“To me, [Bruce Springsteen] is the Steinbeck of our time. He has this amazing gift of putting you in a place and a feeling at the same time, with only a line or a word or a melody.”
Gregory Alan Isakov to Elizabeth Griffin, Esquire, June 4, 2014
…and we’re back! Just in time too, because the list of terrific Springsteen covers keeps growing by the day.
Take today’s entry, for instance: a brand-new cover performed live only two nights ago in Portland, Maine, by two artists who are certainly not strangers to Bruce’s catalog.
Gregory Alan Isakov has been covering Bruce for at least a decade. While that’s not exactly surprising for a Philly-raised recording artist, his choice of material might be: he tends to delve deeply into Bruce’s The Ghost of Tom Joad album. Catch him in concert and chances are good you’ll get at least one song from that album.
But Saturday night in Portland, the audience got two: the title track and a deep cut.
In fact, the encore set was almost entirely a Springsteen cover set, and Isakov wasn’t alone for it: he was joined by his tour co-headliner Patty Griffin. Griffin, of course, has recorded and performed some of the very best Springsteen covers out there, and the only reason I haven’t featured more of them here is that I assume most fans are already familiar with them.
Of their three Springsteen covers in the encore set (one of which was a performance of Patty’s arrangement of “Stolen Car” above), here’s my pick for the best: a gorgeous rendition of my favorite The Ghost of Tom Joad track: “Highway 29.”
Isakov and Griffin are on tour right now, with that very Springsteenian encore set. Catch them if you can!
