His music has been compared to that of Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, Bruce Springsteen, Phil Ochs and Elvis Costello.

[citation needed] He is of Lithuanian Jewish ancestry ; on a trip to Lithuania, he learned Bernstein was his family's name before immigration to the United States.

[9] Between 1997 and 2003, many of his tours and recordings featured a regular cast of backup musicians which he began calling the International Jewish Banking Conspiracy or IJBC, which Bern said was a tribute to the book Nigger by Dick Gregory.

New American Language, The Swastika EP, Fleeting Days and My Country II were all released under the "Dan Bern & the International Jewish Banking Conspiracy" name.

[11] Bern's songwriting skills were used in the 2007 biopic parody film Walk Hard where he helped write 16 songs for the movie.

Many of these songs made the theatrical cut of the film including the Dylanesque "Royal Jelly," and the melodic "(Have You Heard the News) Dewey Cox Died."

[12] In 2009, 2010, and 2012, Bern played with Common Rotation from Los Angeles, California which consists of vocals, guitar, banjo, trumpet, saxophone, and other instruments.

[citation needed] An avid fan of sports and baseball in particular, Bern has written and recorded a number of sports-focused albums and songs, such as the tennis-centered Jack Kramer Wood Racket and the baseball albums Doubleheader, Rivalry, and Elly De La Cruz & Other Stories, the latter of which was created "especially for Reds fans.