MURFREESBORO, Tenn. — New York Times best-selling author and Grammy-nominated documentary producer Warren Zanes recently spoke to Middle Tennessee State University students to share his thoughts on how a legendary musician’s album released decades ago shaped his career and personal worldviews.

“I love colleges and universities. It’s where I am most at home,” Zanes, who is a professor at New York University, said at the beginning of his guest lecture, which focused on his 2023 book “Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska.” 

The book explores the creation, impact, and significance of Springsteen’s 1982 “Nebraska,” includes interviews with The Boss himself, and takes a deeper look into the dark, minimalist recording sessions that made up the album.

Zanes, who visited the Scott Borchetta College of Media and Entertainment as part of the Tom T. Hall Writers Series, told those gathered inside the Business and Aerospace Building’s State Farm Room that the album “just got under my skin.”

“I felt like it was a place I could go. When there was trouble in my life — trouble with kids, trouble with divorce, trouble with my mother — that was the place that I went because in those songs, the characters of ‘Nebraska’ were people at the fringes of society. If things were going to go anywhere for those characters, it was just going to be things getting worse. That was my Nebraska,” he said.

Zanes talked not only about his love of Springsteen’s album but also about his dislike of what he calls lazy songwriting, and about the importance of good songwriting, including that of pop superstar Taylor Swift.

“Taylor Swift’s ‘Folklore’ record is the record (where) I fell in love with Taylor Swift,” he said, admitting, “I didn’t think it was going to happen to me, but the writing just struck me; it was the detail that brought me in. To write songs that have the details, but have that cohesive narrative to them, to me, that’s a very complex art.”

Mom influenced love of Springsteen

Besides talking about his beloved project, which took on a life of its own, including a movie adaptation, Zanes also spoke openly and honestly about growing up in a one-parent household, his relationship with his mom, and her death.

“It was a single-parent home that I grew up in, so there weren’t a lot of resources, but there were books and records. She had a great record collection,” he recalled. “She listened to Bruce Springsteen, and she was constantly promoting the idea, not of being successful in the arts, but having a better life because you’re practicing some art that was so fundamental.”

Zanes said that when he learned Disney was going to make a movie of Springsteen’s worst-selling record, the focus of his book, he considered it a victory.

“Between that, and Bruce and his sister saying, ‘this is a gift to our family,’ the movie was already a success for me,” Zanes said.

Zanes said he was on set and involved in the project from beginning to end.

“I was on set, and they sure didn’t need me, but I just wanted to be there. I wanted to be a guy they invited back, so I was a quiet presence,” he said. “I lost my objectivity, but I thought it was a really good movie made about a difficult subject, mental health, and it just felt so timely.”

Watch the movie trailer below.

Guitarist for Del Fuegos, finishing a Ph.D., setting out on solo career

Zanes also spoke about his time as the guitarist for rock band The Del Fuegos, before returning to school to pursue his Ph.D. and setting out on a solo music career.

“I took a leave of absence from my Ph.D. program and actually made a record here in Nashville at Ronnie Millsap’s old studio. There was Braille on the board,” he recalled, a reference to the technical needs of the legendary blind country music artist and pianist. “I was pretty excited; it was my first solo record.”

But things quickly changed after the record label Zanes was working with abruptly shut down.

“Suddenly, I was without a record label. They owned my record, so I didn’t have a record,” he said.

He returned to school to finish his degree, and eventually, after two years, he got his record back thanks to two people in the industry who lived next door to each other and were cutting their yards at the same time.

“Kenny Vaughn, one of the great guitar players in town, played on that record of mine, and he was out mowing his lawn one day. He lived next to Scott Robinson, who was also mowing his lawn. They got to the fence between their properties, they cut the engines, and Scott said, ‘I’m starting a label. If you hear of any artists, let me know. Kenny said, ‘I just played on this guy, Warren Zanes’ record, you should check it out. And that’s how I got signed to Dualtone Records, because these two guys were cutting their lawns.”  

Zanes also read passages from his book during the recent lecture, saying he didn’t realize he had grabbed the copy inscribed to his mom off the shelf.

“You guys are so kind, and my mother’s spirit is definitely here, and I thank you for that,” he said in closing.

About the Tom T. Hall Writers Series

The Tom T. Hall Writers Series celebrates songwriters, authors, poets and screenwriters and offers students, faculty, staff and the public a chance to learn more about the creative process as well as the business end of success.

Zanes’ lecture was part of and funded by the series and was presented in partnership with the Americana Music Foundation.

“Our dean, Beverly Keel, often says we’re the college of storytellers, and there are few who can tell the important stories of rock ’n’ roll music quite like Warren Zanes,” said assistant journalism and strategic media professor Matthew Leimkuehler.

“His ability to write about what it means to experience music — to live with a song, to understand where it comes from and how it inspires us as creative humans — is contagious. By coming to campus, he was able to share a little bit of that inspiration with the next generation of storytellers.”

—   DeAnn Hays (deann.hays@mtsu.edu)