Bruuuuuuce doesn't ordinarily qualify as a folk music resident but heck he's been trying with his last couple of releases. He's back with a new one and it contains a mixture of styles.
Bruce Springsteen: 'What was done to my country was un-American'
Fiachra Gibbons
The Guardian
February 17, 2012
At a Paris press conference on Thursday night, Bruce Springsteen was asked whether he was advocating an armed uprising in America. He laughed at the idea, but that the question was even posed at all gives you some idea of the fury of his new album Wrecking Ball.
Indeed, it is as angry a cry from the belly of a wounded America as has been heard since the dustbowl and Woody Guthrie, a thundering blow of New Jersey pig iron down on the heads of Wall Street and all who have sold his country down the swanny. Springsteen has gone to the great American canon for ammunition, borrowing from folk, civil war anthems, Irish rebel songs and gospel. The result is a howl of pain and disbelief as visceral as anything he has ever produced, that segues into a search for redemption: "Hold tight to your anger/ And don't fall to your fears … Bring on your wrecking ball."
"I have spent my life judging the distance between American reality and the American dream," Springsteen told the conference, where the album was aired for the first time. It was written, he claimed, not just out of fury but out of patriotism, a patriotism traduced ...
Heard two songs today -- not following the lyrics all that closely -- and thought there are some similarities here. Maybe it's a stretch, maybe not but let's explore.
The first was the James Keelaghan penned "Jenny Brice" -- although the version I heard was performed by Garnet Rogers.
The lyrics:
This morn as i was lost in thought, as up the hill I wandered
Sitting there to greet the dawn, upon my life I pondered
I glanced along the shaded grove where often I had been
With Jenny Bryce, Jack the Rover's daughter.
Her family came of tinker's stock, baptized by flowing water
Old Jack, he was disposed to roam, and so his only daughter
And me a lad of seventeen, I left my parent's home
for Jenny Bryce, Jack the Rover's daughter.
And from wooded glen to heathered moor, with Jenny I went roving
Her voice so sweet and soft and low, from daylight til day's closing
And when at night I laid to rest, t'was in my true loves arms
Jenny Bryce, jack the Rover's daughter.
One day she said, "Oh Willie, I weary of the road"
So a fine small house I built for her, down in yon shaded grove
And there, with Jenny by my side, I led a settled life
With Jenny as companion, and as wife.
And one day she said, "Oh Willie, a child for us I bear",
And all that winter long I worked and helped her to prepare.
But none but God could help us, with a birth such as she had
She was Jenny Bryce, she bore for us a daughter.
And six tortured hours she lingered, and never once complained
And all there was to do for her, I did to ease her pain
When morning came I formed a cross, and carved on it her name
Jenny Bryce, Jack the Rover's daughter.
And this morn as I was lost in thought, as up the hill I ambled,
Back along the shaded stream, where with my love I rambled,
To greet a child of seven years, who bears her mother's name,
She is Jenny Bryce, Jenny Bryce's daughter.
The story arc: from being sedate to joining the peripatetic life, then doing a 180 and settling down, followed by tragedy.
The second was "Beeswing" by Richard Thompson. The lyrics:
I was nineteen when I came to town
They called in the Summer of Love
They were burning babies, burning flags
The Hawks against the Doves
I took a job in the STeamie
Down on Cauldrum Street
I fell in love with a laundry girl
Was working next to me
She was a rare thing
Fine as a beeswing
So fine a breath of wind might blow her away
She was a lost child
She was running wild, she said
As long as there's no price on love, I'll stay
And you wouldn't want me any other way
Brown hair zig-zag round her face
And a look of half-surprise
Like a fox caught in the headlights
There was an animal in her eyes
She said, young man, O can't you see
I'm not the factory kind
If you don't take me out of here
I'll surely lose my mind
She was a rare thing
Fine as a beeswing
So fine a breath of wind might blow her away
She was a lost child
She was running wild, she said
As long as there's no price on love, I'll stay
And you wouldn't want me any other way
We busked around the market towns
And picked fruit down in Kent
And we could tinker lamps and pots
And knives wherever we went
And I said that we might settle down
Get a few acres dug
Fire burning in the hearth
And babies on the rug
She said O man, you foolish man
It surely sounds like hell
You might be lord of half the world
You'll not own me as well
She was a rare thing
Fine as a beeswing
So fine a breath of wind might blow her away
She was a lost child
She was running wild, she said
As long as there's no price on love, I'll stay
And you wouldn't want me any other way
We was camping down the Gower one time
The work was pretty good
She thought we shouldn't wait for frost
And I thought maybe we should
We were drinking more in those days
And tempers reached a pitch
Like a fool I let her run
With the rambling itch
Last I hear she's sleeping out
Back on Derby beat
White Horse in her hip pocket
And a wolfhound at her feet
And they say she even married once
A man named Romany Brown
But even a Gypsy caravan
Was too much settliing down
And they say her flower is faded now
Hard weather and hard booze
But maybe that's just the price you pay
For the chains you refuse
She was a rare thing
Fine as a beeswing
And I miss her more than ever words could say
If I could just taste
All of her wildness now
If I could hold her in my arms today
Then I wouldn't want her any other way
The story arc: mutual lives of roaming, than pairing up but remaining on the road. Then one party wants to settle down which ends the relationship. The further life story of the male is left blank while the female continues living rough after a brief period of caravanning and ultimately shows the wear and tear of her chosen path.
Yes, no great discoveries or 'ah ha' connections. The question of who pays a larger price for one's decisions is unanswered. In one case, it was the woman making the decision and the male agreeing. In the second, the man suggesting, the woman declining and a cleaving of the relationship.
