Was “Sleepy Joe’s Cafe” by Bruce Springsteen based on a Route 66 restaurant?

In the last few weeks, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin columnist David Allen has tried to track down the inspiration to the Bruce Springsteen song “Sleepy Joe’s Cafe,” off the new, fascinating “Western Stars” album.

It’s easy to see why the opening lines of the song intrigued Allen:

There’s a place out on the highway ‘cross the San Bernardino line
Where the truckers and the bikers gather every night at the same time
At seven the band comes in and locals dance the night away
At Sleepy Joe’s Café

Here’s the song, if you want to hear it:

Allen didn’t have many speculations about the song’s locale initially. But last week, a reader posited an interesting possibility:

Lynn Merrill brought up what might be a likelier source of inspiration: Joe’s Cafe.
“A former late councilman, Joe Suarez from San Bernardino, had a now-gone restaurant up in Glen Helen that was a biker and trucker bar just across the city line from San Bernardino,” Merrill told me.
I like its chances so far.
Joe’s was on Cajon Boulevard, which was Route 66 — needless to say, a highway — and closed around 2004. Glen Helen Parkway was built over the site, which is where the road crosses over the railroad tracks.
Former patron Frank Schnetz recalled Joe’s as “an open-air restaurant that sold hot dogs, drinks and fruit.” Nick Gonzalez remembers rock bands jamming there, and Merrill said the place had a taco Tuesday.
The Boss’ lyrics didn’t cite tacos, wieners or fruit, and it’s unclear if his details about Joe having cooked in World War II and having a wife named May match up with the Glen Helen cafe. Or whether Suarez was considered sleepy.
After leaving the council, he moved to Texas and died in 2014.

Allen contacted Springsteen’s publicist with the question about “Sleepy Joe’s Cafe,” but she didn’t provide an answer. She didn’t know, or her boss preferred to let the mystery be.

Alas, online searches for Joe’s Cafe in that area turned up nothing. It’s been gone for at least 15 years, and it existed in a no-man’s-land when the internet still was developing and before social-media sites such as Yelp and TripAdvisor arose.

Of course, it’s possible the restaurant in “Sleepy Joe’s Cafe” sprung entirely from Springsteen’s imagination.

But there’s plenty of other reasons the real Joe’s Cafe might have played a role in the tune. Springsteen has owned a house in nearby Beverly Hills for about 30 years. He’s been known to take long road trips in old cars or on motorcycles; it’s not unreasonable to imagine him encountering the old Joe’s Cafe during one of his forays down Route 66. And he’s always gravitated to working-class joints like ones described in the song.

The “Western Skies” album (Amazon download here) is one of the most interesting projects of Springsteen’s long career. He long was rumored to have been toying with a full-blown country-music release since the late 1980s. “Western Skies” isn’t that album, but he acknowledges the lush California country-pop sound of Glen Campbell and Jimmy Webb during the early 1970s — think “Wichita Lineman” — provided him with inspiration.

Having heard the album, I strongly suspect Springsteen also was inspired by the Southwest desert landscape along Route 66. That’s why many of the songs, such as this one, sound good along the Mother Road:

(Image of Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band in 2012 by Vladamir via Flickr)