Another song for the second Springsteen tribute album.
This is a very simple version of a Woody Guthrie song which Bruce Springsteen performed a few times in the past during some of his tours and he has also included it during some shows in his current 2009 tour as well.

Interestingly to make the song more current I’ve read that Bruce Springsteen changed the lyric “The Gamblin’ man is rich while the working man is poor.” into “The Banking man is rich while the working man is poor.”, so here it is with that lyric change as well.

I chose for a simple arrangement with just a warm synthesizer pad as backing and the vocal. It will probably be the only track on the album with an apparent electronic backing as I am going to keep the rest more acoustic sounding (guitars and piano). I think it is a slighly eerie/empty sounding version but hopefully interesting because of that and will probably stand out as a bit different in amongst the rest of the songs on the final album.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Well sooner than I thought I am working once more on some Bruce Springsteen songs which I will probably turn into another full album. Here is my version of the title track taken from the 2005 album Devils & Dust by Bruce Springsteen. I changed the arrangement quite a bit by settling for Piano and vocal (which I actually think will form for a large part the basis of the full album). I have tried to express the emotions in the song by including contrast both in the vocal (low to high range) and in the piano part (starting very low and ending with a high improvisation part). The original I think is a brilliant song and one of my favourite Springsteen songs from recent years.

Here is my version which will also be the first song on the new tribute album which I hope to complete within the next few months.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.