STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — Author Warren Zanes will present “Entering Nebraska,” a unique words-and-music show based on his book about Bruce Springsteen’s landmark album, on Oct. 26 at Hamilton Park House Concerts in New Brighton.
The performance coincides with the opening weekend of the Springsteen biopic “Deliver Me From Nowhere,” a 20th Century Studios film adaptation starring Jeremy Allen White that draws from Zanes’s book “Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska.”
Bruce and Ray back in the day.(Courtesy of Ray Heffernan)
Zanes’s connection to Springsteen dates back to 1984, when he was a teenager performing with his band The Del Fuegos at Greensboro, North Carolina’s Rhinoceros Club. Springsteen, who was riding high with his biggest album “Born in the U.S.A.,” walked into the group’s small dressing room and joined The Del Fuegos onstage that night.
While Zanes would encounter Springsteen at various points throughout his life, he always viewed him as “the guy who made Nebraska.” Four decades after the album’s release, Zanes sat with Springsteen for hours discussing how the stark, intimate record was created and what it meant to release such an “imperfect, unfinished, and unexpected recording.”
Those conversations formed the foundation of Zanes’s book about the recording and Springsteen’s life during that period. Director Judd Apatow praised the work, saying, “This book, more than any other, reveals the hidden corners of Bruce Springsteen’s creative world.”
The “Entering Nebraska” show features celebrated musicians Kate Fenner, David Mansfield, and Teddy Thompson. According to promotional materials, the performance explores “life falling apart, of art’s redemptive power, and of the lasting place of Bruce Springsteen in American life and culture,” punctuated by songs from the Nebraska album.
The show is described as “the book come-to-life” and captures Springsteen’s “tumultuous but inspired early 1980’s experiences.”
The performance will take place at 3 p.m. at Hamilton Park House Concerts, located in the historic Hamilton Park area of New Brighton. The venue is part of one of the earliest suburban residential parks in the United States, laid out around 1851-1852 by developer Charles Kennedy Hamilton.
Tickets are $30 and can be purchased by emailing rayheff@mac.com or visiting hamiltonparkhouseconcerts.com.
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