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Last night, Bruce Springsteen came back home. Springsteen and his E Street Band headlined the second night of the Sea.Hear.Now festival in their Asbury Park, New Jersey hometown, and they really made a meal of it. Springsteen and the E Street Band played what looks like a triumphant marathon set that was laced with a bunch of old songs that they hadn’t played in a while, and Springsteen also jumped onstage with the Gaslight Anthem and Phish leader Trey Anastasio, two very different acts that were also on the bill that day.
New Jersey’s own Gaslight Anthem have been huge and obvious Bruce Springsteen fans for their entire career. Springsteen first joined the band onstage in Asbury Park way back in 2011, and Springsteen appeared on their single “History Books” last year. At Sea.Hear.Now yesterday, the Gaslight Anthem started their set with Springsteen. They performed “History Books” together for the first time, and Springsteen stuck around for “American Slang,” the same song that he played with the band in 2011. Here’s the video:
During his set, New Jersey native Trey Anastasio talked about his Springsteen was his first concert and welcomed Springsteen to the stage for a long, winding cover of “Kitty’s Back,” a deep cut from 1973’s The Wild, the Innocent & The E Street Shuffle. Here’s the footage:
During the E Street Band’s headlining set, Springsteen’s wife and bandmate Patti Scialfa came out for the song “Tougher Than The Rest.” It was her first time performing since the Toronto Film Festival premiere of Road Diary, a new documentary in which she revealed her struggle with multiple myeloma. Scialfa’s blood cancer was diagnosed in 2018, and she’s been performing with her husband less often since then. The E Street Band also brought back “Blinded By The Light” and “Does This Bus Stop At 82nd Street?,” two songs that have been absent from their setlists since 2017, and “4th Of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)” and “Meeting Across The River,” which they hadn’t played since 2016. Watch some fan footage below.
On Saturday night, photographer Danny Clinch’s Tangiers Blues Band played a festival aftershow at the Stone Pony, and Springsteen apparently joined them onstage for five songs, including covers of John Lee Hooker’s “Boom Boom,” Little Richard’s “Lucille,” and “Gloria,” the garage rock standard from Van Morrison’s old band Them. Noah Kahan, the festival’s night-one headliner, came out to cover Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues. You can see the setlist here. Meanwhile, this was not a surprise, but the people behind the Stand Up For Heroes benefit show announced that Bruce Springsteen will once again play this year’s edition of that show, an annual tradition for him. It goes down 11/11 at Lincoln Center.
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