In 2012, Trevor Moss assembled a group of UK artists to mark the 30th anniversary of Bruce Springsteen’s landmark album, Nebraska.
The Nebraska Sessions is neither the first nor the last project to pay tribute to Bruce’s famous 1982 solo project, but it may be the only one recorded the same way Bruce did: on a TEAC Tacsam four-track cassette recorder.
Each track was interpreted and performed by a different artist or band, and in a nod to more modern times, Moss captured each performance on video as well.
The entire album is worth listening to, but my favorite track by far is the daring reinvention of “Open All Night” by Mad Staring Eyes.
Mad Staring Eyes was a six-piece folk combo out of North London that counted Bruce among their influences. (They don’t seem to be active any more, although I’d be happy to be corrected if they are.)
Their shuffling take on “Open All Night” would have been a perfect arrangement for the Seeger Sessions Tour, had Bruce not gone a completely different direction with his own re-imagining of the song.
Their entire performance is great, but for me the highlight is the rocking flute solo(!), very likely inspired by Canned Heat. Who would have thought “Going Up the Country” would graft well onto “Open All Night?”
This is great, but I wish they’d used the lyric “It takes me two hours to get back to where my baby lives” instead of “It’s an all-night run.” One of my favorite things about the album version of the song is the implication that the singer is caught in some kind of time warp and doesn’t know it. He has two hours to go at the start of the song; at the end of the song, after enough driving that he has to stop for gas, he’s got three hours left, and he doesn’t seem to register that there’s something weird about that. To me, that’s part of what makes the song fit so well on Nebraska. This guy seems at first like the only normal, happy person on the album – he’s got a job, a girl, and somewhere to go, even if he’s a little spooked driving alone at night – but then you realize that even this normal dude has somehow strayed into Looking-Glass Country and he’s never going to make it home.
That always makes me laugh, too. I wonder if the vocalist changed the line because it didn’t make sense to him or because he need space to take a breath. 🙂