E Street Punks: Motorbooks

The artists and music that combine backstreet musical sensibilities and main-street storytelling.

Not so long ago, certain rock circles looked askance at Bruce Springsteen, a millionaire stadium act who had abandoned his roots in smoky blue-collar clubs. But then a funny thing happened: a number of bands across the US, raised on the sonics and cynicism of punk and alternative rock, began drawing comparisons to The Boss thanks to rich narrative lyrics that addressed the same subject matter, from shady characters and dead-end jobs to unreliable partners and even more unreliable cars.

Veteran music journalist Geoffrey Himes coined these musicians “E Street Punks” in reference to Springsteen’s legendary backing band. The bands that Himes names to this canon are bound by their common willingness to embrace both Springsteen’s lyrical aesthetic and to adapt older American styles to punk’s loud-fast ethos, including rockabilly, honky-tonk, blues, garage rock, Celtic folk, Tex-Mex, and Southern soul:

• Drive-By Truckers
• The Hold Steady
• Jason Isbell
• Alejandro Escovedo
• Jon Dee Graham
• Lucero
• Bottle Rockets
• Dropkick Murphys

Himes’s narratives draw on decades of interviews with the artists, as well as new interviews conducted for this book. Himes’s text is supplemented with a selection of photos, creating the definitive story of this essential school of rock. If you are a fan of any of these bands or just an American music history buff, E Street Punks is a must-read volume.