Excerpt from the 11/95 radio interview with Bob Costas, as
transcribed by Susan West:

Bob: Bruce, Tom Joad of course, from John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of
Wrath, but it's clear that your inspiration for this comes more from the
John Ford film, not just for this track, but the whole album has a
cinematic feel. I know you're a fan of John Ford.

Bruce: Yeah, that picture I guess I saw in the late 70s and it had a really
deep effect on me. I think I'd read some John Steinbeck, probably earlier
than that - in high school and there was something about the film that sort
of crystallized the story for me. And it always stayed with me after that,
for some reason there was something in that picture that always resonated
throughout almost all of my other work. It was just an image that popped
out as I was sittin around on the couch messing around with the guitar.

Bob: Do you remember the first time that you watched Henry Fonda give that
speech at the end?

Bruce: Oh yeah, I cried.

Bob: [quotes Henry Fonda speech reference in lyrics, in a Barbara
Walters-like effort to make Bruce cry ;-)]

Bruce: That was a very powerful speech for me. I think to some degree the
things you write are a conversation with yourself. I wasn't... I think
that's probably what that song was to me, it was a conversation I was
having with myself. Not about "oh, brother where art thou," or "where is
this in the world today," it was just "where is it in me?" I think you
gotta start with that question. If you can get people to ask that question
then the song's done its job.

Bob: You've often come to the theme of a person in difficult circumstances
trying to find some nobility some dignity in those circumstances, maybe not
in a dramatic way that everyone can see, but in some small way that would
have a redemptive power for that person. And in these cuts, I find a little
bit of that but also a lot of resignation on the part of these characters
that maybe they're just not even gonna find that little bit of dignity.

Bruce: Well, I guess I sort of see there's a little bit of it out there. I
don't really start from any political point of view - no conscious one. I
suppose everybody carries their politics innately and emotionally in their
psychology in some fashion. But I think that's what's been happening. I
think that the American idea of equal opportunity obviously it hasn't been
realized. And I think what's worse, every study that's come out about the
division of wealth in society over the past ten or fifteen years has shown
that the middle class has been getting smaller and people have been getting
farther and farther apart. I think that while it's something that hasn't
led to, say, riots, it leads to diminished hopes, diminished expectations,
diminished possibilities. And so that feeling which is just something that
I sort of - like I said I don't sit down and start from any particular
conscious point of view, but I think that feeling of the way things feel to
me right now, that colors the stories and the characters' lives on the record.

Bob: Like we said earlier, GOTJ is based much more on the movie, or draws
its inspiration much more from the movie than from the book, and you think
about the movie and this whole family making its way out west in this
little rickety car, and nothing about their circumstances is nurturing,
nothing should give them reason to be optimistic, and they're trying to
forge some sense of community among themselves and find something that's
real that can help them transcend these circumstances. And that theme shows
up in a lot of your work through the years, doesn't it?

Bruce: I guess, see my folks in 1969, I was 19, my folks went west. They
went to California to start a new life. And they, it was my mom, my dad and
my little sister, I think they had saved $3000, and I remember I stayed in
New Jersey because I'd gotten very involved with the band and I guess
that'd become my family at that point in time, and it was also where I
could make a living. I went out to California, I tried to make a living and
I couldn't get a job. I couldn't get a job where somebody'd pay me to play.
And back home I had two or three clubs where I could come up with a
hundred, a hundred-twenty-five, or a hundred-fifty bucks a week, which was
enough to survive on. I was sleeping with 6 other guys in an apartment and
everybody's chippin in a few bucks for rent. But my folks went in 69, they
had three grand, they slept two nights in the car and one night in a motel,
and that was what they did. They drove into California, they didn't know
anybody... I had a girlfriend who was one of the first sort of hippies in
the area, she was the only person anyone knew who'd ever been to San
Francisco (laughs), and she sent em to Sausalito, (laughs) which was sort
of, I guess, this sort of hipsters' enclave at the time...

Bob: Was she sure to wear a pretty flower in her hair?

Bruce: (laughs) So my folks pull straight from New Jersey into Sausalito,
where of course, they realize very quickly that they don't belong there.
And my mother claims they pulled into a gas station and asked the
attendant, "Hey, where do people like us live?" (laughs) and somebody said,
"Oh, you live on the peninsula." That's her story, so they started a whole
new life out there, they did well, but they struggled pretty hard. I went
out there - there was a time when I'd never been on an airplane, till I
made a record, nobody could afford an airplane ticket. To get to see them
about once every year or so, me and a buddy of mine we'd drive across the
country go three days straight, we'd save - whatever, a hundred bucks or a
couple hundred dollars and drive straight through. I went to California, I
tried to, I did some auditioning, but I realized really quickly that I
wasn't gonna be able to live out there. I wasn't gonna be able to... you
know there were just a lot of musicians, and while it was a much bigger
music scene, I was a nobody, and I realized very quickly that while someone
might _let_ you play, they're not gonna pay you. So I stayed about two
months and I realized I was gonna have to be living off my folks and I
didn't want to do that, so I went back to New Jersey. And I don't know if
that's had something to do with part of what I've written about. Maybe it's
some of my own experience and some of just that's the American story. The
American story is transience and the idea of "over the rise," which is less
now, I suppose, but I think it's some ingrained part of, not just the
American spirit but human spirit in general. My characters have always been
on the move going someplace, searching for something - whether it's a
better life or running from something with the idea that somehow moving
will make you better, it'll heal you inside.