vine
I know love and fortune will be mine
Somewhere across the border

Bruce’s final words are heartbreaking: somewhere across the border. Note the change from the definitive there he uses to close each AABA stanza pattern until this point. The songwriter’s deliberate switch from there to somewhere betrays a crack in the narrator’s emotional armor–not enough to weaken the song’s power, but enough to remind us that faith isn’t the same thing as naivete and that hope rhymes with bravery. These notions are important–both here and especially in the song’s sequel, “Matamoros Banks.”

Soozie, Patti Scialfa, and Lisa Lowell provide wordless backing vocals during these last stanzas, a heavenly choir whose voices are the last we hear. Bruce takes a second harmonica solo–this time strong and confident, in sharp contrast with his mid-song solo–with Soozie and Danny providing almost ethereal accompaniment.

There’s an easter egg here too: as the song begins to fade out, Bruce revisits his harmonica solo from “This Hard Land” — which is of course virtually the same song as “Across the Border” in theme and message. We can almost imagine the narrator of “This Hard Land” sending his song out to Frank, crossing paths in dreamland with “Across the Border.” Whether Bruce included this crossover intentionally or subconsciously is something I can’t speak to, but I love that it’s there.

Just as Bruce deliberately placed it near the end of The Ghost of Tom Joad to ensure the album ended on a hopeful note, Bruce closed his main set nightly with “Across the Border” on the Ghost of Tom Joad Tour, and it’s this live version that most fans are familiar with.

Post-Joad performances of “Across the Border” have been rare, but when they happen they’re always special–like with this 2005 performance, in which Bruce is accompanied by Bruce Hornsby on piano…

…or this rare E Street Band performance from 2003, performed as a duet with Emmylou Harris, who memorably covered “Across the Border” with Linda Ronstadt and Neil Young in 1999.

But my all-time favorite performance of “Across the Border” is perhaps the most obscure one. In 1998,  Bruce filmed “Across the Border” for a 30th anniversary television special for Rolling Stone. It was the first-ever performance of the song with a band and its only live performance in an arrangement close to the original album one–with Marty Rifkin, Gary Mallaber, and Danny Federici reprising their studio parts and Jim Hanson subbing for Jennifer Condos on bass).

Although the arrangement is faithful to the studio version, Danny’s accordion is submerged in the mix on the album. Here, he shines, ably carrying the burden of hope entirely on his shoulders. It’s one of my favorite Danny performances captured on film.

Bruce obviously wrote “Across the Border” with a specific context in mind, but the song transcends time and place. For anyone struggling in their circumstances, separated from their loved ones, lacking in safety and security, or feeling like they’re deep in a tunnel with no end in sight, “Across the Border” is a reminder that a better place awaits us just across the border, as long as we keep striving towards it.

For what are we without hope in our hearts?

Update 5/22/21: Bruce played “Across the Border” last week for the first time in thirteen years, and it may have been my favorite performance yet. The occasion was the awarding of the Woody Guthrie Prize, and Bruce is this year’s recipient. He performed a mini-set for the occasion, comprised of songs by and inspired by Woody, and the highlight of the set was most definitely “Across the Border.”

Across the Border
Recorded: April -June 1995
Released: The Ghost of Tom Joad (1995)
First performed: November 21, 1995 (New Brunswick, NJ)
Last performed: May 13, 2021 (Colts Neck, NJ)

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