Cover Me: Down the Road Apiece

If ever a rock and roll recording was predestined for live jamming, it’s “Down the Road Apiece.”

Even in its original boogie-woogie recording by the Will Bradley Trio in 1940, we can’t help but feel like we’re hearing a live performance in a smoky club.

The self-referential song (Eight Beat Mack and Big Daddy Slack are the nicknames of two of the musicians) became a Top 10 hit late in the year.

In 1946, Amos Milburn took it uptempo with his cover, but the song really came to life when he performed it live, as in this 1954 television appearance.

Ella Mae Morris recorded “Down the Road Apiece” in the 1950s (changing the musician references to “Sam and Spider-Finger Jack”), and in 1960, Chuck Berry covered it, name-checking “Kickin’ McCoy, the rubber-legged boy.”

The Rolling Stones changed “Kickin'”  to “Charlie” when they recorded their 1965 version, no doubt a nod to their own drummer…

…and it’s this version that almost certainly inspired Bruce Springsteen to first cover “Down the Road Apiece” during his Bruce Springsteen Band era of 1971-72. How do we know? Because he kept the “Charlie McCoy” reference.

A jam piece from its very origin, “Down the Road Apiece” proved a perfect showcase for the talents of the Bruce Springsteen Band players: Bruce and Steve Van Zandt both take a turn in the guitar solo spotlight, and David Sancious dazzles as always. Take a listen to this vintage show-opening performance from February 1972.

“Down the Road Apiece” was a perfect fit for the Bruce Springsteen Band, but when the BSB evolved into the ESB later that year, Bruce set the song aside and didn’t look back for almost a quarter-century. He rediscovered it in 1995, when he performed it not with his own band but as a guest with two of his good friends.

That summer, Bruce travelled to Berlin to record a live video for “Hungry Heart” (fifteen years after its original release) with Wolfgang Niedecken and his Leopardefellband. Bruce fronted the band through “Hungry Heart” seven times through that day, and to break it up a bit for their video shoot audience, they interspersed a few covers into the set–the first of which was, “Down the Road Apiece.”

That Berlin performance might have been a one-off, if not for Joe Grushecky. A big Rolling Stones fan, Joe added “Down the Road Apiece” to his set lists on his October Assault mini-tour for American Babylon later that year. Since Bruce was an honorary Houserocker for the entire tour, that added another half-dozen “Down the Road Apiece” performances to the record, and we’re fortunate that one of them has seen official release on Joe’s 1999 live album, Down the Road Apiece: Live, with Joe and Bruce sharing lead vocals.

It must have been as much fun for Bruce and Joe to perform “Down the Road Apiece” together as it was to witness it, because they reprised it another eight times over the decade that followed.

It’s been six years now since Bruce and Joe last played “Down the Road Apiece” together, but in the years since, Danny Clinch’s Tangiers Blues Band picked up the slack, first performing it with Bruce at the Asbury Lanes re-opening event in 2018.

Bruce and the Tangiers Blues Band played “Down the Road Apiece” one more time together, just last year at the annual Kristen Ann Carr benefit.

We might be in a pandemic pause at the moment, but when it finally lifts there are gonna be some epic jams on the Jersey Shore, and odds are good that we’ll see another Springsteen performance of “Down the Road Apiece.”

Down the Road Apiece
First performed: July 10, 1971 (Lincroft, NJ)
Last performed: April 13, 2019 (New York City, NY)