'The Boss' is back with a new CD

When "The Boss" releases a new CD, the entire music world listens up, and fans know exactly what they can expect: thought-provoking, soul-stirring songs about life in America. This time, they'll also get something they probably weren't expecting — a warning label. But as Bruce Springsteen's career proves, change is good.

Bruce Springsteen is all alone on the stage, a troubadour with a guitar and harmonica. He playing music from his latest CD, a raw, stark collection called "Devils and Dust.” It’s a stark contrast to some the rousing  music that earned him the title, “The Boss” and made him a  rock and roll icon, legendary for  bringing the house down, with songs that are more than music to his fans.

They're anthems.

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But now there's no E Street Band to back him up. Springsteen has stripped down to the basics. It's another fork in the long musical road that is his career.

Springsteen: “After I do something that's very external, like I do with the E Street band where everything is out and there's a lot of energy, I like to do something internal, basically. It helps me to express both things. I always say, the E Street, that's my Italian side, that's my mother and her family. And then when I go to Nebraska and Tom Joad and this record, you know, I think the Irish, the moody Irish side comes out.”

Springsteen is a songwriter at heart. Time Magazine called him a rock poet. He writes stories as much as songs and has been hailed as an authentic voice for the downtrodden. It's a theme he returns to with “Devils and Dust.”

Matt Lauer: “I think you said somewhere about a lot of the songs in this album, they're about people trying to handle the challenges in their life. And sometimes they do it well, and sometimes they do it tragically. And when it comes right down to it…”

Bruce Springsteen: “Yeah, just like all of us, you know.”

Lauer: “Most good songs have some element of that. And I guess most people who write those songs have some element of that also?”

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Springsteen: “Well, you got it. You can't — you're writing, you're never writing something that's totally outside of yourself you know. That's the essential element. It's how you sort of declare your solidarity with that character. And it's how you show your respect for his experiences is by drawing up the part of you that's him and vice versa. That's what makes the song real. That's what makes people sit on the edge of the seat when you're telling your story. That's why when it's over they feel like, that's me.”

The 55-year-old Springsteen wrote many of the songs a decade ago, when he did his very first solo acoustic tour after the release of "The Ghost of Tom Joad.”

Lauer: “So, you'd go home after doing a show on the road for ‘Tom Joad.’ You go to a hotel—“

Springsteen: “Yeah, yeah, what else is there to do, you know. I'm too old to do anything else. But I'd come home. And after the acoustics, so you still had your voice left. You didn't have to save some for the next night. So, and I'd have the guitar. And I think I was really inspired by doing the tour. It was the first time I'd played acoustically.”

Those songs sat on the shelf while Springsteen slipped back to being The Boss, reuniting with the E Street Band and selling out stadiums all over the world. And then came September 11. Springsteen, like most Americans, was deeply affected, and the songwriter put his feelings into his music. The result was the critically acclaimed "The Rising."

World events would inspire him once again two years ago, when America went to war in Iraq. He dusted off those old songs and then wrote a brand new one, the title track, "Devils and Dust.”

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