Alexandra Jardvall has released an album of Bruce Springsteen songs, “In the Spirit of Springsteen: The Live Sessions, Vol. 1,” as well as a single titled “Welcome Home to Asbury Park.”
When I interviewed Swedish singer-songwriter Alexandra Jardvall last year, two topics that came up prominently were her love of Bruce Springsteen and her love of Asbury Park. Both are reflected in new recording projects by her that are currently available online.
In the Spirit of Springsteen: The Live Sessions, Vol. 1 features covers of 15 Springsteen songs, ranging from trademark hits such as “Dancing in the Dark” and “Born to Run” to relatively recent material like “There Goes My Miracle” and “I’ll See You in My Dreams.” She has also released a single, “Welcome Home to Asbury Park,” about her love affair with the New Jersey rock mecca; she has described it as “an homage to my adopted hometown and its residents.”
You can listen to her versions of Springsteen’s “Growin’ Up” and “Human Touch,” as well as “Welcome Home to Asbury Park,” below. For information about both projects, visit alexandra-music.com or facebook.com/alexandra.jardvall.
CONNI FREESTONE
ALEXANDRA JARDVALL
Jardvall is accompanied by just one musician, guitarist Richard Hauer, on the In the Spirit of Springsteen tracks, so they have an intimate, coffeehouse vibe. This really enhances the storytelling element of songs like “Spirit in the Night” and “No Surrender,” which you are used to hearing with a full band. Perhaps the biggest changes, though, come to “Born to Run” and “Land of Hope and Dreams”; they seem more calmly reflective than incendiary, and maybe even a bit sad. The inspirational messages still come through loud and clear; they just come at you from another direction.
Similarly, on “There Goes My Miracle,” from 2019’s Western Stars, Jardvall downplays the soaring power of the chorus the first two times she sings it, before dramatically embracing its uplift, as if she has undergone a change of heart, the third and final time it comes around.
The album’s biggest surprise, by its mere presence, is “Pony Boy,” the Human Touch track that surely must rank among Springsteen’s least-covered songs. It’s a low-key, folky album ender here, just as it was a low-key, folky ending to Human Touch. It is subtitled “for Ted”; Springsteen expert and Jardvall friend and supporter Stan Goldstein explains that he is “Ted Brych of Toms River, who has been battling cancer. Ted has been to more than 500 Bruce shows around the world and he always kids that ‘Pony Boy’ would be his request for Bruce. So Alexandra recorded that as a dedication to Ted.” (HERE is a link to a GoFundMe campaign to help Brych in his battle.)
In “Welcome Home to Asbury Park,” Jardvall sings of Asbury landmarks (The Carousel, The Boardwalk), concert venues (The Stone Pony, Convention Hall, The Wonder Bar etc.) and festivals (Sea.Hear.Now, Light of Day), and the way “locals embraced me.” She visited “this beautiful coastal wonderland,” as she calls it in the song, in the spring of 2023, as well as in both the spring and fall of 2024.
“In 1984, when I first discovered Bruce Springsteen, I said ‘When I grow up, I’ll be on stage in Asbury Park,’ ” she has written on Facebook. “It took me almost 40 years, but I did it!”
As part of the 2025 Light of Day WinterFest, Jardvall will perform at the “Asbury Angels” show at The Stone Pony, Jan. 17 at 6:45 p.m.; and at a “Songwriters by the Sea” show at The Watermark, Jan. 19 at 12:15 p.m. Visit lightofday.org.
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