OKLAHOMA HILLS^©

Live 14 Jan 2006 version

Many a month has come and gone
Since I wandered from my home
Those Oklahoma hills where I was born
Many page of life has turned
Many lessons have I learned
And I feel like I'm back in those hills where I belong

Way down yonder in the Indian Nation
I ride my pony on the reservation
Those Oklahoma hills where I was born
Way down yonder in the Indian Nation
A cowboy's life is my occupation
To those Oklahoma hills I do belong

As I sit here today
Many miles I am away
From the place I rode my pony through this draw
While the oak and blackjack trees
Kiss the playful prairie breeze
This is where I belong

Well, way down yonder in the Indian Nation
I ride my pony on the reservation
Those Oklahoma hills where I was born
Well, way down yonder in the Indian Nation
A cowboy's life is my occupation
Those Oklahoma hills where I was born

Many a month has come and gone
Since I wandered from my home
??? Oklahoma hills where I was born
Hey, many a page of life has turned
Many a lesson I have learned
And I know it's in those hills that I belong

Well, way down yonder in the Indian Nation
I ride my pony on the reservation
Those Oklahoma hills where I was born
Well, way down yonder in the Indian Nation
A cowboy's life is my occupation
Those Oklahoma hills where I was born

???!
Way down yonder in the Indian Nation
I ride my pony on the reservation
In those Oklahoma hills where I was born
Way down yonder in the Indian Nation
A cowboy's life is my occupation
Those Oklahoma hills where I was born

As I turn back a page
To the land of the great Osage
In those Oklahoma hills where I was born
While the black oil it rolls down
And the snow-white cottons grow
In those Oklahoma hills where I belong, hey!

Well, way down yonder in the Indian Nation
I ride my pony on the reservation
Those Oklahoma hills where I was born
Well, way down yonder in the Indian Nation
A cowboy's life is my occupation
Those Oklahoma hills where I was born
Come on now!
??? is doing!

Way down yonder in the Indian Nation
I ride my pony on the reservation
On the Oklahoma hills where I was born
???!
I say way down yonder in the Indian Nation
A cowboy's life is my occupation
In the Oklahoma hills where I was born
Let's try it, let's do it once more!

I say way down yonder in the Indian Nation
I wanna ride my pony on the reservation
In Oklahoma hills where I was born
Woah!
Hey, way down yonder in the Indian Nation
A cowboy's life is my occupation
In those Oklahoma hills where I was born
Come on!

Well, way down yonder in the Indian Nation
I wanna ride my pony on the reservation
In Oklahoma hills where I was born
Hey, way down yonder in the Indian Nation
A cowboy's life is my occupation
Those Oklahoma hills where I was born
???, come on!

Way down yonder in the Indian Nation
I ride my pony on the reservation
In Oklahoma hills where I was born
Way down yonder in the Indian Nation
A cowboy's life is my occupation
Those Oklahoma hills where I belong

Page last updated: 05 Sep 2007

"The Nebraska Project" took place on Saturday, 14 Jan 2006 (8:00 PM – 10:30 PM) at the World Financial Winter Garden, New York City, NY. It was the opening event of the New York Guitar Festival. Artists like Mark Eitzel, Michelle Shocked, Jen Chapin, and Chocolate Genius took turns covering Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska album song-by-song. Bruce Springsteen himself was watching the event with wife Patti Scialfa from near the front of the stage on the audience's outskirt. His presence remained mostly unnoticed until he took the stage for the show's encore.

David Spelman, director of the New York Guitar Festival, had sent a note to Springsteen's management informing them of the event. When Springsteen showed up early in the evening, he met Spelman who invited him to join all the night's musicians in singing Woody Guthrie's OKLAHOMA HILLS. Springsteen wasn't sure which song was this until Spelman sang him the chorus. He gave him the lyrics and pointed out verses for him to sing. Springsteen, who didn't have his reading glasses, wrote down the one verse on the paper's back (photo below).

At the end of the concert, Springsteen borrowed a guitar from Spelman and joined the ensemble onstage for an encore of a strong extended version of OKLAHOMA HILLS. The song was played in honor of Woody Guthrie who inspired the Nebraska album, and the above lyrics are for that performance.

When the song ended, the host, jockey John Platt of public radio station WFUV-FM, tried to engage Bruce in a little serious conversation (as he had earnestly, and at times awkwardly, throughout the show). He asks, "So while Bruce is here, I just gotta ask him two things. First off, did we get any of it wrong? Is there anything I said that was misrepresented, inaccurate? You can have a chance to correct it now." Bruce jokingly replies, "Uh, the, a lot of the interpretations of the songs uh, the uh, when you were talking about them were wrong. Most of the songs were uh, written, as I said about all Rock 'N' Roll, to get uh, women to pull their pants down." He adds, "But no. I've been honored from my ass to my heels, I wanna thanks all the musicians and say..." Platt then interrupts and asks, "Ah we do too. And listen, uh, what is that you think makes this album resonate for us 25 years later? Do you have a clue?" Bruce bows off the question replying, "No, I'll let the, I'll let the audience..." Then he returned to thanking the cast, shaking hands and engaging in hugs and so forth.

"The Nebraska Project" guests, in order of appearance:
- Michelle Shocked
- Jesse Harris
- Kieran Tolhurst
- David Spelman
- The National
- Chocolate Genius
- Harry Manx
- Martha Wainwright
- Marc Ribot
- Jen Chapin
- Stefan Crump
- Dan Zanes
- Vernon Reid
- Laura Cantrell & Band
- Gary Lucas
- Otis Taylor
- Mark Eitzel
- Kevin Kinney
- Lenny Kaye
- Bruce Springsteen

Lines in Bold are by Bruce. Lines in Italic are by the ensemble, including Bruce.

The above lyrics are for the above-mentioned live 14 Jan 2006 performance at the World Financial Winter Garden, New York City, NY. Check also the live 28 Apr 2005 version (more details) and Woody Guthrie's original version.

Visit www.NewYorkGuitarFestival.org. Most of the above info are taken from Backstreets Magazine issue #85.

Request:
The above lyrics are not 100% complete or correct. If you can assist, please contact me via email at or by using the below form. You will be credited. Thanks in advance.

Article published on 13 Jan 2006 -- A Guitar Festival Begins With a Trip to 'Nebraska':

Murders, broken families, lost jobs, last chances and long, late-night drives down dark, lonely Interstates - Bruce Springsteen's album "Nebraska" has something for everyone to feel bad about.

While Mr. Springsteen and his fans have spent the last few months celebrating the 30th-anniversary rerelease of his anthemic 1975 breakthrough, "Born to Run," the New York Guitar Festival has chosen to open its three-week calendar with a tribute to his 1982 cycle of spare, existential folk songs.

In a free concert tomorrow night at the World Financial Center Winter Garden, musicians including Michelle Shocked, the National, Meshell Ndegeocello and Mark Eitzel will perform the entire album, in sequence.

"The first Springsteen record I ever bought was 'Nebraska,' " said David Spelman, the director of the festival, which he founded in 1999. "I was in one part flummoxed by it and in another part fascinated, and really attracted to it."

The New York Guitar Festival includes more than two dozen concerts, seminars and other events at sites around the city. Most will spotlight guitar titans past and present. But while the show tomorrow night will include accompaniment and instrumental interludes from six-string luminaries like Marc Ribot, Vernon Reid and Gary Lucas, the focus will be on Mr. Springsteen's unvarnished album.

"It's probably better for a night like this that it isn't one of the more famous records," said the singer-songwriter Jesse Harris, who will perform the song "Atlantic City." "Because of the nature of the record, it lends itself to interpretation."

The songs on "Nebraska," recorded as four-track demos, feature just Mr. Springsteen's guitar, harmonica and voice. The title track crawls inside the head of an unrepentant killer (inspired by Charles Starkweather, who murdered 11 people in the late 1950's), and the album rarely strikes a sunnier note. It limns one troubled life after another before concluding with a song that observes dryly, "At the end of every hard-earned day, people find some reason to believe." In the wake of what precedes it, the line sounds more ironic than hopeful.

In interviews, some of the participants promised a range of musical settings. Mr. Harris is bringing a band. Ms. Shocked will add horns to "Nebraska." Mr. Lucas promises a "psychedelic electronic" recasting of "State Trooper," inspired by what he called the song's "stark, doom-laden riff." The country-folk singer Laura Cantrell will sing "Used Cars," backed only by guitar and mandolin.

"I'm very curious who will find what and draw what out of these songs," Ms. Cantrell said. "By spreading the songs across very disparate performers, the songs might still retain the dark quality, but it's not going to be unrelentingly bleak."

As a prelude, the Winter Garden is presenting a free miniconcert of songs from the album at 12:30 this afternoon, featuring six local acts chosen from a "Nebraska" battle of the bands at the Bitter End last month.

Mr. Spelman, 39, who organizes and produces music and arts events around the country, said he started the festival to reconnect with the instrument he had played and studied for years - he is a graduate of the New England Conservatory - but then put aside. Inspired by the eclecticism of John Schaefer's radio show "New Sounds" (heard on WNYC, 93.9 FM, nightly at 11), he said, he wanted to showcase the full range of guitar music. With Mr. Schaefer's encouragement and support from sponsors including D'Addario, which manufactures instrument strings, he put together a jubilee that this year has grown to include 65 guitarists.

"It's kind of ballooned into quite an extravaganza," Mr. Spelman said. Proceeds from the festival, which is nonprofit, go to musical outreach programs in New York City schools.

Besides the "Nebraska" tribute, the opening weekend features an eight-hour "Guitar Marathon" on Sunday at the 92nd Street Y, celebrating 450 years of Spanish guitar. Other highlights include tributes to Delta blues legends, live film soundtrack performances and concerts by Bill Frisell, Daniel Lanois and the classical guitarist Stephen Aron.

"Nebraska" is the second album to get the tribute treatment at the festival, following a 2004 salute to Bob Dylan's "Blood on the Tracks." Over the years it has become an entry point into Mr. Springsteen's catalog for people - from folk purists to indie-rockers - who otherwise might consider Mr. Springsteen "too popular to be worth listening to," as Mr. Spelman put it. He allows that he was one of them, until he moved to New Jersey seven years ago, and a friend urged him to give the state bard a chance.

At a rehearsal Monday in the Winter Garden's backstage area, Mr. Spelman and about half the performers in the concert felt their way through a handful of Woody Guthrie verses that will serve as a group finale. Mr. Lucas and Mr. Reid traded licks, while Ms. Cantrell shared lines with Jen Chapin, Dan Zanes and Kevn Kinney. Mr. Spelman told the assembled group that he had contacted Mr. Springsteen's management but did not know if Mr. Springsteen would attend the concert. (A spokeswoman for Mr. Springsteen said he was not available for comment.) By closing with a Guthrie song, Mr. Spelman said, the evening will connect "Nebraska" with the Dust Bowl songs that are its most obvious antecedent.

Mr. Reid, the guitarist for Living Colour, said he thought "Nebraska" was Mr. Springsteen's attempt "to look at another side of the American dream."

"The thing about that record is that it's the America we all try to deny," Mr. Reid said. "I wish other artists of his stature took on what he laid down - a solid, unmitigatable statement."

-- Jesse Fox Mayshark, The New York Times