Waitin’ on a Sunny Day

It’s Ann here today. Andy is in OurLittleCorner thinking about road trips.

“I need you to chase these blues away” is a line from “Waitin’ on a Sunny Day” by Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band, 2002.

I’m kind of enamored with Bruce Springsteen at the moment. His looks? His style? His music? Something else? You can probably guess.

Admittedly, this affection for Bruce came late. His first album, Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ, came out in 1972. In 1972 I was busy with our one-year-old daughter – and thinking about having our next child, who would arrive in 1973. And I didn’t have much time to spend listening to music.

That 1973 child, our son Travis, has been here visiting from Brooklyn for the past week, and we always talk about music. And we listened to Nebraska, the album which Springsteen recorded in 1982. And then, after reading up on Springsteen, I realized he took part in the 2004 Vote for Change tour, along with such super-stars as James Taylor, Neil Young, Jackson Brown, and The Dixie Chicks, all of whom were supporting the presidential candidate John Kerry.

One of the songs sung repeatedly on the tour was “People Have the Power,” a song written by Patti Smith in 1988. Patti Smith wasn’t a part of that musical/political tour but Springsteen and Michael Stipe (what a fabulous dancer — as well as singer — whom I had not heard of until this week) joined Patti in 2018 at the Beacon Theater in NYC for a performance of her song. The lyrics resonate. And Patti, at the age of about 72, is inspirational.

The people have the power

The power to dream, to rule
to wrestle the world from fools
it’s decreed the people rule
it’s decreed the people rule
Listen
I believe everything we dream
can come to pass through our union
we can turn the world around
we can turn the earth’s revolution
we have the power
People have the power

Finally, I watched Springsteen’s impressive plea in “Land of Hope and Dreams,” recorded in the UK in May of this year, 2025. That solidified it. I needed to blog about him!

If you want to know more details about Springsteen’s life, The Times of London has a recent interview. Did you know that Michelle Obama played the tambourine with him at a Barcelona performance in 2023?

“Waitin’ on a Sunny Day” may not be one of Springsteen’s most lauded songs, and it’s certainly not one of his most political … it’s really about a relationship, but I like the title and I especially like this joyful (sexy?) 2010 video. It hard not to smile — and feel a little more upbeat — as you watch it. Patti Scialfa, whom he’s been married to since 1991 and is a member of the E Street Band, is, appropriately, a part of the performance.

Hard times
Baby, well, they come to us all
Sure as the ticking of the clock on the wall
Sure as the turning of the night into day

‘Cause I’m waitin’
Waitin’ on a sunny day
Gonna chase the clouds away
Waitin’ on a sunny day

Finding a recipe to go with this blog was tricky. Springsteen has talked about loving a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the middle of the night. And he has talked about the buttermilk pancakes he fixed for his kids’ breakfast. Neither of those excite me. So I’m turning to Patti Smith for help. She is, apparently, a big Korean Carrot Salad enthusiast.

According to the website BeyondKimchee.com, Korean Carrot Salad, or Morkovcha (Морковча) in Russian, was created by ethnic Koreans known as the Koryo-saram, who were relocated to Central Asia by Stalin in the 1930s. “In their new homes, they had to adapt their traditional recipes, especially kimchi, using available ingredients. Since Napa cabbage and radishes were hard to find, they started using carrots instead, leading to the creation of this unique Korean salad.“

If you want a good video, here’s TikTok’s Kat Chao showing you how to make it (with slightly different ingredient amounts than our recipe).