Host Erin Narloch sits down with Melissa Ziobro, curator at the Bruce Springsteen Archives & Center for American Music at Monmouth University, to discuss Springsteen’s and the archives’ commitment to education, the value of authenticity, insights from Springsteen’s collection, and how music helps us understand broader stories about American history and culture.
Ziobro began her career as a historian, archivist, and curator for the U.S. Army in 2004 before returning to her alma mater, Monmouth University, to teach full-time. In August 2023, she became curator of the university’s Bruce Springsteen Archives & Center for American Music after having worked with the center for many years in her faculty role, including by curating its first traveling exhibit, “Springsteen: His Hometown,” with the Monmouth County Historical Association in 2019. Her most recent publications include “Fort Monmouth: The US Army’s House of Magic” (2024) and “The Battlin’ Bastards of Bravo: Bravo Company, 1/506th, 101st Airborne, in Vietnam and Beyond” (2025). Her current book project is “Born in the USA: Bruce Springsteen, Bart Haynes, Walter Cichon—and the Vietnam War.”
Transcript:
Erin Narloch 00:11
Welcome to the History Factory podcast today we are joined with Melissa Ziobro from the Bruce Springsteen Archives and Center for American Music.
Erin Narloch 00:30
We had a great conversation where Melissa really took us from where she started in her career to what she’s doing now. The purpose of the Archives and Center for American Music, how she positions, you know, education as being kind of a hallmark of what the archive does. And we even talk about REMBASS. So listen to where you find out more about that and where it makes a sighting on one of Bruce’s album covers. But really want to thank Melissa for an incredible conversation, a really interesting take on the value of being authentic and music in American history. Well, let’s get into it.
Erin Narloch 01:30
Melissa, thank you so much for being with us today. We’re so excited to chat with you about the Bruce Springsteen Archives and the Center for American Music. You have a really interesting kind of career progression, where you started in military history and then you now have this very interesting role. Can you tell us a little bit about kind of your career and how you made the pivot to where you are today.
Melissa Ziobro 02:04
Sure, sure. So I will go back to my undergrad years, although I promise I will keep it brief, but I do this because I think it’s really important, especially for budding historians. You know, it had never been explained to me that you could do history as a career. If you liked history, you could teach. But other than that, it had never been explained to me that you could do history as a career, and that could not be further from the truth. But when I was an undergrad, I assumed, well, I’m a history nerd, you know, lifelong history nerd. But what am I going to do with that degree? I’ll go to law school. And so I, you know, was a history political science interdisciplinary major in my undergrad at Monmouth University, assuming I would go to law school. I had a wonderful, wonderful internship with the National Parks out at Fort Hancock on Sandy Hook here at the Jersey Shore, and I was able to do oral history interviews and help with exhibits. It was just an incredible experience. I loved every moment of it, and when it was over, I got my credits and I went back to campus and went on my way.
Melissa Ziobro 03:06
But I was very fortunate because my supervisor at the MPs, Mary Rasa, recommended me for a job at Fort Monmouth. Fort Monmouth was an active duty military base here in Central Jersey. And so another tip I’m always telling my students and anyone who might be listening here is take your ex Ed experiences, your internship experiences, very seriously, because you never know where they might lead. And so I applied for this entry level historian job at Fort Monmouth. It was as a US Army civilian employee, and I got it. And so I was in this very lovely position of finishing my undergrad with a full time job ready to go. So started my career in 2004 as a command historian at Fort Monmouth. It was a long time Signal Corps base. Signal Corps being the branch of the army charged with all manner of military communications. And so I the job title is command historian, but it was like being a historian, an archivist, a curator, you know, wearing a lot of hats there, stewarding the archival collection and doing oral histories and doing exhibits. It was an incredibly rewarding experience, because at one moment you could be interviewing a World War II vet, the next moment you could be interviewing someone who just come back from their deployment from Iraq or Afghanistan. So wonderful job, an incredible learning ground for me.
Melissa Ziobro 04:28
Also, you know, as a budding historian, the army paid for me to get my master’s while I was there at the fort. The base closed due to something called Base Realignment and Closure, where the Department of Defense periodically assesses its real estate holdings and sees where it can get rid of land to hopefully recognize a cost savings for the taxpayer. So the base closed and my job moved to Aberdeen, Proving Ground, Maryland. As I always tell it, though I resigned rather than leave the great state of New Jersey. I am a lifelong New Jerseyan. I’m very, very dedicated to the Jersey Shore. So I was fortunate to move back to my alma mater, Monmouth University, and teach history full time. So I’d actually been adjuncting while I was working at Fort Monmouth, and then moved into full time. So I’ve been teaching history for 18 years now in my classroom work in my role as a full time faculty member.
Melissa Ziobro 05:14
I started working with the Bruce Springsteen archives and center for America. Center for American Music, and we can talk more about that entity and its mission in a moment. But when I taught public history classes, oral history, historic preservation, museums and archives management, instead of taking, you know, lovely blue book exams, we would do large capstone projects that showed the students mastery of the course material. And originally I would partner with public history sites throughout the county, throughout the state, but when the Springsteen Center came to campus, we started doing our capstone projects with them. So I’d been working with the Springsteen center in my faculty role since 2016. They were getting ready to undergo a big expansion, and they recruited me to move over from my faculty line to serve as the curator. And it was August of 2023, so I’d been there a little over two years. Now it’s crazy. It goes so fast because we’re so busy and we are getting ready to open a brand new, roughly 30,000 square foot center in the spring of 2026 just in time for America’s 250.
Erin Narloch 06:31
Wow. Just just a few things going on. Just a few things going on as we had…
Melissa Ziobro 06:37
Tried to keep it short, I’m sorry,
Erin Narloch 06:38
No, no is wonderful. As we kind of pivot and start to talk about the archives, can you talk about what kind of has remained the same from early in your career to now, or what is what has changed?
Melissa Ziobro 06:53
Yeah. So this is so interesting I find when I talk to other public historians. You know, no matter what their job title, archivist, curator, or whatever. Some of them have come to their current positions just because they have a strong skills based background. You know, best practices in oral history are the same whether you are doing an oral history interview of a Vietnam veteran or a musician. Right? Best practices in exhibit design are the same, whether the subject is the pigeons of World War I or Bruce Springsteen and long branch, right? And then there are some public historians who are more steeped in the content matter, right? And so for me, the skills that I learned when I spent my seven years at Fort Monmouth and went through, you know, Center of Military History training programs, etc.–those all translate directly to the work that I’m doing today, because the best practices are the best practices, regardless of the subject matter. Yeah. And then, of course, you know, I’ve always been a New Jersey history specialist. So whether it’s New Jersey’s military history or New Jersey’s music history. There’s a lot more overlap, actually, than you might think. Bruce Springsteen actually performed, played at Fort Monmouth, you know, many, many times over the years. So there’s all these, you know, very interesting overlaps here at the Jersey Shore.
Erin Narloch 08:18
I love it. You’re really doing a great benefit for New Jersey tourism board right now, like
Melissa Ziobro 08:26
We can’t wait. We hope to welcome some 50,000 visitors, conservative estimate a year to the new building, and when they come, they’re going to see us, but then we’re keen to make sure they visit all of the other wonderful public history sites that are in the area.
Erin Narloch 08:42
That’s amazing. Can you talk to us a little bit about about the Bruce Springsteen Archives, its mission, kind of, what are you setting out to do as an organization?
Melissa Ziobro 08:53
Yeah. So we have a long title, Bruce Springsteen Archives and Center for American Music at Monmouth University. But I often will say the whole thing, one, because it does not lend itself to a tidy acronym, but also because both pieces are so important, and our mission, then is really twofold. Bruce Springsteen Archives. We are his official repository, right? So we have that direct relationship with Bruce. But it is not just about Bruce—that Center for American Music piece is equally important, and that was something that Bruce himself wanted. When we were talking to Bruce about I say we, who was my our executive director, Bob Santelli, I want to make sure I give Bob a shout out there when he was in conversations with Bruce about potentially making Monmouth his official repository. He was like, Yeah, but it can’t just be about me, right? I’m paraphrasing, but it’s like, I don’t want to just build a creepy shrine to myself. Or can we be educational? Can we do something bigger?
Melissa Ziobro 09:54
And so, you know, I as a resident history nerd on our team. You know the life-long historian, 20 plus years here. I’m so grateful that that is the case, because if it was just about Bruce, that would be wonderful. That would be interesting. It would be rich. But to also call ourselves the Center for American Music and with our exhibits, our programming, our publications, tell broader stories about American life, history and culture through that very accessible prism of music, is just so exciting. You know, people sometimes will say like, Oh, you’ve got my dream job. Or they will be shocked when I say I had to think long and hard about leaving my full time faculty role to serve as the curator. And they’re like, that’s crazy. You weren’t like, yes, please pick me, you know. I mean, I was to a degree, but, but I did. I really had to think about it, because education is the most important thing for me, right? And I wanted to make sure that I was going somewhere where education was at the heart of the work and and it really, really is. It’s, it’s our goal to serve Springsteen fans, music fans, yes, as just like a fun tourism site, but also we do this deeper educational work.
Melissa Ziobro 11:07
You know, we just had this incredible conference in September. It was a collaboration with the School of Humanities and Social Sciences and other areas across campus, where we brought over 100 scholars from across the globe to campus to take these fascinating looks at Bruce’s landmark album “Born to Run,” right so all of these scholars there to talk about Bruce and race and gender and class. Just two weeks ago, I had over 70 middle and high school educators on campus to talk about our curriculum-aligned lesson plans for field trips to the new building. So yes, our mission is twofold, Bruce’s official repository, but also the Center for American Music and education is really, really the crux of everything that we do.
Erin Narloch 11:56
Yeah, that that is so I appreciate that thoughtfulness that he brought to the project, right and not just centering his own narrative and his contributions, but putting it in context and in a broader context. How do you, how do you archive a kind of a living brand and a living person? What does that look like?
Melissa Ziobro 12:20
This is so funny. So I have a silly little story. We on our website, Springsteen archives.org, got a lot of different great content. I hope everybody will go check out the website. There’s the usual things you’d expect, like our calendar of events, but we’ve got a video series, conversations with our curator. But we’ve also got this blog, and the blog is the story I’m getting to here. I had just done a blog post about Bruce’s Christmas music. He famously does live performances of “Merry Christmas Baby” and “Santa Claus is Coming to Town,” and the Christmas music of our American music honors awardees. So I do this whole blog. I sent it to the you know, web guy on a Saturday, and then on Sunday, Bruce hops on stage in a surprise performance at the Stone Pony in Asbury Park and plays those two songs. And now I’m like, wait, stop, pause, delete, I gotta update the blog, because Bruce just got on stage, right? So that’s an example of the fact that, you know, we’re working with someone who’s still living, who’s still very active, and it does impact our work.
Melissa Ziobro 13:22
Another little silly story. While I’m talking about the blog, I just did a post about there’s these hats. They’re really, really popular. It says, United States of America versus Bruce Springsteen. It’s like, wait, what? So people can go on the blog and read the whole story. But long story short, Bruce is always out and about here in, you know, New Jersey, and a couple years ago, he’s out on his motorcycle, and he comes across some fans, and they offer him like a shot of tequila. And he’s just like, Okay, I’m gonna do a shot of tequila with the fans. This is sweet. Well, he gets intercepted by park rangers. It was on Sandy Hook, actually, where I did my internship, and he’s not intoxicated, he’s below the legal limit, but it blows up into this whole like press story. And so when we had the announcement of our building opening, he makes a joke. He’s like, you know, live it. Naming a building after a living person is a tricky thing. I could get in trouble. I could get arrested for drinking tequila in a public park, and he goes on to say, I promise I will do my best to never embarrass you again. You know, so a sweet, cute little story, but it goes towards the unique situation of documenting someone’s life while they are still actively living it.
Erin Narloch 14:37
Yeah, I think that’s that’s so interesting and like it also, quite honestly, kind of, from my vantage point, is showing the value of making history every day, right? And kind of being agile in your approach, I think requiring a different, a different skill set from you in being that kind of historian and curator… curator that can, can kind of move with, with someone who’s very much alive and well and living his own life. The topic of music, kind of like writ large, right as a part of American culture, as an opportunity to drive community engagement—how do you think about it? At at the center, what do you, what are you doing to ensure, like beyond, you know, beyond oral histories? How are we utilizing, you know, music to its fullest capacity?
Melissa Ziobro 15:34
Oh, that is a great question. Um, as I said, I always kind of think as of music, as like this hook to catch people, and then you get them, and you start to tell them serious stories about life in America across time, right? And when I say we use music, it might be a live music performance where the interludes contain little history lectures. That’s a favorite kind of program of mine, or it could be in our exhibits, where we hook people with like, oh my goodness, look at this famous person’s stuff. Look at this is Ray Charles suit and sunglasses. Oh my goodness, it’s Frank Sinatra’s ukulele. But then we draw the people in, and we get to tell them deeper stories that they might otherwise think is a snooze fest, right? So I really see music as a gift to make the telling of history more palatable to those who might otherwise not be inclined to dive into those areas.
Erin Narloch 16:33
Yeah, I think it’s super accessible, right? It is like everyone has a personal experience with music, everyone can utilize it, or many people can utilize it, kind of as a reference point. And it looked like you wanted to add to that. Go ahead.
Melissa Ziobro 16:51
Yeah, I just, you know, I’m always telling educators in particular, think of music as a primary source document, because I think a lot of times we don’t when we think of primary source documents that we want to incorporate into our teaching, into our interpretation. We think of photos. We think of census data. We think of this that, but think of music. Music is so often a primary source that documents the time period in which it was created. So again, it just goes towards my feeling that music is such a gift for us as historians to have in our toolkit.
Erin Narloch 17:28
Yeah, that’s great. So you mentioned earlier during our conversation, kind of the future and the building. Can you talk to us a little bit more about what’s what’s kind of on the horizon and and the strategy you have in place to really become a cultural destination.
Melissa Ziobro 17:47
Yes, so the building will open in late spring of 2026 as I always say, right in time for America’s 250th birthday. The time is going quick, alarmingly quick, if you’re the person that has to work on getting the exhibits ready. But when we open … the building is roughly 30,000 square feet, we have a roughly 240 seat soundstage or theater, where during a regular museum day, you will watch an incredible film by Bruce’s trusted videographer, Tom Zimny, that’ll be your orientation to your museum visit. Then we have roughly 10,000 square feet of exhibits. The first floor has an American music history gallery that looks at 250 years of American history through music. It has a roughly 2200 square foot temp gallery where we will have new exhibits every six months or so. The first one will be on music and activism, and then when we get upstairs, we get into Bruce and the E Street Band. So we will look at Bruce’s career throughout the decades. We will look at the key members of the E Street Band and their background and their influences. We will dive deep into Bruce’s songwriting process, exploring, in particular, the books which have inspired and shaped him throughout the years. We will have a photo gallery. We will have two really immersive galleries called In Studio and In Concert. In Concert is kind of self explanatory. You go in and it’s like you’re immersed in the concert experience. And we’ll have curated concert footage in there for you. Bruce’s live performances are, of course, legendary. And then in the In Studio Gallery, you’ll go in and it’s like you’re in the studio with the band. You’ll be able to pick up instruments and kind of be taught how to play them by, you know, Nils, by Stevie.
Melissa Ziobro 19:43
So it’s really going to have something for everyone you know, no matter what kind of music you like. That’s the great thing for me. You know, in the American Music Gallery, we will look at classical music and hip hop music. rock music, and you know, everything in between. Even when you go upstairs into the, you know, quote, Bruce area, there are interactives all throughout the museum. But one interactive that pops to mind for me is we’re talking about the variety of genres is one that will explore artists who influence Bruce and artists who have been influenced by him, and so again, it’s not just a place for the Bruce Springsteen fans. And I never, I want to always make sure when I say that it doesn’t sound negative. Of course, we love the Bruce Springsteen fans, and we want them to come but there is something for everyone, no matter what kind of music they enjoy.
Erin Narloch 20:39
Yeah, what an incredible resource to have on campus, for for students, for faculty, to utilize. I like thinking back to my own college days. I couldn’t imagine to have that, that sort of, that sort of resource. What’s the plan to engage those, those those audiences. Yeah.
Melissa Ziobro 21:04
Yeah, so there’s a number of different ways that we kind of serve the university. First of all, we are a separate 501(c)(3), that is essentially owned by the university. So we are all university employees, and the building is a university owned building, but we do fundraise all our own operating and capital costs. So while we are not a drain on tuition in any way, we are constantly increasing the profile of the university right when we’re constantly in the news, and we have these artists on campus, and you know, our exhibits are traveling the country, or we’re traveling the country, doing speaking engagements and symposiums. And an increased profile for the university hopefully translates into increased enrollment, and, you know, translates into increased tuition dollars. It’s just a good thing for the university overall. Every class trip that comes through. We want all of those middle and high school students to fall in love with the university and come someday. So I think there’s, you know, that enormous recruitment potential.
Melissa Ziobro 22:09
And then we want, you know, faculty, students to be in as much as they want to be. You know, we collaborate with students on projects. We collaborate with faculty on their research. You know, we’re always trying to promote the faculty research so it’s, it’s just such a unique opportunity to increase the profile of this gorgeous, kind of hidden gem here at the Jersey Shore. We also hire student workers. We have like, roughly eight to 10 student workers per semester who you know, are paid to help, and we try to match the work that they do with their plans for their life after Monmouth. So you know myself as a Monmouth University alum, and as I said 18-year faculty member, it is critical to me at all points to be like, okay, how does this serve the university? Because, you know, that’s that’s just who I am personally. And so I’m very, very invested in ensuring that we are serving the needs of the institution in addition to our constituencies.
Erin Narloch 23:17
Yeah, I love that. And mentioning student employees. I have to tell you, my first experience in my kind of professional career was being, you know, an employee of my university’s art museum and working there for three years, and that sent me on my way. So I I can’t imagine the opportunity for for students, I would say, across different humanities disciplines, to to be able to be a part of the museum and gain that experience.
Melissa Ziobro 23:49
Yeah, that’s the thing. I think the work that we do is very, very interdisciplinary. Because, you know, like, I’m the director of curatorial affairs, and there’s the exhibits and the publications that we do and the oral history program, but we have such a robust kind of public programming schedule as well where we’re doing concert events and different film events and things that engage really the general public. So when we look at how we can serve the students. I’m thinking about the history students, right? But Monmouth University has an award winning music industry program. Students from that program can come in and can, you know, see how we put together an award show in concert. You know, we can have students from marketing and public relations come in and help with our social media and our website. So we do try to be very thoughtful about serving as broad a swath of the university as possible.
Erin Narloch 24:45
Yeah, that’s great. I wanted to talk a bit about kind of the value of authenticity. You know, Bruce represents like authenticity better than most American brands. Like, what do you think corporations could learn from how Springsteen managed his own history and archives and like under the theme of authenticity. Why? Why does that resonate?
Melissa Ziobro 25:13
That is a great question, you know, and this is something that just came up in my interview with Country Music Hall of Fame Inductee Kenny Chesney, because we were talking about his new book, “Heart Life Music”. When you are an artist, particularly when you’re starting out in your career, you’re hungry, right? You want it, and you’re willing to do a lot of things to get your career off the ground. But Bruce has always remained true to himself. We can go back to his very, very first album. Bruce gets his recording contract with Columbia Records, and they would have been happy to market him as a New York artist. You know the Jersey Shore is close enough to New York. Who knows where Freehold, Asbury Park are? Everybody knows where New York City is, and Bruce is like, no, I’m from Jersey, and my first album will be called “Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.” Like he did that to make a point that he kind of drew that line in the sand from the very earliest point in his career, that he was going to be his authentic self, and he was going to make it work on his terms. And from that point in 1973 forward, he has done things on his terms. And I think that even comes down to, you know, why did he make Monmouth University his official repository? There are many institutions who would have loved to be Bruce’s official repository, to have his notebooks. You know, the notebooks where he’s jotting down notes in his sessions with President Barack Obama. Why Monmouth? And it was him being authentic. He is from the Shore. He is of the Shore. He could have raised his family anywhere in the globe that he wanted to and he did it here at the Shore. And so he wanted his repository to be at the Shore. So from the very earliest moment of his career, where his first album is “Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.” Oh, and the second one, by the way, is The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle. E Street being an actual street here at the Shore in Belmar, New Jersey. To the end, not the end of his career, he’s still going strong, right? But here we are, you know, 50 plus years in, and he’s like, nope, my archives are going to be here in New Jersey, because that was him being his authentic self, and that has been a recipe for success for him.
Melissa Ziobro 27:26
You know, he at 75, he’s now 76, he was 75 when he just ended, you know, a global world, a world tour with sold out stadiums around the globe. So being true to himself has worked for him, and I hope that it would inspire other people, other brands or corporations to feel like they can be true to themselves and make it work and find a formula for success that works for them. This is something I was talking about last night. I was on a different program with this wonderful fan group, The Spring-Nuts. And I was saying artists do not have that staying power just because they’re a good singer or, you know, you have to connect with your fans or your audience, right? If you’re a brand. You’ve got to actually connect to have long term success. It’s not just because you have a good voice or a good product. It’s connection, human connection, that matters. And I think if you are real and you are authentic, you will have that human connection that equates to success.
Erin Narloch 28:30
That’s great. I really appreciate that insight. I’m going to ask you just a few rack questions. What’s your favorite item in the archive?
Melissa Ziobro 28:44
This is so hard. People always ask this, even when I was at Fort Monmouth. Of course, people ask this, and it’s like, it’s like being asked to pick your favorite child. You’re not supposed to do that. My answers might change from time to time, but I almost always say his mom Adele’s scrapbook, scrapbooks, plural, actually. So his beautiful, lovely mom, Adele, may she rest in peace. She passed away a few years ago. She scrapbooked his career. And I’m a mom. I have two boys, 14 and 18, and that’s so relatable to me, right? So she initially, in the beginning, she doesn’t know he’s going to make it big. She doesn’t. She’s just clipping out newspaper articles and annotating them. There’s an adorable letter she writes to the record company where, you know, I’m paraphrasing a little bit, but she’s like, “Thanks for the three free copies of the record. We gave them all away because everybody’s so excited to hear Bruce’s voice. Can we have some more free copies?” Like it’s just the sweetest thing in the world? So I almost always say his mom’s scrapbooks another favorite item for me.
Melissa Ziobro 29:55
Let’s here. I’m going to give your listeners a little quiz right now. Listeners, please pick. Picture in your mind, if you can, Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” album cover. What does Bruce have in his back pocket on the iconic “Born in the USA” album cover? Okay, give you a beat. A lot of people will say, uh, red bandana. And that’s like a Mandela Effect thing. It’s actually a red hat. So it’s this red hat. We have the Red Hat still, and the Red Hat says REMBASS on it, R, E, M, B, A, S, S, and that stands for remotely monitored battlefield sensor system. Where am I going with this? Well, coincidentally, that hat came from Fort Monmouth. Again, this Fort Monmouth tie, right, came from Fort Monmouth REMBASS was a… I’m like at a loss for words. Now to describe it easily. It was a sensor system that was created to help detect the movement of enemy troops in Vietnam. So the hat through circumstance—I have an article coming out about it, it’s kind of too long to explain—but the hat changes hands a number of times. It winds up with Bruce. Bruce has no idea what it’s about, but how coincidental is that that in his back pocket on the “Born in the USA” album cover, which the album deals with the struggles of Vietnam vets, in his back pocket, he has got a hat from a Fort Monmouth RCA project that was trying to save the lives of soldiers in Vietnam. Love it. So okay. Scrapbook and the hat, the REMBASS hat. Those are my favorite items in the collection.
Erin Narloch 31:41
That is a deep cut in, like, with some incredible knowledge. Thank you for sharing that with us. I love a good deep cut. I have another question for you, what would people be most surprised by, like, either a story or something in the collection? What do you think?
Melissa Ziobro 32:00
I think, I hope this isn’t a hokey answer, but I think people would just be surprised at how genuinely humble Bruce is. He is just the sweetest, most humble. You know, when he comes to campus, this is an example I always give, like, he’ll always make time for the students. And he could be like, get these kids away from me, right? He’ll always make time for the students to say hi to the students. You know, when he tours the building, he’s just like, wow, you like, he’s just so kind and so humble. And I think that would surprise a lot of people, because I think we have sometimes negative views of celebrities being pompous or being demanding or having an over inflated sense of their self importance. And he just, he just genuinely does not, and I don’t get paid to say that. It is not my job to be Bruce Springsteen’s hype woman. I am a historian, first and foremost. But it’s just, it’s just genuinely true. He’s just so, so nice and down to earth, and again, I will be forever grateful to him for insisting that we be the Bruce Springsteen Archives and Center for American Music so that we can leverage his name and his legacy to tell really broad and needy stories about American history, life and culture.
Erin Narloch 33:16
That’s amazing. That’s so great to know. It’s that people are that kind and humble. All right, one final question for you. We’re in a time machine, and we’re going a year into the future, so we’re sitting here, and it’s, you know, the end of 2026, tell me. Tell me what it’s like at the archives.
Melissa Ziobro 33:43
Yeah, so we should be open for about roughly six months at that point, if all else goes well, I hope sincerely that we have a parking lot full of yellow school buses, because I want to see kids coming through there all the time. I want to see families coming through. You know, this is something that comes up a lot. You know, my kids now are third generation Bruce fans. I get it from my mom, and then I’m a Bruce fan, and now my kids. How beautiful is it that that music, or any music, can unite generations of families, you know. And if I’m really going to be crazy, I’d like to say a year from now, maybe we’re even talking about a second building, because our building isn’t even open yet, and it’s already just about full. So, you know, the archivist in me always wants to be finding new treasures, and I’m going to need more space to do that. So I hope that we are open, that we are full of happy fans and learners, and that maybe we’re looking at phase two.
Erin Narloch 34:52
That’s incredible. Well, Melissa, thank you so much for your time today. You’ve provided us with such a vivid kind of picture of what happens at the archives and at the university, and I think it’s just been wonderful. So so thank you so much.
Melissa Ziobro 35:10
Awesome. Thank you so much for having me and everybody, please visit springsteenarchives.org. There’s lots of free content for you to access there from anywhere in the world, and in a couple months, you’ll be able to book your tickets to the new building, so we hope to see you there.
Erin Narloch 35:29
Great. Thank you.
Erin Narloch 35:36
I hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did with Melissa. I thought it was incredible. I really loved how she talked about the authenticity that Bruce Springsteen brings, and what corporations and brands can learn from that point of view, as well as really having fun and talking about kind of what’s on the horizon for the Archives and Center for American Music. I do want to shout out Melissa and really just say thank you for taking the time to talk with us about Bruce Springsteen’s music and this Archives and Center for American Music. So with that, thank you so much and see you next time.