Who's the steel player? Bruce Springsteen Tracks II: The Lost Albums

[John Larson]

Springsteen recently released a box set of 7 unreleased albums/recording sessions spanning from 1983-2018.
Disc 4 entitled "Somewhere North of Nashville" and has loads of steel on it. Who's the steel player? Good mix of standard E9 pedal steel and some western swing esque C6 some of which sounds like non pedal.
It was recorded around the time of The Ghost of Tom Joad album on which Marty Rifkin played pedal steel on a few tracks.

"Under a Big Sky"

"Repo Man"

"Janey Don't You Lose Heart"

"Stand on It"

"Blue Highway"

"Somewhere North of Nashville"

[Pete Finney]

It's Marty Rifkin. This is from an article in the New York Times that I ran across a week or so ago where Marty talks about the sessions. I remember that he later did a long Springsteen tour built around the 2006 "Seeger Sessions" album.

"Assembling “Tracks II” began in 2018, when Springsteen decided to revisit the tracks that became “Somewhere North of Nashville.” They’re twangy, upbeat, often comic songs; one, “Delivery Man,” is about a truckload of chickens gone awry. Surprisingly, the songs were recorded while Springsteen was making “The Ghost of Tom Joad,” his somber 1995 album about marginalized people struggling to get by in California.

By day, Springsteen and a small band romped through live-in-the-studio takes of the songs on “Somewhere North of Nashville.” Then, after a dinner break, they worked on the “Tom Joad” songs by candlelight. Marty Rifkin, the pedal steel guitarist who’s front and center on “Somewhere North of Nashville” and eerily atmospheric on “The Ghost of Tom Joad,” recalled, “It was a beautiful thing — both smiling all day and feeling for the characters he wrote about at night.” He added, “During the day, I had to really dig in and hit the gas pedal hard. And then at night it was the complete opposite.”

ttps://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/18/arts/music/b ... rview.html

[John Larson]

Awesome, I forgot Marty played on the Seeger Sessions tour. I've always loved this version.
"Highway Patrolman"

Interesting they did Tom Joad by candlelight, totally fits the mood of that album.

I drive through the remnants of the once bustling Pennsylvania Anthracite Coal fields and I think about that lyric in "Youngstown" a lot.
From the Monongaleh valley
To the Mesabi iron range
To the coal mines of Appalacchia
The story’s always the same
Seven-hundred tons of metal a day
Now sir you tell me the world’s changed
Once I made you rich enough
Rich enough to forget my name