Roll of the Dice: James Lincoln Deere

With so much stylistic variation from album to album, it’s easy to miss the throughlines in Bruce Springsteen’s songwriting.

Case in point: The Ghost of Tom Joad.

If you were a recent convert, Springsteen’s 1995 album seemed a shocking tonal shift from the bright, optimistic Human Touch and Lucky Town albums that immediately preceded it. For longtime fans, it was a return to the quiet, introspective, acoustic sound of Nebraska.

But if we listen to his lyrics from Nebraska to Born in the U.S.A. to Tunnel of Love and even Lucky Town, we find thematic veins that are always present in Bruce’s songwriting no matter the broader context of any given album.

We’ll explore one of those themes this week over the course of three installments, beginning with a 1982 acoustic outtake called “James Lincoln Deere.”

At the time he recorded that demo in March 1982, Bruce was carrying Nebraska around on a cassette tape. He obviously wasn’t finished with that style of cinematic, film noir songwriting, however, as “James Lincoln Deere” demonstrates.

From the very first line, we hear similarities to the quiet, first-person reflection of “Highway Patrolman,” and in its thematic exploration of the relationship between unemployment and crime, we hear distinct parallels to “Johnny 99.”

When times get hard, both Ralph and Jimmy find themselves driven by desperation first to theft and inevitably to murder. But whereas Johnny 99’s capital crime stems from an alcoholic binge, the titular anti-hero of “James Lincoln Deere” is more cold-blooded.

Bruce starts his tale with the epilogue: Jimmy Deere is a resident of Richfield Prison, interned for a crime we won’t learn about until the end.

My name is James Francis Deere
I was born in Remington
Found my home in Richfield prison
Where I paid for the wrongs I done
Once, I was free and on the streets of Indiana
And I was twenty-two
Just a kid, no better or worse than you

I don’t know why Deere refers to himself as James Francis in the first line and James Lincoln in the last. This was a work in progress when Bruce recorded it, and it’s not the only inconsistency we’ll find.

Middle name notwithstanding, James introduces himself to us as an everyman, “no better or worse than you.” Or at least he was, once–which tells us he isn’t quite so much now. At the outset, though, life was good. He had a job, and he had a girl, and they had something going in their world.

Me and Terry married in the spring
We moved in with her ma and pa
On our wedding night she sighed, “Jimmy,
We can have anything we want.”

She got a job in Silverton
We worked hard and we scraped and saved
And we got by all right
On the money that we made

Life was good. Not easy, but good. As his wife reminds him: it isn’t money that buys happiness anyway. That’s easier to believe when you have a steady income of course. Jimmy and Terry did have a steady income, though, so when Terry’s seedy brother Sill tries to persuade Jimmy to pursue ill-gotten gains, it’s not hard for Jimmy to turn him down.

Terry had a brother
A brother, name of Sill
Made a livin’ stealin’ farm equipment
Down in Wiggonville

He’d sit at my kitchen table Friday nights
His roll of dough he’d flash
Say, “Johnny, you need a little extra work
All you gotta do is ask.

“You got a wife and a child to feed
There’s no one, buddy, lookin’ out here for you
In this world a man takes what he can
Or he ain’t nothin’ but a fool”

There’s another name change in that second stanza; I think we can chalk that one up as accidental, too. However, it’s interesting that Bruce specifically tempts his protagonist with stolen farm equipment and names his character very similarly to a leading purveyor of such equipment.

More pertinent, though, is Sill’s voice of temptation. It’s a storytelling tradition that dates back to the Book of Genesis: casting a role that for most of us is just a voice in our own minds. Bruce employs it often; we’ll see it again in “The Big Muddy,” for example, and again in “Straight Time.”

(“Straight Time” isn’t the only Ghost of Tom Joad connection to “James Lincoln Deere.” If Bruce’s 1982 guitar melody sounds strangely familiar, it’s because he’d re-use it for “The New Timer” in 1995.)

Now here comes the inciting incident:

Then came the shutdowns
And our whole world went black
Man said, “These jobs are goin’ boys
And they ain’t comin’ back.”

You recognized that verse instantly, didn’t you? “James Lincoln Deere” never saw an official release, but those last two lines would soon migrate to “My Hometown.”

What happens to good people when faced with hard times? That’s a question Bruce has explored many times over the decades, and this was one of the earliest examples.

Then I required a different job
Couldn’t find none
Found myself sittin’
On the curb outside Sill’s house

Forced to find a new job but unable to do so, Jimmy remembers his brother-in-law’s words: You got a wife and a child to feed. There’s no one, buddy, lookin’ out here for you. In this world a man takes what he can or he ain’t nothin’ but a fool.”

Bruce employs an interesting storytelling device at this point, flashing forward to the trial but still keeping us in suspense about the offense. Jimmy now sits behind bars, unable to do anything but reflect on the consequences of his actions between visits from his wife and child.

Trial, trial was short
An honest man had died
They put us on the prison trucks
And let us ride

Now I got nothin’ to do
Except wait for these days to pass
I see my wife and child
Through double-pained Richfield glass

Only at the very end of the song does Jimmy reveal the nature of his crime, and it’s breathtakingly cruel.

Me and Sill, we robbed a Stop and Shop
On a cold and windy night
I had my pistol
And I shot a boy in flight.

I held my pistol to his face
His eyes caught fire with fear
I said, “Remember me before you die.
My name is James Lincoln Deere.”

In my honest opinion, the reveal doesn’t really work. It’s too dark a turn, and one that hasn’t been earned by planting and watering seeds throughout the song. In “Johnny 99,” Ralph commits manslaughter while under the influence, but Jimmy executes his victim point blank with a cold fury.

Bruce’s tales of good men turned bad work better when subtler, and by the time “James Lincoln Deere” evolved into the also unreleased “Richfield Whistle,” he had crafted a much stronger, more haunting story.

We’ll listen to that one later this week.

James Lincoln Deere
Recorded: March 1982
Never released
Never performed

Looking for your favorite Bruce song? Check our full index. New entries every week!