{"id":29031,"date":"1988-09-02T11:00:00","date_gmt":"1988-09-02T18:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/estreetshuffle.com\/?p=29031"},"modified":"2026-02-24T18:11:31","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T02:11:31","slug":"matr-joe-grushecky-bruce-springsteen-and-patti-scialfa-comin-down-maria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/estreetshuffle.com\/index.php\/1988\/09\/02\/matr-joe-grushecky-bruce-springsteen-and-patti-scialfa-comin-down-maria\/","title":{"rendered":"Comin’ Down Maria"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two COVID summers ago, Joe Grushecky and I had a long, detailed conversation about his milestone\u00a0American Babylon<\/em> album, which celebrated its 25th anniversary last year. And in the middle of our conversation, he dropped a bombshell on me.<\/p>\n

I’d asked him how Patti Scialfa’s vocal contributions to “Comin’ Down Maria,” one of the album’s lovelier tracks, had come about. Obviously I knew she’d been in close proximity, since her husband was producing the album, but Bruce himself wasn’t involved with that particular track.<\/p>\n

Or so I thought. And so I’d read.<\/p>\n

“I just had that song,” Joe shrugged. “It was just Bruce and I recording it. And one of us (probably me) said, ‘Hey Patti, want to sit in on this?’ So she came over.”<\/p>\n

Mildly surprised by the “Bruce and I,” I sought to clarify that Bruce was overseeing the recording not participating in it, but Joe disabused me.<\/p>\n

\u201c[It’s] just me and Bruce. We\u2019re the only guys playing instruments… If there\u2019s drum sets, it\u2019s probably electronic drums somehow that we did, plus Patti singing.”<\/p>\n

“Wait,” I said. “I did not know that. I\u2019m not sure anybody\u00a0<\/em>knows that, actually.”<\/p>\n

“Well\u2026 ” Joe laughed sheepishly, “we didn\u2019t actually want to say how much he had done on the record, because he\u2019s pretty much all over it. He\u2019s on every track except ‘No Strings Attached’ and ‘American Babylon.’ On every other song he is playing or singing or something.”<\/p>\n

So there you go: after a quarter-century of hiding in plain sight, a secret Springsteen studio performance was revealed.<\/p>\n