Bruce Springsteen and an all-star cast celebrate the roots of American music

A baker’s dozen of high-profile, iconic American rock ‘n’ roll and blues-rock musicians gathered on June 5 in West Long Branch, New Jersey, at The OceanFirst Bank Center on the Monmouth University campus for Music America: The Songs That Shaped Us, a two-night concert celebration held in conjunction with the opening of the Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music. The Center for American Music officially opened to the public on June 13.

To his credit, Bruce himself—still, in many respects, a humble, shy, and introspective person—asked that the $50 million, 32,000-square-foot museum be not so much a celebration of his life, music, and career, but rather a place that also pays homage to his many varied influences. Bruce’s influences include Robert Johnson, Woody Guthrie, Muddy Waters, Elvis Presley, Pete Seeger, and dozens of other musicians, both past and present.

To be sure, with names like Dion DiMucci, Jimmie Vaughan, Gary Clark Jr., Nils Lofgren, Darlene Love, Little Steven Van Zandt, Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams, Jackson Browne, Sheryl Crow, and Mavis Staples on the bill, along with Springsteen himself, it would have been hard for any fan of American roots music to leave this concert feeling less than satisfied.

All of these artists were presented in a well-orchestrated, revue-style show with an expert backing band, the Disciples of Soul, led by Marc Ribler, an extraordinarily talented guitarist and bandleader I first wrote about for The Asbury Park Press more than a dozen years ago.

Ribler was based in New York City before relocating to the Shore area in the early 2000s.

Bob Santelli, executive director of the new museum and a Monmouth U. alumnus, taught rock music history at the school. He left in the late 1990s to become Director of Education at the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, then became a director at the Experience Music Project in Seattle and the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles. Santelli served as emcee, explaining a bit about each performer, musical genre, and time frame while set changes were taking place.

The concerts were divided into two parts: Revolutionary War to World War II on Thursday, June 4, and World War II to the present on Friday, June 5. We were not able to attend on June 4.

As you can imagine, the 4,100-seat OceanFirst/Monmouth U. basketball arena was sold out. Most patrons and guests came from various parts of New Jersey, but many also attended from neighboring states.

The concert explored iconic songs by iconic performers that are part of American roots music while also touching on newer genres like rap through Chuck D. and Public Enemy.

Springsteen took the stage early to pay tribute to one of his primary influences as a youth, Elvis Presley. He offered spirited vocals and a confident stage presence on the familiar Presley tunes “Jailhouse Rock” and “Burning Love.”

While blues, gospel, and roots music aficionados like myself are familiar with Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams, Springsteen, Van Zandt, and company shared the spotlight by bringing in these talented, yet perhaps less familiar, musicians.

Multi-faceted Sheryl Crow was a standout, offering soul-stirring takes on Patsy Cline’s “I Fall to Pieces” and a duet with Springsteen on Bob Dylan’s “I Shall Be Released,” with Campbell and Williams adding backing vocals and guitar.

Mavis Staples offered a stunning take on The Band’s “The Weight,” which turned out to be a real crowd pleaser, as Staples is now in her 80s yet moved about the stage comfortably.

Rappers Chuck D. and Flavor Flav closed the program and referred to the Disciples of Soul as the E Street Band before a series of finale tunes brought all of the performers on stage.

Springsteen later was joined on stage by Gary Clark Jr. and Jimmie Vaughan, Austin-based musicians who are no strangers to Antone’s, the blues club that helped launch Austin’s still-lively club scene in 1975. They, along with Nils Lofgren and Ribler, offered a roof-raising take on Bobby “Blue” Bland’s “Further On Up the Road.”

Other tunes in the finale included Eddie Floyd’s “Raise Your Hand” and “I Don’t Want to Go Home,” a tune written by Van Zandt and popularized by Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, which featured Jon Bon Jovi on vocals. Earlier in the concert, E Street Band guitarist Nils Lofgren and Bon Jovi delivered a passion-filled take on Neil Young’s bluesy “Rockin’ in the Free World.”

Gary Clark Jr. offered a spry tribute to Jimi Hendrix with “Power of Soul.” After a brief intermission, E Street Band keyboardist David Sancious and drummer Will Calhoun of Living Colour explored jazz-rock fusion with one of Sancious’ originals, “Sleight of Hand.”

Appropriately, the concert concluded with Bruce, alone on stage with his acoustic guitar, performing his own recent composition, “Land of Hope and Dreams.”

This kind of “edutainment” was pioneered by Santelli at the Rock Hall in Cleveland, which hosted week-long celebrations of the music of Robert Johnson and, the following September, Muddy Waters. Similar “edutainment” events include the annual Satchmo SummerFest in New Orleans, a celebration of Louis Armstrong held every August, and the interview stage at the annual New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, held every spring at the Fair Grounds Race Course in Gentilly and often called “the mother of all festivals.”

As exciting as this marathon, revue-style concert was, perhaps what is most exciting about the Springsteen Center for American Music is what is to come. There’s a small, acoustically correct theater inside the museum, plenty of permanent and rotating exhibit spaces, and listening posts throughout the museum. Other venues on the Monmouth campus include Pollak Auditorium, which earlier that week hosted a concert of Native American folk, rock, and blues music featuring Native American musicians from as far away as Florida and Ontario.

Before Springsteen took the stage with just his guitar for the closing number, Santelli urged the crowd to bring friends and family to the new Springsteen Center for American Music.

“It is going to be our home here, our spiritual home, our pilgrimage home for so many bands from all over the world to come here and understand the power of music, not just with Bruce, but with all of American music.”

One can make the argument that this is yet another arena in which the federal government lags behind technology and the arts, as a museum like this should have been built on the Mall at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., more than a decade ago. After all, recorded American music, in all formats, remains one of our healthiest exports!

All photos courtesy Monmouth University