Bruce Springsteen pays tribute the female Mexican “soldaderas” who aided the country’s fight for independence on “Adelita,” the latest preview from his upcoming seven-album rarities boxed set, Tracks II. The song is housed within Inyo, the previously unreleased material on which was written in the mid-1990s during Springsteen’s non-E Street Band The Ghost of Tom Joad period.
“Inyo was a record I wrote in California during long drives along the California aqueduct, up through Inyo County on my way to Yosemite or Death Valley,” says the Boss. “I was enjoying that kind of writing so much. [On The Ghost of Tom Joad tour] I would go home to the hotel room at night and continue to write in that style because I thought I was going to follow up The Ghost of Tom Joad with a similar record, but I didn’t. That’s where Inyo came from. It’s one of my favorites.”
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Inyo is largely a Springsteen solo project, although mariachi musicians Luis Villalobos, Alberto Villalobos, Angel Ramos, Humberto Manuel Flores Gutierrez, David Glukh, Jorge Espinosa and Miguel Ponce all appear throughout.
Tracks II is out on June 27 from Columbia and covers decades’ worth of never-before-heard recordings, including 1983 sessions between the albums Nebraska and Born in the U.S.A. and a complete album born out of work on the theme song for the 1993 movie Philadelphia.
Springsteen and the E Street Band are on tour through early July in Europe, where the Boss’ onstage comments about Donald Trump have lately become national news. An EP featuring those speeches is available on all DSPs.
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