Houserockers + Bruce show at Nick’s sees the light of day
There’s a long list of fine guitar players associated with the Houserockers, from Gary Scalese to Eddie Britt to Warren King to Bill Toms, and now Danny Gochnour. For a few nights in 1995, they also had some guy named Bruce Springsteen.
It’s strange to think about it now, but after “Tunnel of Love” in 1987, The Boss went 18 years without releasing another album with the E Street Band
During the early years of that hiatus, among other things, there were the two 1992 solo albums — “Lucky Town” and “Human Touch” — a subsequent tour with a pickup band and an Oscar win for “Streets of Philadelphia.”
Basically, he was a little more available than usual, so when Houserockers frontman Joe Grushecky was working on a new batch of songs, the Pittsburgh legend’s wife suggested he have Bruce play on them. They had known each other since the early ’80s and, as Pittsburghers will recall, jammed at the Decade in 1984 when Springsteen was here on the “Born in the U.S.A.” tour.
As Grushecky tells it, he “hemmed and hawed for a while” before asking the Boss, who not only said yes but also offered to produce the entire “American Babylon” album andco-write two of its songs, “Homestead” and “Darkand Bloody Ground.”
Needless to say, it’s one of Grushecky’s most compelling and penetrating albums, with a handful of songs, like “Never Be Enough Time,” “Labor of Love,” “Chain Smokin’” and “Homestead,” that have been staples of his concert sets.
On Friday, it is re-released in an expanded 25th anniversary edition for digital and streaming release with a vinyl LP set to follow early in 2022. The 12-song album is appended with never-before-released demo versions of “Chain Smokin’,” “Never Be Enough Time” and “Only Lovers Left Alive.”
The real treat, however, on this Halloween weekend is the companion disc capturing the Houserockers with Springstreen at Nick’s Fat City on Oct. 20, 1995. It was the fourth date of the October Assault Tour that began on Oct. 17 at the Stone Pony in Asbury Park, N.J., and continued to Tramps in New York City, the Electric Factory in Philadelphia, two nights at Nick’s (now Foxtail) on the South Side, and Park West in Chicago.
“It was completely unexpected,” Grushecky says of the tour, “because, No. 1, he volunteered to do it. So you’re going out, with your band, with one of the greatest rock ’n’ rollers of all time. It takes it up a notch, to say the least. We had a blast doing it.”
That is evident from the Nick’s show, as the guys power through the “Babylon” album, with Springsteen playing his share of fierce leads, and let loose on Iron City Houserockers classic “Pumpin’ Iron” and deliriously rocking versions of Springsteen’s “Light of Day” and the old boogiewoogie staple “Down the Road a Piece.”
At the one tour rehearsal before the first show at the Stone Pony, Grushecky says, “I suggested ‘Murder Incorporated,’ because I had been trying to get him to give me that track.”
The unreleased song from 1982 appeared on Springsteen’s “Greatest Hits” album in 1995 and was also played on the Houserockers’ mini-tour and at the two Nick’s shows.
Springsteen suggested “Light of Day,” a “Born in the U.S.A.” outtake that became the soundtrack hit for the 1987 movie of that title, performed by Joan Jett and Michael J. Fox. (Incidentally, Fox joined the Houserockers and Springsteen to perform the song as part of the Light of Day benefit concert series at the Stone Pony in 2003.)
As for the “Down the Road,” a song from 1940 that the Stones famously covered in 1965, Grushecky says, “You can tell on the recording that it’s a work in progress. We’re just all winging it, just [expletive] jamming.”
At other stops on the tour, they would cover the Stones’ “Gimme Shelter,” Bo Diddley’s “Diddy Wah Diddy” and Little Richard’s “Keep a Knockin,” the latter of which will be on the vinyl.
The live show was recorded by ace producer Rick Witkowski, also a Houserocker at times, on B.E. Taylor’s rig.
“It’s basically what we played that night, and it’s a very raucous, raw recording,” Grushecky says. “We’d only played the songs four or five times before we got to Pittsburgh. We were learning the songs as it went on. That’s what you can hear on the record. It’s a wild night at the bar with a crazy, drunken bar band.”