Springsteen & The Seeger Sessions Band - UK tour 2006

Just finished travelling around on Bruce-quest 2006 - Manchester May7th, London May 8th and (unexpectadly) London May 9th!

Saw some fantastic shows - the Manchester one was ok but it was a big basketball stadium so it wasn't well suited. London was much better - it was the Hammersmith Apollo (formerly known as The Hammersmith Odeon - where he did his first concert outside of the US in '75 - just issued on DVD in the Born To Run 30th Anniversary boxset) so he made lots of cracks about "this place
looking familiar" - it was quite touching when he talked about, as a musician you remember all the places you've played - but that this one he's always gonna be a part of and it's always gonna be a part of him. Sounds kinda lame when I type it but it was very touching.

Also the London venue was standing only downstairs - so we managed to get a great spot just in front of the mixing desk. In fact I spotted Jon Landau behind the mixing desk for most of the main set (at one stage he appeared to get very hands on and looked to be working the faders himself - yikes!). I was plotting what I'd say to him if I got the chance to catch him on the way out but he disappeared before the show ended (for the record I narrowed it down to questions about the "electric Nebraska sessions", if Tracks 2 is still on the radar now the Seeger stuff has been released in it's own right, and if he'd consider putting out a tour EP from the current shows - with half a dozen or so of the new covers and rearrangements - also a nice one to repackage the album with in a month or so).

Dunno if you've read much about his new setup - but it's a 17 piece band - and he's using quite a bit of string-action: double-bass, a couple of fiddle players, plus a full horn section and backing vocalists. He mostly does the new album (which I'm a massive fan of) but also a few re-arrangements of older songs (a kinda of do-wop version of Nebraska's 'Open All Night', tex-mex version of 'You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)') but my favourite was a mash-up of 'Cadillac
Ranch' that uses the chorus of 'Mystery Train' ("train I riiiiiiide, sixteen coaches long").

The other thing he's doing is a couple of new blues/folk covers - the best one being a song by Blind Alfred Reed called 'How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live?' - which he's written a few new verses for himself, about New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina. He even dedicated it to "president bystander" so it's good to see his political edge is still sharp!. I think Bruce likes the
song as there's a free soundboard recording of it up at his official site - http://www.brucespringsteen.net/site.html - download it and let me know what you think.

The other cover he's doing - as a show closer at both shows - is a very sombre reading of 'When The Saints Go Marching In' - and he's using a couple of verses I'd not heard before - one of them goes along the lines of "following in the footsteps of those who've gone before" which I guess he sees as an explanation of the whole Seeger sessions/folk tribute album he's undertaken.

Last night I read he was doing a performance to be filmed by the BBC for TV/radio - so I did a bit of detective work and noticed in the TV guide it mentioned St Lukes - a web search on BBC and St Lukes turned up an old theatre that the London Symphony Orchestra refurbished as a small performance venue - and the BBC use for some of their classical recordings and broadcast. Anyway - I looked it up on the map and it's only about 30 mins from my work - so after I knocked off about 5:30 I decided to wander past to see if it was the right place and what was going on.

I quickly worked out it was the right place - a couple of BBC semi-trailers of recording equipment, and a heap of equipment - of which I recognised the double-base road case pretty easily. I spoke to a security guard and he said there were a few other fans waiting around the front - so I go around and there's maybe a dozen other Springsteen fans waiting in a line. They said a security guard had told them earlier to queue up and see if they "get lucky". So I jumped on the end of the queue - at this stage it must be 6:30 - and watch various famous and semi famous folks filter into the venue (I still can't recognise a lot of UK famous people - but they had the celebrity "glow"
around them - those I did recognise were Emmylou Harris, Stephen Merchant (the non Ricky Gervais part of The Office/Extras duo), DJ Chris Evans (the former Mr Billie Piper!) and DJ/former Old Grey Whistle Test presenter Bob Harris.

About 7:30 – a lady from the BBC came over and gave everyone waiting in the line (by this stage there was about 30 of us) tickets to get in – and I wandered into this tiny church – basically just a giant open room – that had about 150 people in it – walked straight to the front (about 5 people back from dead-centre of the stage).

Bruce and the band came on a bit after 8 – did a storming set 10 songs plus they had to do a couple twice (“because you clapped along and fucked us up!” was his explanation). And that was it. I think I’m still in a daze about it – like it was some kind of dream. In fact better than a dream cause I’d never come up with something as wild as seeing Springsteen play a free show in a
less than 200 person venue. The show will be broadcast on BBC radio and TV - so if even half the magic of the show is captured in the recordings - I recommend catching it because it was an incredible show!

PS - thanks to maikanosurrender on the Backstreets.com forum for the photos of the London show.