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Get in touch! Perseverant. By the time you finish listening to  my interview with emzae, you’ll have a good idea about why I’ve started my introduction like this. Other words also apply. Intelligent. Interesting. Insightful. Inspiring. These words also seem uniquely appropriate for this singer-songwriter from Derby, England. emzae and I met for this interview across the span of one continent and one ocean but by the end of our conversation, I felt like we were a little bit closer. I think you’ll have the same experience. emzae is the stage name of Emma, a singer-songwriter, producer, and mixing engineer from Derby. She calls her hometown an engineering city with little creative heritage or pathway. She coined the name in a 2009 MSN Messenger chat. For years afterward she drew artwork with it splashed across the front, rehearsing a future she wasn’t sure she’d be allowed to have. The road there was not direct. Chronic illness, M.E. and OCD, arrived in her teens and took her out of school at fourteen. She finished her schooling in a hospital outpatient classroom and taught herself the rest: singing, guitar, piano, production, and mixing. You see - there it is; perseverance. In 2014 she began posting demos to SoundCloud, many of them recorded on a guitar she’d received at seventeen, purchased at Argos. One of the songs she wrote for her first acoustic project earned her first BBC “Introducing” play. Then came “Lucid Dreaming,” a trip-hop-tinged confession of how badly she wanted to make music for a living. It was the first song she felt proud enough to share with her own family. You’ll get to hear a number of her songs, interwoven through this interview. That song opened the door to All Those Things I Thought I Knew. Taking six years to complete, her debut album was released in September 2023 on her own label, Zirconia Records. She wrote it, played it, sang every layer of it, produced it, and mixed it. She then toured it, remixed it, and pressed it on vinyl with money she didn’t really have. Since the Beatles and the Stones first took American R&B home and handed it back, British pop has been talking back to American song. emzae belongs to a newer branch of that family tree: the artist who is also the engineer, the label, the publicist, and the booking agent. Perhaps I should go back and insert the word, multi-faceted, up there at the top? She has written candidly about the cost of that arrangement. She describes it as a fine line between “protective hyper-independence and simply screwing yourself over.” She has also written about walking away from the major-label dream in favor of something she could actually sustain. Today she mixes and produces for other artists through her studio, Zirconia Audio. In October 2026 she played her first full-band show, and her second album is well underway. In this conversation, recorded in August 2026, we go song by song through All Those Things I Thought I Knew. We also talk about building a career outside the system, and what it takes to keep making art when your body sets the schedule. More Ways to Enjoy American Song! Visit us on Substack. Drop us a note and share your ideas for future shows, see more of our new artist interviews. Read our blogs. It's all on Substack. Use the link! https://substack.com/@americansong Joe Hines is now live on GUTSY radio twice a month on Saturdays at 5 pm Eastern time. Great music, fascinating stories, good vibes!  See the Gutsy show schedule for details.

Get in touch! At the start, radio was like the Wild West. Anyone could get on the air, and it was all fair game: preachers, farmers, a quack broadcasting from Mexico. But that was before the networks moved in, before the payola hearings took the records out of the DJs' hands, and ultimately before a single law in 1996 sold the dial to a few corporations. Signalis the story of American radio's hundred-year fight between the people who wanted to say something and the people who wanted to sell something. Because the good guys win in the end, free voices keep getting through anyway. Last time: Signal Episode One, “Hello, World,” covered radio’s first three decades. We listened in as a man on a Pittsburgh rooftop in 1920, read election returns into a microphone without a clue as to whether anyone was listening. In just three short years from that random starting place, there were 556 stations. In the beginning, Boy Scouts built crystal sets. Families gave the radio the best spot in the living room. Farm wives in the Depression found company in it, and FDR comforted a nation in it. For a brief, chaotic window, anyone could get on the air: preachers, poultry farmers, Pedro González speaking Spanish to Los Angeles, and a goat-gland doctor blasting half a million watts from across the Mexican border, where a six-year-old Johnny Cash heard the Carter Family for the first time. Then NBC and CBS moved in and turned all that noise into a business. Radio was built on the fact that people would crave a voice they trust. Then television showed up and took the business away. Now: This is Episode Two and its about what happened in the empty room TV left behind. The big stars packed their bags and left: Jack Benny, Bob Hope, the Lone Ranger all headed for that little box with the fishbowl screen. Meantime, a transmitter, a microphone, and a stack of records were left to hold down the fort. That turned out to be enough. It actually birthed the DJ.  Episode two is also the tragic story of Edwin Armstrong, who invented FM radio and was destroyed by the company that should have made him famous. So much for gratitude and fair dealing. And this is also the story of WDIA in Memphis, where Nat D. Williams reached one in ten Black Americans and B.B. King sang jingles. This was also the open range prowled by wildman Wolfman Jack, howling across the border at 250,000 watts. Look again and its also the story of payola hearings: Alan Freed lost everything, Dick Clark lost nothing, and anyone paying attention could see why. My episode two guest is Bruce Warren, who has spent more than 35 years at WXPN Philadelphia, most recently as Assistant General Manager for Programming and Executive Producer of NPR's World Cafe. He’s living proof that some vestiges of the 1950s still remain. The listener-supported model that a pacifist invented in Berkeley, CA in 1949 is the same one that pays NPR station bills. The promotion game that brought down Alan Freed still happens to a lesser extent; these days its concert tickets now instead of cash. And the formatted, playlist-driven radio the payola hearings created leads straight to today, where one voice-tracked DJ can "host" six cities at once.  Turn it up. The static’s the good part. Did you miss the first episode - Signal: Hello World? No problem! It's available here on your favorite streaming platform or on the American Song website. Check it out - you won't want to miss it! Get in touch: I'd love to hear from you! Find American Song on Substack.

Get in touch! In 1920, a radio signal was a rumor with electricity behind it — a handful of amateurs in garages and attics, broadcasting into a void nobody had proven was listening. There were no networks, no formats, no rules, because nobody in power had figured out yet that there was anything here worth controlling. That's the world this episode opens in: the accidental birth of American radio, before it belonged to anyone. "Hello, World" traces how a scattered hobby became a national voice — and sets up the argument this whole series is built on: American freedom tends to live in the places nobody's bothered to claim yet. Episode one of Signal, a new American Song series on the rise, fall, and strange afterlife of American radio, is live now. In this episode: Robert Baden Powell (founder of the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts) talks to parentsKDKA Pittsburgh. 11/2/1920. First Commercial Radio BroadcastW.K.  (Old Man) Henderson -  Hello World (1930)KPBS Classics - Ballad of an Unsung HeroFather Couglin - 12/11/1938The Amos 'n Andy Show - Courtroom CatastropheOrson Welles - War of the Worlds Radio Broadcast (1938)FDR Fireside Chat on BankingEdward R. Murrow - The London BlitzAnd here's what comes next: Radio didn’t stay innocent for long. Neither did anyone, really. A man invents FM radio, and the company profiting from it steals it out from under him and leaves him with nothing. For thirty years after that, nobody wants what he built. Turns out neglect was the best thing that could’ve happened to it — because ignored is free, and free is where a DJ can play whatever he wants, for as long as it deserves to be heard, with nobody telling him otherwise. That part is genuinely glorious. It’s also, like most glorious things, temporary. Because eventually somebody in Washington signs a piece of paper almost nobody reads, and in a few short years radio stops belonging to the people who loved it and starts belonging to a balance sheet. Local voices get replaced with automation. One January morning, a chemical disaster hits a small town, and the station legally required to warn people doesn’t answer the phone — because there’s nobody left inside to answer it. That’s not a metaphor. That’s what corporate greed actually costs. The people radio pushed out never stopped loving it. They rebuilt it somewhere else — podcasts, Substack, stations run by people who remember what this was supposed to sound like. Something America loved got taken away by greed, and then, quietly and stubbornly, brought back from the ashes by the people who never let go of it. That’s also an American pattern. It happened to jazz. It happened to punk. Over the next six episodes, we watch it happen to radio.

Get in touch! Today’s episode is an interview with the Southern California based singer-songwriter, Anson Corsair. His remarkably open interview reveals some of the highs and the lows he’s lived through and how he’s processed these events into a growing group of beautiful songs. While American Song generally covers some of the most well-known musicians throughout the canon of popular music, these artists are just the tip of the iceberg. Interviews with people like Anson help us appreciate just how rich the music world is. Writers like myself have an opportunity to shine a light on the immensity of what’s found below the waterline!  With a sound that is reminiscent of Jack Johnson, John Mayer, and Ed Sheeran, Anson’s songwriting craft is elegant, and poetic. In this interview, he goes deep on the many life experiences that have shaped who he is and how he understands his world.  I hope you’ll enjoy today’s show! Learn more about Anson Corsair: Website: https://www.ansoncorsair.com/ Instagram: AnsonCorsairMusic Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/ansoncorsairmusic Spotify Follow American Song on Buzzsprout or your favorite streaming platform and connect with me on Substack!

Get in touch! Today on American Song, I’ll introduce you to my friend, A.J. Deiboldt. A.J. is a singer-songwriter originally from upstate New York, now making his music in a small town in the woods of Tennessee just outside Nashville. American Song is a show that celebrates the history, breadth and richness of our country’s music in all its flavors. Writing memorable and sensitive songs in the style of Chris Whitley, and with historic connections to acoustic blues pioneers such as Ledbelly, Sonny Boy Williamson and Robert Johnson, A.J. is certainly no stranger to this legacy.  By the end of this interview, I think you’ll end up agreeing , he represents the music well!  A.J.'s songs are beautifully crafted, and his musicianship is finely nuanced and highly developed. I’m proud to have him on. Music In This Episode Some Day's Gonna Come Some DayDiamond's In The DustSteal AwayThe Old WaysPretty Days Look for A.J. Deiboldt at: Substack: The High Notes YouTube: AJDeiboldt Connect with us online! American Song on Substack.

Get in touch! New Wave was born in a New York dive bar, then it got on a plane. In England it picked up eyeliner and a synthesizer where its guitar used to be. But somewhere over the Atlantic, in a few very specific places, it also picked up something heavier: a government watching. This is the final episode in our New Wave series, and it's the one where the genre stops being an aesthetic and starts being evidence. In Chile, three teenagers formed a band while Pinochet's regime was still making people disappear — and wrote songs about it anyway. In Argentina, a junta collapsed the same year its kids started plugging in synthesizers. In South Africa, artists built entire careers on saying things apartheid censors weren't fast enough to catch. None of these bands set out to be political. The regimes they lived under made that decision for them. Germany, South Africa, Latin America, and back around to post-Franco Spain — the biggest songs from the boldest bands in each, made under governments that would've preferred they stayed quiet, played anyway. This is Dancing Under Fire. Across different times, places, artists and eras, it's a now familiar story in hipper clothes and different accents. American music keeps leaving the country and coming back changed — recognizable, but not asking permission anymore. Music In This Episode Germany DAF - Der MussolilniSpider Murphy Gang - Skandal Im SperrbezirkNina Hagen- Du Hast Den Farbfilm Vergessen Ideal - Blaue AugenIdeal - Wir Stehn Auf BerlinIdeal - MonotonieNena - 99 LuftballonsNena - Irgendwie Irgendwo IrgendwannPeter Schilling - Major Tom (Völlig Losgelöst)Peter Schilling - Die Wüste LebtFalco - Ganz WienFalco - Der KommissarFalco - Rock Me AmadeusSouth Africa éVoid - ShadowséVoid - TaximanéVoid - I Am a FadgetéVoid - Urban WarriorBrenda Fassie - Weekend SpecialBrenda Fassie - Black PresidentBrenda Fassie - MemezaPaul Ndlovu - Khombo Ra MinaSolomon Linda - MbubeLatin America Los Prisioneros - La Voz de los '80Los Prisioneros - El Baile do Los Que SobranLos Prisioneros - Tren Al SurLos Prisioneros - EléctricasSoda Stereo - Por Qué No Puedo Ser del Jet SetSoda Stereo - Nada PersonalSoda Stereo - Persiana AmericanaSoda Stereo - En la Ciudad de la FuriaSoda Stereo - De Musica LigeraCaifanes - La Negra TomasaCaifanes - La Célula Que ExplotaCaifanes - NubesCaifanes - No Dejes QueRadio Futura - Enamorado De La Moda JuvenilRadio Futura - Escuela de CalorRadio Futura - Semilla NegraRadio Futura - 37 GradosCome visit with us on Substack!

Get in touch! Britain just turned the lights fluorescent. The future arrives every Wednesday now, whether you're ready or not. Picture 1979 England: factories closing, Thatcher cutting glass with every syllable, and a music press so brutal it could make or break a band before the tea went cold. Punk already burned down the house. Now a blond former schoolteacher from Newcastle who sounds like a cathedral trying to seduce you, a man dressed as three centuries of fashion history simultaneously, and a band that named itself after a hairstyle and a bomber are about to rebuild it — colder, sharper, and somehow more danceable. This episode: The Police turn jazz chords into a global empire. The Clash and XTC ask exactly how much pop a protest song can survive. Siouxsie and the Banshees, Squeeze, and Tears for Fears each find a different way to make precision sound like feeling. Elvis Costello smuggles class warfare into a piano hook your kids could hum. Then the screen turns on. MTV launches with nothing to play but the eccentrics nobody else wanted — and the eccentrics become the biggest stars on Earth. Until two artists the network never planned for, Michael Jackson and Prince, force the door open and rewrite who gets to be on television at all. The future was never going to be warm. But it was going to be brilliant. Songs In This Episode The Clash -  Career OpportunitiesXTC - This Is PopThe Police - Message In a Bottle (No Vocal)The Police - RoxanneThe Police - Walking On the MoonSqueeze - TemptedAdam and the Ants - Kings of the Wild FrontierThe Cure - A ForestSiouxsie and the Banshees - Cities in DustOMD - Enola GayTears For Fears - The HurtingTears For Fears - Mad WorldTears For Fears - ShoutTears For Fears - Everybody Wants to Rule the WorldElvis Costello - Pump it UpElvis Costello - Watching the DetectivesElvis Costello - Oliver's ArmyElvis Costello - AlisonElvis Costello - Radio, RadioThe Monkees - (Theme From) The MonkeesThe Buggles - Video Killed the. Radio StarMichael Jackson - Don't Stop 'Til You Get EnoughPrince - ControversyMichael Jackson - Billie JeanPrince - When You Were MinePrince - 1999Prince - When Doves CryFalco - Der Kommissar (German Version)Interviews With StingAdam AntElvis CostelloMichael NesmithAndy Summers Join American Song on Social Media Substack:  https://substack.com/@americansong

Get in touch! It was the late 1970s and early '80s. New York was bankrupt. Akron's tire factories were closing. Regular families were struggling with double-digit inflation. The AIDS epidemic was raging. The Soviets invaded Afghanistan and the US boycotted the Olympics in protest. John Lennon was assassinated.  And somewhere in the background, always, that low hum — nuclear warheads, patient at the edge of the light.  Into that America walked Blondie, Talking Heads, Devo, the B-52s, the Cars, and Oingo Boingo. You Might Think you know what they were doing. Quirky! Fun! Great hair!  Here's what they were actually doing: holding a mirror up to everything that was broken and making it danceable. Whether that was a fun house mirror or a regular one — you'll have to decide.  This episode, we find out what New Wave was really made of. And who was really making it. Continue the American Song journey on Substack!  Music Featured In This Episode Blondie - X OffenderBlondie - Rip Her to ShredsThe Stillettos - Anti DiscoBlondie - One Way or AnotherBlondie - Heart of GlassBlondie - Call MeBlondie - RaptureBlondie - DreamingTalking Heads - Psycho KillerTalking Heads - Take Me to the RiverTalking Heads - Life During WartimeTalking Heads - I ZimbraTalking Heads - Once in a LifetimeTalking Heads - Burning Down the HouseDEVO - Jocko HomoDEVO - Whip ItDEVO - Wiggly WorldB-52s - Planet ClaireB-52s - Rock LobsterThe Cars - My Best Friend's GirlThe Cars - Just What I NeededThe Cars - You Might ThinkOingo Boingo - CapitalismOingo Boingo - Only A LadOingo Boingo - Private LifeOingo Boingo - Dead Man's PartyOingo Boingo - Goodbye, GoodbyeOingo Boingo - We Close Our EyesInterviews With Chris Stein David ByrneMark Mothersbaugh and Gerry CasaleCindy Wilson and Fred SchneiderJohn LennonRick Ocasek and Benjamin OrrBrandon FlowersDanny ElfmanContinue the American Song journey on Substack!

Get in touch! Five hundred million years ago, ( approximately 1977), something extraordinary happened on the floor of an ancient sea. Life — which had spent billions of years as little more than a few unremarkable blobs drifting in the dark — suddenly exploded into every possible form simultaneously. Claws. Fins. Shells. Eyes. Creatures of impossible elegance and alien strangeness, emerging from the murk and becoming something the world had never seen before. Scientists call it the Cambrian Explosion. It was the moment life stopped playing it safe. Rock music had its own Cambrian moment. And like the original, it happened in the dark, in conditions nobody would have designed on purpose, among creatures that looked like nothing that had come before. This is the first episode of American Song: New Wave — a new series tracing the origins, explosions, and enduring legacy of the genre that turned anxiety into an art form, made nervousness a fashion statement, and somehow got America dancing to songs about the end of the world. In this episode: Kraftwerk emerges from postwar Düsseldorf like something that evolved independently of everything else — precise, alien, and more perfectly adapted to the future than anything sharing its environment. The Ramones reduce rock to its purest possible form and discover that what's left is still everything. Television proves that minimalism and virtuosity are not opposites. And Patti Smith walks into a twelve-foot room on the Bowery and claims the entire territory of rock and poetry for herself, without asking anyone's permission, because it hadn't occurred to her that permission was required. New Wave didn't descend from the mainstream. It crawled up from somewhere older and stranger and more alive — from musicians too weird, too restless, or too furious to stay in the shallows. This is where it started. This is the murk. Music In This Episode Peter Gabriel: IntruderKraftwerk: AutobahnKraftwerk: Trans Europ ExpressGary Numan: CarsThe Feelies: The Boy With the Perpetual NervousnessRamones: I Wanna Be SedatedRamones: Beat on the BratRamones: I Wanna Be Your BoyfriendTelevision: See No EvilTelevision: Marquee MoonPatti Smith: GloriaBlondie (Rhythm Only): One Way Or AnotherB-52's: Rock Lobster Interviews Ralf Hutter (Kraftwerk)Hilly Krystal (CBGB's)Marky Ramone (Ramones)Tom Verlaine (Television)Patti Smith (Patti Smith) Next episode: Blondie. Talking Heads. Devo. The B-52s. Oingo Boingo. New Wave goes national — and it turns out the whole country had been waiting.

Get in touch! Part 2 Happy New Year, Everybody! (Even if you're reading this in July....) Across the last five seasons of American Song, we've traveled the arc of American music and listened to some of the greatest songs ever recorded, by some of the best loved artists over a century of thrilling music that changed the world.  But what about all those artists whose music is as good, if not better, than those "giants", who (but for the fickle finger of fate) never got the massive acclaim that those rarified few received?  What is it within a songwriter that drives their art and compells them to write, even if they're not filling stadiums, or winning Grammy's (questionnable why some of the folks who do receive them deserved it!).  I've been fortunate to share many road miles with one of these artists for most of my life, and in today's episode, I introduce him to you.  In 1995, LA Time music critic, Mike Boehm, said this about Mark's first album: "The two albums I couldn’t stop listening to in ’95 were a tie for the number-one position in my Top Ten. [One of these was] Mark Davis, “You Came Screaming”. Davis’ first album is graced by superb melodies and hall-of-fame influences. His intensely realized subject is the embattled condition of idealism in a fallen world."   Other music critics have said this: "Getting at large truths with songs full of human-scale detail and unsentamentalized beauty.  - Los Angeles Times  “Davis is truly a master of his craft… able to lift spirits even while supporting the weight of the world.” - Orange County Register  I hope you'll listen closely to this two part episode. I have a special feeling that when you do, you just might come to love this music and appreciate this artistic soul as much as I do. Learn more about Mark Davis and support his music through these links: https://songrites.com/mark-davis-and-the-inklings https://markdavisinklings.bandcamp.com

Get in touch! Part 1 Happy New Year, Everybody! (Even if you're reading this in July....) Across the last five seasons of American Song, we've traveled the arc of American music and listened to some of the greatest songs ever recorded, by some of the best loved artists over a century of thrilling music that changed the world.  But what about all those artists whose music is as good, if not better, than those "giants", who (but for the fickle finger of fate) never got the massive acclaim that those rarified few received?  What is it within a songwriter that drives their art and compells them to write, even if they're not filling stadiums, or winning Grammy's (questionnable why some of the folks who do receive them deserved it!).  I've been fortunate to share many road miles with one of these artists for most of my life, and in today's episode, I introduce him to you.  In 1995, LA Time music critic, Mike Boehm, said this about Mark's first album: "The two albums I couldn’t stop listening to in ’95 were a tie for the number-one position in my Top Ten. [One of these was] Mark Davis, “You Came Screaming”. Davis’ first album is graced by superb melodies and hall-of-fame influences. His intensely realized subject is the embattled condition of idealism in a fallen world."   Other music critics have said this: "Getting at large truths with songs full of human-scale detail and unsentamentalized beauty.  - Los Angeles Times  “Davis is truly a master of his craft… able to lift spirits even while supporting the weight of the world.” - Orange County Register  I hope you'll listen closely to this two part episode. I have a special feeling that when you do, you just might come to love this music and appreciate this artistic soul as much as I do. Learn more about Mark Davis and support his music through these links: https://songrites.com/mark-davis-and-the-inklings https://markdavisinklings.bandcamp.com

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 calls out a "incompetent, corrupt, and treasonous administration" and then sings about hope, duty, and “we the people” anyway.  This final chapter ties Bruce back to everyone we’ve studied in 2025 on American Song—including Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Bruce Cockburn, Randy Newman, Warren Zevon and Jackson Browne —and makes the subtext plain: if we want a better America, we’re going to have to live up to the American values embodied in the songs of the artists we say we admire. Music In This Episode: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band My City of RuinsShackled and DrawnRocky GroundSundownHello SunshineLast Man StandingOne Minute You're HereThe Power of PrayerLong Walk HomeWe Shall OvercomeArchival Interviews Rick Rubin/ Malcolm Gladwell

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 that forward into Trump’s first administration and Charlottesville, and we hold Bruce’s choices up as a different model of Americanness—one where loving your country means telling it the truth and standing with the people it’s hurting, even when that costs you. Music in This Episode: Bruce Springsteen (With and Without) the E Street Band Tunnel of LoveHuman TouchLiving ProofThe Ghost of Tom JoadTheme from Ken Burns 'The Civil War'*The Price You Pay**American Skin (41 Shots)This Land Is Your LandArchival Interviews Rick Rubin/ Malcolm Gladwell Mark Maron Howard SternBank Street Podcast *As performed by my second cousin, Molly Hines of Wilmington, NC. A massively talented violinist, during our family reunion in Yellowstone National Park; Summer, 2025. Thank you, Molly! Visit https://www.mollyjhines.com/ ** E Street Band backing track; no vocals.

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 compassion. We end in East Berlin, 1988, with Springsteen singing to a divided crowd about freedom and walls coming down, and we ask: what if this kind of complicated, honest patriotism was the version we measured ourselves against instead of the cheap, loud kind? Music in this Episode: Bruce Spingsteen (With and Without) the E Street Band I Fought the Law - LiveBadlandsThe Promised LandProve it All Night - Live from Hammersmith Odeon. 1978The Ties That BindThe River album medley: Point Blank/ The River/ Hungry Heart/ Cadillac Ranch/ I'm a Rocker/ Drive All NightAtlantic CityJohnny 99Born in the USABorn in the USA Nebraska era demoDownbound TrainDancing in the DarkChimes of Freedom - Live in East Berlin 1988Archival Interviews Letter to You era interviewNPR/ Loren Anki - Born in the USANPR/ Terry Gross

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 that almost derailed him, and the strange, exhausting new life of a band suddenly under the lights. This chapter closes with one of the great stories in the Springsteen mythos: the bomb scare in Milwaukee, the evacuated club, and a night that turns from chaos into a legendary, delayed show—a perfect snapshot of how fragile and how powerful this whole thing really was. Music in this Episode: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band Born to RunThunder RoadJunglelandTenth Avenue Freeze OutKitty's BackMountain of LoveI Fought the LawArchival Interviews Mark Maron Interview Rick Rubin/ Malcolm  Gladwell Interview