Bruce Springsteen created Nebraska in 1982 with a four-track recorder, releasing the songs as demos and opting out of full-fleshed production with his trusty E Street Band, whom he had collaborated with for Born to Run, his uncompromised masterpiece.
The result is eerie. The 10 songs are potential rockers spurned in favor of sparse atmosphere—and Springsteen sounds downright harrowing.
Rob Koegler, who works at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, has coordinated Deliver Me From Nowhere, a fascinating new take on Nebraska, performed live in its entirety by a collaboration of local musicians at NCSSM.
“We worked up arrangements that include pedal steel, mandolin, drums, violin, accordion, harmonium, upright bass and guitar,” Koegler wrote in an e-mail. “I wanted to preserve that quality but provide a different context.”
Part of this new context is coupling the concert with two charitable partners, the Coalition to Unchain Dogs and the Southern Coalition for Social Justice.
“The Coalition is a well-organized machine and is very good at getting their message out,” Koegler said.
The North Carolina organization builds fences so that neglected dogs can be released from tethers and has recently attracted support from local groups like Superchunk and Lost in the Trees.
“You see fences going up, and dogs having better conditions at your neighbor’s house,” said Will Hackney, who runs Chapel Hill-based Trekky Records and will play mandolin for the concert. “There’s an instant gratification that is rare with other causes.”
Jason Kutchma of indie-rock band Red Collar, who will play guitar and contribute vocals, explained his interest in the SCSJ, a group of professional philanthropists who help underrepresented people.
“My friend has been dealing with a brain tumor for the past eight years, [and] he recently had a surgery,” Kutchma wrote in an e-mail. “Making ends meet has not been easy. [SCSJ] are acting as an umbrella for [my friend] to receive benefits and help.”
Concertgoers don’t need to have a personal stake in either organization to enjoy the music, which goes beyond rote covers and hero-worship. And diehard Boss fans can expect to be pleased. Deliver Me From Nowhere is “a good enough spin for Springsteen fans, though not distancing it far enough away that they’ll be disappointed with our interpretation,” Kutchma—who’s enjoyed plenty of Nebraska spins himself—said. “It’s a guy and a guitar. That’s it. Though that is enough. Though the song structure is simple and the narrative direct, there’s a depth and complexity that not many other albums have. There is despair and violence all over the album... and yet there’s some hope.”
Though most contributors are big Boss fans, Hackney had never heard Nebraska.
“I think that made the process really rewarding, because I’m getting to know the music by actively playing it,” Hackney said. “I can bring ideas to the process which might not occur to someone who knows the songs inside out.”
Another new discovery for the mandolin player—who also works with Lost in the Trees and fellow Triangle bands Bowerbirds and Midtown Dickens—was that Koegler is actually his next-door neighbor.
“We didn’t really know each other before this process, so its been a nice way to collaborate,” he said. “And our rehearsals have been 40 yards from my house.”
Koegler, who apart from organizing the benefit show will be playing in the band, said he didn’t know any of the contributing members beforehand except for Kutchma, whom he specifically targeted for his vocal talents.
“One starts to run around with the same folks... it’s just the way it goes,” Kutchma said. You get busy with the business aspect of being in a band and participating in other projects takes a back seat. It’s an exceptionally nice change of pace and a real thrill to do something like this.”
Deliver Me From Nowhere also includes a screening of Terrence Malick’s 1973 film Badlands prior to the show. In the film, Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek play Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate, the infamous couple responsible for 11 murders in Nebraska and Wymoning. Its inclusion is no accident—in the eponymous opening track, Springsteen assumes the voice of Starkweather to narrate:
“They wanted to know why I did what I did/Well sir, I guess there’s just a meanness in this world.”
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