Get in touch! Part Five starts with a funeral and a realization: when Bruce's friend and former Castile's band mate, George Theiss, dies, Bruce becomes the last man left from his teenage band. That shock pushes him into Springsteen on Broadway, Western Stars, and Letter to You—projects that ask what kind of ancestor, and what kind of citizen, you want to be when you’re running out of time. We follow him into those late-career marathon shows and finally to a 2025 European stage, where he...

Get in touch! Factories closing, marriages cracking, the glitter of the ’80s hiding a lot of hurt—Part 3 lives right in that gap between the American dream and the American day-to-day. Bruce digs into Darkness, The River, and Nebraska, writing about people who rarely get a mic: laid-off workers, young couples in over their heads, neighbors hanging on by their fingernails. Then Born in the U.S.A. turns into a worldwide roar, and politicians try to strip the songs of their doubts and their comp...

Get in touch! Part Four is where the story cuts close to the bone. Bruce lets the E Street Band go, stares down his own failures on Tunnel of Love, and writes The Ghost of Tom Joad for the people that some Americans prefer not to see: migrants, the unemployed, the left-behind. The band reunites, “American Skin (41 Shots)” forces a conversation about race and fear, and The Rising and Wrecking Ball turn grief and economic anger into something like a shared civic ritual. We carry all of th...

Get in touch! Part two picks up in the clubs and dives where Bruce and the band are trying to outrun obscurity. We walk with them through the struggle to get the first records heard, the critics who saw the spark, and the brutal work of making Born to Run: months of second-guessing, endless mixes, and the very real possibility that it might all collapse under its own ambition. We hear about Jon Landau’s famous “I saw rock and roll future” review, the Bottom Line breakthrough, the U.K. trip th...

Get in touch! We start the episode in 2025, at Springsteen's show in Manchester, UK where he makes a landmark statement about America's "leadership" before we flash back to his formative years. A cramped house in Freehold. A father smoking in the dark kitchen. A kid staring at the radio like it’s a way out and a way in. In Part one, we meet Bruce not as a legend, but as a working-class American kid learning early what struggle, pride, and community look like. As we follow him into those early...

Get in touch! For over five decades, Jackson Browne has stood at the intersection of melody and message—crafting songs that speak not only to the heart, but also to the conscience. In an age of division and disinformation, his music feels like a lifeline to an older, more grounded sense of American democratic values—truth, empathy, accountability, and moral courage. This episode dives into Browne’s lifelong journey as both a master songwriter and a tireless activist, examining how his music h...

Get in touch! In this episode of American Song, we explore the life and legacy of Warren Zevon, one of America’s most fearless and darkly funny songwriters. Known for his biting wit and uncompromising honesty, Zevon built a career chronicling the messier sides of the human experience—addiction, regret, heartbreak, and mortality. From his early days as a struggling songwriter in Los Angeles to the unexpected success of “Werewolves of London,” Zevon never stopped grappling with the contradictio...

Get in touch! You could think of Randy Newman as a musical Mark Twain. His songs draw up from a range of curiously disconnected observations about life in this era’s America in some of the same ways that Twain’s pen spoke of the America he lived in. Twain’s Mississippi paddlewheels churned the dark waters of that rolling river mixing old and new, sacred and profane and In his songs, Newman is doing the same thing. He draws from American roots music, Tin Pan Alley, the blues, and orchest...

Get in touch! In this haunting and deeply reflective episode, we explore the music of Bruce Cockburn—an artist who persistently challenges our indifference and urges us to reckon with the moral weight of being human. His songs are not just art; they are calls to awareness, rooted in compassion and fierce clarity. We delve into the global injustices that course through his music: the devastation of climate change, and the brutal legacy of capitalism in the Global South, where lives are often s...

Get in touch! In these days, when people play fast and loose with truth for the purpose of personal gain at the expense of important things like rights, and even survival, I hope this episode, and the next one help us all regain a little sanity and peace. Personal Truth takes you on a powerful journey through the birth of the singer-songwriter era, spotlighting artists who didn't just sing about the world—but cracked themselves wide open to show us their own. Starting in the fertile gro...

Get in touch! By the late 1960’s, folk was beginning to feel “scarred and battered”, so what came next in this tradition was less political, and much more personal. The world was changing politically, socially, and culturally. Some of the new generation of singers and songwriters felt that staying relevant meant they had to move away from folk, towards more personal themes. The ‘70s was the “Me” decade. Instead of drawing from what was happening in the outside world, one group of song-writers...

Get in touch! It seems like every ten years or so, society experiences a great reset. The end of the ‘60s was like that. The idealism and teen-culture of the ‘60’s was ten years older and moving into adult life. Just like everything else in life that was questioned and re-invented. Some musicians began pushing the boundaries of what rock music could become. Across the Atlantic, and as Ian Anderson, of Jethro Tull put it, English rockers “were trying to be orig...

Get in touch! It seems like every ten years or so, society experiences a great reset. The end of the ‘60s was like that. The idealism and teen-culture of the ‘60’s was ten years older and moving into adult life. Just like everything else in life that was questioned and re-invented, some musicians began pushing the boundaries of what rock music could become. Across the Atlantic, and as Ian Anderson, of Jethro Tull put it, English rockers “were trying to be originators...

Get in touch! It seems like every ten years or so, society experiences a great reset. The end of the ‘60s was like that. The idealism and teen-culture of the ‘60’s was ten years older and moving into adult life. Just like everything else in life that was questioned and re-invented, some musicians began pushing the boundaries of what rock music could become. Across the Atlantic, and as Ian Anderson, of Jethro Tull put it, English rockers "were tryin...

Get in touch! Punk may have been born in America, but it had many homes around the world. In every place it went, punk became part of the struggle for social change. Punk's roots are in the blues, music made for expressing struggles and refusing to accept things the way they are. With heritage like this, it should be no surprise that it moved people and shook things up in the powerful ways it did! Join us, as we see how punk expressed the real lives of the people making and list...

Get in touch! When the dreams and promises you’ve placed your hopes in end up being a mirage, its only human to feel angry. In the mid 1970’s, a lot of teens and young adults found themselves in this camp. The nation’s shift toward a decidedly more cynical era could be heard in anti-war statements such as "War is not healthy for children and other living things" On the equal rights agenda, the demand for black civil rights encouraged a louder beating of the drum as seen in t...

Get in touch! America's Punk movement was started on both coasts. Early proto-punks like the MC5 and the New York Dolls were followed by a number of other early iconic acts who played at several New York clubs, including CBGB's (Country Blue Grass and Blues), such as the The Ramones, the Talking Heads, Blondie, and Patti Smith. Meanwhile, LA and San Francisco had a decidedly more political movement propelled by bands like X, The Dead Kennedy's, and Black Flag. These bands ha...

Get in touch! This is the second half of a two-part episode In the late 1960's and early 1970's, Southern rock, a rebellious fusion of blues, rock and roll, and country music, emerged as the defiant cry from the heart of the South. Lynyrd Skynyrd's guitars wailed like banshees, their lyrics echoing the region's resistance to outside finger-pointing and strengthened a determination to preserve their own cultural identity. Never mind the warts and blemishes. The Allman Brothers Ban...

Get in touch! In the late 1960's and early 1970's, Southern rock, a rebellious fusion of blues, rock and roll, and country music, emerged as the defiant cry from the heart of the South. Lynyrd Skynyrd's guitars wailed like banshees, their lyrics echoing the region's resistance to outside fingerpointing and strengthened a determination to preserve their own cultural identity. Never mind the warts and blemishes. The Allman Brothers Band played with improvisations like soaring eagles...

Get in touch! This is part one of a two-part focus on Reggae music. The heart of Reggae music has always been politics and spirituality. In this two part episode, you'll learn about some of the musical and political forces in Jamaica's colorful past that all contributed to the music that we celebrate as reggae today. From Marcus Garvey, the modern-day prophet who had a vision for the black people living in the new world, and Ethiopia's Emperor Hailie Salassie, whose form...