No Kings!
2026 Tour Updates
Wednesday, March 4, 2026 Entry #216
As I reported in Entry #213, Bruce Springsteen recently announced that he and the E Street Band were heading out on a spring 2026 tour of the United States, one with a decidedly anti-Donald Trump orientation (sounding much like the limited run he made overseas last spring, except now he will be taking that music and those messages home).
Longtime Springsteen pal and the E Street Band’s guitarist and musical director Little Steven Van Zandt appeared on Sirius Radio recently and made some fairly revelatory remarks about Springsteen’s unexpected announcement.
“It didn’t exist two weeks ago. He just kind of sprung it on everybody. You know, he put out this single (“Streets of Minneapolis,” see Entry #211 ) three, four weeks ago, and the next day it was like four million hits, which we thought was a lot, four million hits, wow! Two days later, it was a billion hits, with a ‘b.’ And so, obviously, he’s hitting a vein here, he’s on to something. And, he went on and sat in on a gig in Minneapolis (with Tom Morello), and again, that was like two weeks ago. And, it’s just like, ‘yeah, let’s do it , let’s tour this.’ He’s really into it. And, I don’t know how our tour manager, who’s just a magician, did it, but he got 20 dates in April and May. Every other band is booking two years ahead, and this is not even in two months, incredible. We’re gonna do twenty dates, and see from there, but it was just a complete surprise, it didn’t exist, like two weeks ago.” (Interviewer interjects: “I’m sure you had other things lined up?”) “Yeah, everybody did. It’s like, ‘whoops,’ you know? Time for a little adjustment of the schedule, folks. It’s alright, we work around it. We love it, we love playing live, as you know. We were going to have the whole year off, and I’m glad we’re not!”
With this interview, Van Zandt confirmed what most observers intuited. It was not as if Springsteen had been keeping the news under wraps—this tour was put together very quickly! This explains why only four of the twenty concert dates were on weekend nights, even a “magician” tour manager couldn’t find many arenas with prime openings on such short notice. Moreover, Little Steven acknowledged that this year was planned to be the first since 2023 without a Bruce Springsteen (at least with the E Street Band) tour. Springsteen’s sudden decision to hit the road clearly came about solely because he felt the societal and political events that were happening in real time necessitated his response, one he wanted to make with a very large megaphone. Van Zandt even leaves the door open for the possibility of even more tour dates being added (“We’re gonna do twenty dates and see from there…”).
Van Zandt’s comment that he and his bandmates needed to adjust their schedules (he and several other E Streeters have various musical side projects, not to mention their personal lives) to work around Springsteen’s new plan (he is their “Boss” after all!) was echoed in another big announcement about the tour. Around the same time as the Little Steven interview came out, Springsteen’s social media platforms blasted out an important tour development. The hot-shot guitarist Tom Morello, whose recent anti-ICE benefit concert in Minneapolis included Springsteen as an unannounced guest (See Entry #213), would be joining this spring’s “Land of Hope and Dreams: No Kings” tour on “selected songs.”
Morello, a member of the rock band Rage Against The Machine, a longtime social justice warrior, and a Springsteen collaborator (for some background on the Springsteen-Morello partnership, see Entry #89), like the Street Band had to quickly pivot in order to participate. He let it be known in his own post that for the sake of the “crucial resistance work that our music can do together,” he was postponing concerts on his own already-planned solo tour to hit the road with Bruce Springsteen. As Little Steven said, “Time for a little adjustment of the schedule, folks.”
The stage, as they say, is set. There is now less than a month to go before this much- anticipated tour begins!
