Larry Campbell, photo by Dino Perrucci

Larry Campbell’s list of performance and recording credits can hold its own next to any other. In five decades of performance, the Grammy-winning singer-songwriter, guitarist and producer has lent his talents to ventures from some of rock’s most iconic artists of all time, including Levon Helm, B.B. King, Willie Nelson, Paul Simon, Linda Thompson, Little Feat, Mavis Staples and Bob Dylan, with whom he spent seven years on the Never Ending Tour. Now, he’s added Bruce Springsteen to that list by his part in the long-awaited live recreation of Nebraska.

Springsteen’s legendary 1982 album is currently enjoying an overdue revival, with the imminent biopic Deliver Me From Nowhere, as well as Nebraska ’82, the artist’s upcoming expanded edition featuring the solo album’s coveted full-band sessions. Part of that five-disc reissue is Springsteen’s first-ever complete live performance of the album, meticulously recorded to preserve its closeness and gravity while imbuing it with the insights Springsteen has accrued in the years since. Campbell, who has performed alongside Springsteen’s wife, Patti Scialfa, and once oversaw The Boss’s contributions as co-producer on Soozie Tyrell’s White Lines, got the call to join in the session.

“He said the songs had never been performed the way they were recorded, and he needed a second guitar player, and would I be interested and have time to do it?” Campbell said in a new interview with Rolling Stone. “I said, ‘Gee, let me think about this – yes.’”

Campbell signed on and prepared for the recording by carefully relistening to the sparse instrumentation of Nebraska, which in its release represented a pivot towards raw, unguarded soul-searching. “Bruce asked me to listen to the tracks and stay true to the second guitar stuff going on in there,” he recalled. “That took a lot of paying attention to what was going on. His engineer did send me some of those guitar parts separated, because they’re not mixed where they’re really discernible.”

When the time came to get to work, Springsteen, Campbell, keyboardist Charlie Giordano, director and longtime Springsteen collaborator Thom Zimny and minimal crew set up at Red Bank, N.J.’s Count Basie Theatre. With a small arsenal of Springsteen’s guitars – including a 12-string wielded by Campbell – and videography from Zimny, the trio took the stage before an empty house, harnessing the vast stillness to charge their resurrections of Nebraska’s heartland outpourings and stripped-down folk intimations. “This may be me projecting, but that sense of emptiness contributed to the vibe of the whole thing,” Campbell shared.

“As far as technical guitar playing, none of that was challenging,” Campbell reflected on the powerful experience. “But what was challenging about it – about all of them – was feeling like I was expressing the mood of each of those songs. I had to really listen to the lyrics and put myself in a place that was empathetic to what Bruce was trying to say. I had to feel like I could see myself inside the songs.”

Read Campbell’s full Rolling Stone interview here. Watch the trio’s performance of “Open All Night” below.

Nebraska ‘82 will be released on Oct. 17 via Sony Music. Beyond the new live album and its concert film, the collection includes Nebraska Outtakes, a set of nine solo rarities from his original acoustic sessions and a scrapped solo studio session, as well as a 2025 remaster and Electric Nebraska, recorded with a powerful backing at New York’s Power Station in 1982 and introduced earlier in September with a roaring early version of “Born in the U.S.A.” The full collection is available to pre-order and pre-save now.