Let The Day Begin...Let The Day Start!: Day 117 - Devils & Dust

Yesterday I posted about Springsteen's Seeger Sessions album, exactly a year before that was released Bruce released Devils and Dust. It was his third "acoustic" album following The Ghost of Tom Joad and Nebraska.

Bruce Springsteen was very open about the fact that many of the songs from Devils & Dust dated back a decade or more. Springsteen wrote the song "All the Way Home" for Southside Johnny to use in his album Better Days which was released in 1991. The songs "Long Time Comin'" and "The Hitter" were written and performed during Springsteen's solo Ghost of Tom Joad Tour in 1996. "Devils & Dust" is also known to have been written previously, and was featured in soundchecks during The Rising Tour beginning in the summer of 2003 and the following year during the Vote for Change Tour in late 2004.

Starbucks had been considered a possible retail outlet for the album, as it had accounted for about a quarter of all sales for the recently successful Ray Charles's Genius Loves Company. Starbucks, however, declined to sell copies of Springsteen's new album, sparking some headlines. Starbucks rejected the album not only because of the song "Reno", but because of stances that Springsteen had taken on corporate politics and Springsteen not granting approval for a cobranded disc and promotional deal that prominently featured the Starbucks name. Springsteen's label, Columbia Records, balked when the idea was floated, citing the blue-collar champion's well-known opposition to merchandising his music. "There were a number of factors involved...[Lyrics] was one of the factors, but not the only reason," Ken Lombard, president of Starbucks Entertainment, told Reuters. At a concert at the Tower Theater in Philadelphia, Springsteen introduced "Reno" by joking that the album would be available "at Dunkin' Donuts and Krispy Kreme stores everywhere."

Springsteen's performance of the title track at the 48th Grammy Awards caused a bit of a stir when he added a part of "Bring 'em Home" at the end (a song that in full was added to the Seeger Sessions American Land Edition in 2006).

I've done a couple of other posts on Devils & Dust and you can check them out here. There's loads of links to live performances from the 2005 Tour.

I'm not a fan of everything that's on the album but there's enough to make me want to play the album from time to time. I think that a lot of the songs come across a lot better in a live setting.

Devils and Dust - Bruce Springsteen

Columbia

Produced Brendan O'Brien

Released 25th April 2005 Europe and 26th April in the USA

US Chart #1 (Debuted at the top spot)

UK Chart #1

#1 in eight other European Countries:Austria, Belguim, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland, and Spain.

Personnel
    Bruce Springsteen – vocals, guitar, keyboards, bass, drums, harmonica, tambourine, percussion
    Brendan O'Brien – hurdy-gurdy, sarangi, sitar, bass guitar, tambora
    Steve Jordan – drums
    Patti Scialfa – backing vocals
    Soozie Tyrell – violin, backing vocals
    Marty Rifkin – steel guitar
    Lisa Lowell – backing vocals
    Chuck Plotkin – piano
    Danny Federici – keyboards
    Nashville String Machine – strings
    Brice Andrus, Susan Welty, Thomas Witte, Donald Strand – horns
    Mark Pender – trumpet

Let The Day Begin...Let The Day Start!