In the past three years, Nils Lofgren, the guitarist in Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band for nearly 35 years, has released a career-spanning, 10-disc/DVD box set of his solo work and his first solo live album in more than a decade with a disc of the European tour of that album.
But Lofgren hasn’t been able to mount a tour of the United State to support either. He planned one for 2016, but Springsteen called him at the last minute to do a tour to support “The Ties That Bind: The River Collection,” the 35th anniversary box set of “The River.”
Now, with Springsteen off doing “Springsteen on Broadway,” his theater concert residency in New York City, Lofgren finally has time to promote not only his two most recent discs, but also his entire career apart from the E Street Band.
Lofgren will play Musikfest Cafe at ArtsQuest Center on Sept. 19, and at The Colonial Theatre in Phoenixville on Sept. 20.
In a recent phone interview from his Scottsdale, Ariz., he talked about those new discs, his upcoming shows, the Springsteen tour, and a disc of new music he has in the works.
Here’s an edited transcript of the call:
Nils Lofgren calling from Scottsdale, Ariz., where he lives with his wife, Amy. “Going through our heat spell in summer, but I really love it here.”
LEHIGH VALLEY MUSIC: Good morning, Nils.
NILS LOFGREN: “How you doin’, man?”
Just fine, thanks. How are you?
“Ah, pretty good. Dealing with, uh … we lost Aretha. That’s pretty awful. Just awful. I knew she was ill, but still. It’s just such a … you know, light in our lives with her music and songs. Just everything that she shared, it’s just kind of hard to believe she’s gone.
“But hey, you know, she’s in peace now. And I didn’t know her personally, so the music’s here – I’ve been listening to it. Thank God. There are just hundreds of, you know, beautiful songs she left behind.
“But anyway – we’ve been losing a lot of greats and there’s nobody greater than her.”
Yeah. I did an obituary for her for my paper this morning and I called up a review I did in 2014 in Philadelphia, and she was just amazing. Sill, at that age, was just amazing. So …
“Yeah, it’s crazy. That’s kind of one of the magical things from music. I mean, I feel terrible that we lost her and she wasn’t around longer. But at the same, her voice is in my phone, on my record table. It’s in my life and will remain so. Which is one of the beautiful gifts of music. You know, if you’re willing to go through what you have to share – which, of course, nobody did better than her.”
Absolutely. So let’s jump into this: You’re going to be playing out Musikfest Café in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania on Sept. 19.
“I grew up in the Washington, D.C., area – Maryland, Virginia. I left Chicago when I was 8 years old and grew up in D.C. My brothers and mom are still back there. We’re actually starting this run of shows with three shows at the Birchmere in Alexandrea (Va.). That’s kind of hometown shows for me, and my brothers come up and sing with me.
“And me and Greg Varlotta, the gentleman I’m playing with, will hit the road and we got a nice run of shows for three and a half weeks in the Northeast. Looking forward to it.”
So tell me a little about the shows. Acoustic duo, yes?
“Yeah, I, um, do solo shows, of course – which is a different animal, by myself. But I love playing with what I call swing men – my brother and I started this way back in the early ‘80s – just having another sound to play off or play to, or being able to, instead of finger-pick the melodies and rhythm, I can play lead guitar, which is not my favorite thing to do, but I love to do it. And it’s fun to have someone, you know, keep the train rolling while I can go off and improvise.
“And Greg’s amazing. He plays keyboards, guitar, sings. He also is a great trumpet player, and will have his trumpet along. And he’s a great tap dancer, of all things. And he’s from a deep musical school of tap – where it’s a percussion instrument. It’s not kind of show and tell.
“So we’ll use tap dancing (laughs) trumpet, piano, guitars, vocals.
“I put out a box set – ‘Face the Music – a 10-disc retrospective of my 50 years on the road and recording, and I’m real proud of that. My wife, Amy, produced the packaging and the art. And I spent 2 ½ years putting it together and hand-picked like 180-some songs. And fortunately, Fantasy Music let me put out the whole thing. They went and got the rights to every song I wanted.
“So it just kind of focused me on the best of my career, and gave me a whole new set list of songs to pull from. And I’m excited.
“I’ll jump around – there’ll be a little electric guitar here and there. I’ll sit at the piano for 20 minutes or so and just try to share the best of what I’ve been up to for half a century.
“I’m working on a new album now that I’m hoping to have done at the end of the year and out in early spring. I don’t have a company to put it out – I just make music to share on my website. But I’m excited to have a new batch of music I’m happy about.
“But this tour will be kind of a retrospective of the best of 50 years of work. I love playing live – miss leaving home now. So it almost keeps me more focused and grateful when I’m out there. To get a chance to sing for people who went to the trouble of getting to the show.”
[Laughs] The last time I interviewed you, I told you that you were answering questions before I asked them. And you’re doing it again.
“[Laughs] Well I just ramble. I’m a rambler. So cut me off when you need to.”
No, you know what? You know how to be interviewed! So let me go back: I saw on your website that you’re working on a new album. Still looking to release it by next spring?
“Yeah. I mean, it’s … again, I want it to be right. I’m really excited about it. I tracked a bunch of songs and extras with Andy Newmark on drums and Kevin McCormick on bass – who are dear old friends who made the ‘Wonderland’ album, the ‘Silver Lining’ album. Andy was on the ‘Flip’ album and ‘Came to Dance.’ The both of them play with me a lot and we’ve toured a lot together.
“So my wife, Amy, looked after us. They moved into the house for 2 ½ weeks and we became a band. We didn’t use a click track. I sang live in the studio – the three of us in my little garage studio, looking at each other. And we didn’t start recording till we spent quite a while – might have been five, six days learning 14, 15 songs.”
Wow.
“So we experimented with different arrangements, different ideas. So by the time we actually started recording, we kinda knew the songs. It wasn’t … sometimes in the studio, you work hard on a song and then, even when you’re tired of it, you keep working on it till you get a solid track. And it’s usually kinda safe, and then you move on.
“And this way, if we were bogged down with a song, we’d just leave it – go onto another song, come back to it. And it kept evolved and shaping into something that really felt like a band playing a bunch of what I think are good songs and has a good feel to it.
“So now I gotta turn it into a record. And yeah, I hope to be done by Halloween or Thanksgiving and, you know, take a few months to get a plan together to promote it, et cetera. And then get it out in the spring and just go play.”
The last description on your website said it was “mostly electric, with some piano songs and some acoustic songs.” Is that still the case?
“Yeah. I wrote some songs on the piano. A couple songs – I wrote a lot of it on some great old acoustic guitars I have in the house. But there’s some really, I think, raw electric stuff I haven’t done in a while on it, and then there’s some, I think, some more tender acoustic things. And, I think, some cool stuff on the piano.
“I don’t know, it just kind of has a vibe of my first solo album or something. Where I’m just practicing in advance, being able to play and sing everything live. You know, I took a long time – I really started in earnest assembling it when the E Street Band was in Australia, at the end of ‘The River’ tour. And I took the whole year to just kind of craft things, make a plan and get to the point where I was able to sing and play live and fairly consistently.
“And two of my dearest friends and great musicians as a rhythm section, and we cut it as a power trio. And now I’m finding some touches – not too many; I want to keep it simple – to put around things. And Cindy Mizelle (who has toured with Springsteen and worked with Luther Vandross, The Rolling Stones, Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey) a great soul singer, R&B, everything – just ballads, she does it all beautifully. Got to be really good friends with me and Amy on the ‘Wrecking Ball’ tour. And she was one of our singers. She came out for a few days and sang beautifully on quite a few songs for me.
“I had a local men’s choir I had a couple ideas for; It’s just some neat touches around a solid bed of songs with playing live with my buddies. So I’m excited about it, and it’s been a long time since I had a new record. So it’s nice to have a new batch of songs I feel good about.”
The last time we talked, you had just put out the live album, and you were going to come to Pennsylvania to do a show, and Bruce called you to do ‘The River’ shows.
“Yeah, I canceled … I wound up canceling a lot of shows – a couple dozen. And I felt bad about it. But, of course, I’m in the E Street Band, so … And they really didn’t have any plans for the band – they had some other plans in mind, and they had a change of heart. Which, of course, was beautiful for E Street fans and me as a musician in the band, for someone who takes playing very seriously. I mean, I don’t cancel shows – I play shows deathly ill [laughs]. My attitude’s ‘If you’re not in the hospital, you crawl out and sing.’ Hopefully there’s not too many of those shows. We’ve all had them.
“But so I’m trying to make some of them up now and just honor my commitments and get back out and go to places. The Northeast has been my kinda favorite place, bread and butter, to play—as far as being able to do 15 cities, 15 shows, in 17 days. You can’t do that anywhere else except the Northeast, ‘cause of the proximity to the cities. Can’t do that when you get out into the wide expansive U.S. But in the Northeast you can.
“So we’re going to be playing almost every night, and it’s a good focus for me to discipline to really stay in shape and do my best each night.”
Hey, so what was it like doing that “River” tour? You have never before played those songs live, right?
“No, we played a lot of ‘The River’ songs live.”
Well, that’s true, yeah.
”I mean we were playing some of them when I joined the band in ‘84 on the ‘Born in the USA’ tour, my first tour. But not the whole album in its entirety. It’s interesting – I was living in LA, staying for long periods of time at the Sunset Marquee before it got to be a famous hotel. It was kind of a musician’s hotel.
“And I was working on something – I don’t know, this was 1980, ’81, ’79, I forget. And Bruce was there, and we were friends from the years we’d run into each other – way back on an audition night for Bill Graham back in 1970, when [Bruce] was with Steel Mill and I was with Grin.
“Anyway, one day we were talking at the pool, and he said, ‘Hey, I’m headed over … I just finished mixing a new album called ‘The River.’ It’s a double album – you want to come along and listen to it? And I said, ‘I’d love to.’
“So I went over and I sat down and listened to the entire record after it was mixed. And, you know, to me it – I loved his music, I still do, and I would always go see him play, it was so inspiring. But I thought, it sounded to me like he and the E Street Band figured out how to get what they do live in the sizzle. You know, that sizzle in the room kind of got on the recording of ‘The River,’ at least to my ears.
“And, of course, years later to be in the band and get deeply involved with every single song and do a double album live was really exciting. And it was a beautiful thing and I had a ball doing it. And we took a break and when we were done in the States and then finished up in Australia. It wasn’t quite ‘The River’ tour in Australia – we did a lot of stuff and focused on some of ‘The River.’
“But it was a beautiful ride. We’d done other albums, of course, famously live in their entirety. But to do a double albums like that for an entire tour was really kind of neat. ‘Cause you really get so deep inside these song that you think you know, and you find a deeper appreciation of them and just little twists and turns you can add to your parts just from familiarity. And then playing them in front of an audience so much, you learn the most.”
Yeah, it’s interesting that you say that. Because as a listener – I saw the tour in Philadelphia – as a listener I felt the same thing. Number one, the songs really held up amazingly well. But number two, just any little intricacies that were different just added to the experience.
So another thing that you mentioned: I was reading on your website that you had song that you had recorded with Lou Reed that you were finishing up. Is that still going to happen?
“Yeah, that’s a possibility. I’m looking at some. Lou and I did a lot of songwriting together, um, years ago, and the used a few of them and I put three out. And then since put a couple others out. But, you know, a bunch of them never saw the light of day. So I’m looking at sharing some of those, too.
“But it’s kind of a work in progress. I have a lot of things recorded; I’m just trying to finish up more than I need, and then take a look at what would make the best album.
“But, you know, did a lot of writing on my own, too. Looking at a couple covers that may or may not make the record. Just kind of, in general, having fun making the record. Taking my time and my goal is by, in between Halloween and Thanksgiving, to have a finished record I’m happy with. Could be 12 songs, could be 13, I don’t know.
“And then take some time to get a plan together to try to … ‘cause when you put a record out, you want to share it. So I’m gonna take some time to get a plan together, maybe get it out in the spring and go plan. I hope to even play with a band – something I haven’t done in a very, very long time. And just promote it and try to spread the word, and hopefully people will enjoy it.”
Tell me about the Blind Date jams you have on your website.
“Yeah, my whole life I would be in bandstands or things where somebody would start noodling a riff and a band would be, like, while you’re waiting for a band leader for a sound check or you’re at a TV studio and they say, ‘We need to wait 10 minutes but you can’t leave.’ And you get into these jam sessions that were impromptu.
“And they would be beautiful. And at the end, I would always think to myself, ‘Hmm, no one will ever hear that.’
“So Blind Jam, the idea is the musicians get together who respect each other with no idea what they’re gonna do or play. They set up their instruments and then I’ll throw an idea at them. Or if they have one, they can throw it out.
“And we just go to town. Kind of like you jam for two hours, 2 ½ hours and you walk away. And you have no idea what you’re gonna do, and you’ll probably never do it again – just to let people see how it is when people who love to improvise get surprised an react to something they’ve never heard.
“’Cause traditionally musicians will get a tape, they’ll study they’ll write charts. You play something four or five times, all of a sudden, ‘Oh, there’s a good riff for the chorus.’ So you hear that riff every time in the chorus. And it’s good. Same thing with verses, bridges, you kind of get in the parts that work. And that kind of music will be presented forever and is done beautifully, and video shows there are thousands of shows every night like that.
“So I wanted people to see what it’s like when that does not happen. I did one about seven years ago with Mike Smith – an extraordinary pedal steel player.
Last question Nils: Any idea when E Street will re-form or when Bruce will finish up?
“No, there’s no plans. The Broadway show is brilliant – me and Amy got to see it – and just a lovely thing. And I know him and Patty are digging it. It’s coming out on Netflix in December. They’re booked through Christmas.
“So I don’t know what the future holds. Of course, as a giant fan, I hope – and in my gut I feel like there will be another chapter. But there are no plans. It’s just my idea. And I’m sure I’m one of many people who are in the band and fans all over the world who would like to see it.
“When and if it happens is up to Bruce and Patty. But there’s no plans today.”
Those were the questions I had prepared. I love interviewing you. It always feel like it’s a conversation rather than an interview.
“Well, I’m a gabber, and I love music, and I’m kinda tickled that I’m celebrating my 50th year on the road now. Coming to Bethlehem. And you know, like I said earlier, as much as I don’t like leaving home anymore – Amy calls it a champagne problem because a lot of people don’t have a home they love or a wonderful wife and dogs and a community of family and friends that they don’t like leaving.
“So it really keeps me focused more on the music and the show, and there’s a deeper gratitude and excitement, actually, than I’ve ever had. Plus I’m 67 – so it takes a bit of … you got to pay attention to get in shape for a run like that.
“And I’m excited and it’s a good challenge for me to come and try to do a great show every night for people who go through the trouble of showing up. We’ll do a great one in Bethlehem and really hope people come out and check us out.”
NILS LOFGREN ACUSTIC DUO, 7:30 p.m. Sept. 19, Musikfest Cafe at ArtsQuest Center, 101 Founders Way, Bethlehem. Tickets: $34-$39, www.steelstacks,org, 610-332-3378
ALSO, 8 p.m. Sept. 20, Colonial Theater, 227 Bridge St., Phoenixville. $32.50-$54.50, www.thecolonialtheatre.com, 610-917-1228.
