Nebraska, New Jersey

MeShell NdegeOcello did not appear as advertised, but the New York Guitar Festival tribute to Bruce Springsteen's seminal 1982 album Nebraska was still full of highlights, worth the effort for even for those listeners who, like myself, have always been somewhat indifferent to the Boss's seemingly universal appeal.

The chance to catch a free set by Ms. NdegeOcello, Michelle Shocked, Vernon Reid, and Martha Wainwright had lured me to the no-man's land of the World Financial Center, a part of New York that, as my concert companion put it, is really almost part of New Jersey, anyway. So I was prepared to go with the flow.

The venue certainly felt like home-turf for the gritty song suite of Nebraska, despite the incongruous palm trees of the Versaille-like Winter Garden and an inexplicably cheesy master of ceremonies. A crowd of Springsteen enthusiasts and financial analysts working late (or are they one and the same?) gathered early and stayed for the whole show, which ran through all the songs on Nebraska, plus some extras. My companion, who knew each song by heart, offered ongoing commentary on each interpretation, along with relevant ethnographic information drawn from his childhood on the Jersey shore, which was really helpful, since I was hearing most of these songs for the first time. The exceptions, Born in the USA, and I'm on Fire were written at the same time, but released on a subsequent album you may have heard of.

Jen Chapin did a scorching, slow-burn version of Born in the USA accompanied only by an upright bass, a reintepretation that worked, unlike a lukewarm, folksy I'm on Fire. I missed the performer's name but he, like many of the performers that night, slowed down the driving rhythm and urgency that is signature Springsteen, perhaps in some misguided quest to find the timeless ballad inside the rock song. One reimagining I liked was Vernon Reid and Dan Zanes turning "State Trooper" into a reggae-fied, Bob Marley-meets-Eric Clapton protest jam.

The unspoken expectation that Springsteen himself would show up at some point was ratified with a surprise encore, along with most of the night's performers, doing a rousing sing-along version of Woody Guthrie's "Oklahoma Hills." The crowd, who had remained seated throughout the concert, momentarily recalled its youth when Springsteen wandered onstage, and they gave the stage the polite, 40-something equivalent of the bum's rush. Despite my skepticism that this well-heeled crowd really identified with the hard-scrabble tales of povery and woe they had been listening to all evening, there was no doubting the sheen in the eye of the Jersey banker type standing next to me, intermittently shouting out "Bruce!" as New Jersey's favorite son lit the glassy dome of the Winter Garden with his laconic star power, momentarily ventilating the January chill with the warming "playful prairie breeze ... in those hills where I belong."