Wednesday, May 27, 2026 Entry #235
(Photos/videos taken by Randy Fleisher unless otherwise noted)
It is hard to come up with a superlative that has not already been used to describe Bruce Springsteen’s performance style. Energetic, passionate, powerful, joyful, inspiring, life-affirming, and “he leaves everything he’s got on the stage” have all been used time and again “He performs magic,” is a sentence about the Springsteen live experience from a recent book that I read that isn’t even about the Boss exclusively. I will add one word that came to me tonight as I watched another show on this highly charged, politically-themed tour, and that is “urgency.” Springsteen is always intense out there, but he has taken it to another level in 2026. It’s a directness, a fire in his eyes, and it’s in his posturing. It’s in the way he enunciates key words of songs, wanting to make sure he is heard and understood.
As Springsteen has said night after night, this tour wasn’t supposed to be. Springsteen and the E Street Band had been on the road for two years, and they were taking a break. But, Springsteen, always a harsh critic of President Trump, saw the American values and ideals that he cherishes being targeted and overturned in this second term with alarming rapidity. Springsteen felt an immediate need to provide a counterweight through his songs and his messages. Springsteen openly acknowledges feeling “helpless, hopeless, betrayed, frustrated, and angry”…and he knew that he had to do something. He decided to fight for the big-hearted, inclusive, and tolerant version of the America he loved in the format he knew best—a rock concert. That sense of urgency which was clearly the impetus of the “Land of Hope and Dreams: No Kings” tour that opened in late March has carried on to this moment in Washington D.C. two months later.
As it turns out, the national leader who best exemplifies Springsteen’s ideal America was spotted on his way tonight with his wife to the side of the stage to check out what his friend (and one-time podcast co-host) was up to. Somebody posted this picture of former president and first lady Barack and Michelle Obama in “the house.”
Springsteen’s opening speech, calling out the Trump administration from the get-go (“corrupt, incompetent, racist, reckless, and treasonous.”) was pretty much the same as in Minneapolis, with the emphatic line, “The E Street Band was built for tough times!” met with loving cheers. (I will report here on what Springsteen said in D.C. that was different from his messages on that first show; for full transcripts of all Springsteen’s speeches/sermons in Minneapolis, see Entry #224).
One of the things this tour and its fixed setlist have done is help cement the case that Springsteen’s iconic song, “Born in the U.S.A.” is a song of protest, not one of jingoistic sloganeering. Springsteen performs the song early in the concert, while most of the other less political hits are crowded into the encore section. In addition, Springsteen has strategically placed “Born in the U.S.A.” between two other angry oppositional songs, one fiercely anti-war (“War”), and “Death To My Hometown,” which is about how greed, cruelty, and corruption can leave a formerly decent place unrecognizable. Though Springsteen is a patriot, and this is a tour about love of country, Ronald Reagan and legions of 4th of July fireworks watchers’ misunderstanding of “Born in the U.S.A.” (because of its powerful chorus) as one of uncritical nationalism has always rankled Springsteen. Tonight was one of many steps he has taken to reclaim it over the years.
I was very excited to hear “Clampdown,” which was not played at the concert I saw in Minneapolis, but it became a mainstay on the tour’s setlist just afterwards. I was a very early devotee of the seminal political punk group The Clash. Their London Calling album, which included “Clampdown,” was one of the records that made a huge cultural imprint on me during my high school years.
On this tour, Springsteen shares lead duties on “Clampdown” with the tour’s special guest Tom Morello. Morello is a “Clash baby,” and his brand of radical leftist loud-rock can be traced directly to the punk pioneers he now honors. Though Springsteen is from the older generation of rockers that bands like the Clash set out to decimate, there has long been a mutual admiration society between the two.
Witnessing Springsteen and Morello trade verses on this blistering version of “Clampdown” was riveting. I was so stunned that I couldn’t even take my phone out of my pocket to record it. One of the verses could well serve as this tour’s “mission statement”-”Let fury have the hour, anger can be power, do you know that you can use it?” I wanted to share a video clip of this powerful moment from tonight’s show, so here is one from YouTube. Notice that Springsteen changes the key (especially for the anti-Trump theme) verse from “In these days of evil preseidentes” to “In these days of CORRUPT presidentes.” In clips from previous shows, Springsteen spits out the original word, but maybe tonight he wanted to emphasize the 1.8 billion dollar slush fund for “victims of weaponization” (such as January 6 rioters) that Donald Trump had recently procured. “What are we gonna do now?” indeed.
After two older Springsteen songs of personal struggle and hanging on to threads of faith and hope (“No Surrender” and “Darkness on the Edge of Town”) that felt more societal in this context, it was time for Springsteen’s most recent song that needed no re-interpretation at all, “Streets of Minneapolis.” When Springsteen got to the “ICE out now!” chant, Springsteen yelled, “Let them hear you at the fucking White House!” When the song was over, the crowd seemingly tried to do just that, knowing that they were a mere four miles away. To Springsteen’s surprise and delight, the chant was revived without the Boss’s prompting, and it went on for a good spell.
Hearing “Streets of Minneapolis” in Washington D.C. reminded about a comment that Representative Jamie Raskin, a congressman from Maryland, posted back when the tour was announced. Raskin, a big Springsteen fan and Trump nemesis, wrote that Springsteen’s new protest song would “rattle the walls of what’s left of the White House” (echoes of Bob Dylan’s “We’ll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls.”). Raskin promised to be “out in the street” (clever paraphrase of the Springsteen song) when Springsteen comes to town.
By this point, rain had started and it was coming down steadily. I had been watching the weather predications for days, and it got me feeling a bit bummed that rain during the concert looked likely. When the show began with clear skies, I forgot all about the forecast. But, when the rain came, it was actually great. I went beyond accepting it, I embraced it. I had a poncho in my shorts pocket, yet I didn’t reach for it once. To me, the rain felt cleansing, gentle, cooling, and revivifying. Moreover, given the purpose of the tour, the metaphor of rain coming to wash out the current political ugliness was inescapable. The rain, which lasted for a solid hour, became another spiritual element of an already transcendent concert, and more than one social media comment referred to the light showering as a type of “baptism.”
In my review of the Minneapolis concert, I was ruminating about Springsteen’s visceral connection to his fans, and I quoted the Boss talking about a recent outdoor concert he played where it was pouring. The Boss talked about how he came out from under the stage protection, waded into the stands, and put himself in the (wet) shoes of the audience. “You have to get soaked with the crowd,” Springsteen said about that previous show. As you can see, he lived up to that ethic tonight.
The song “Promised Land” is obviously incredibly near and dear to Bruce Springsteen’s heart. It is a rare appearance when he doesn’t play it. Tonight I heard Springsteen singing, “I ain’t a boy, no I’m a man,” with this new meaning: “I’m going to accept the responsibility to stand up against the wrecking balls and fight for my country to get back on the track of living up to its founding promises.” Built for hard times.
Springsteen followed up “Promised Land” by sending out some love with two “heart” songs, “Two Hearts” (as always on that one, Springsteen sharing the mic with Little Steven) and “Hungry Heart.” Then, it was back to the social commentary business at hand and the searing “American Skin (41 Shots)” about racial profiling. I happened to look over at Jake Clemons while Springsteen was singing the aching section of the song about “The Talk” that Black parents need to have with their sons about encounters with the police. I don’t know if he has been doing this all tour, but tonight Jake was reverently holding his arms up in the air, in the “don’t shoot” pose. I imagine that, despite his celebrity, Jake is familiar with being targeted just for living in his American skin.
I have written about the message of “Long Walk Home” in this blog a number of times. It is a great song, and as Springsteen says, it is definitely a “prayer for our country.” This is also the song in which the humongous American flag appeared on the screen behind the band. But, what I noticed most this time around on this song and many others was the incredibly lush, full, and powerful music I was hearing and feeling. This expanded E Street Band (with vocalists and a horn section) sounds so good! The guitars (Little Steven, Nils Lofgren, Tom Morello, and Springsteen himself) get much of the glory, but add in Roy Bittan’s intricate piano fills, Max Weinberg’s steady beat, the chorus of voices, and it makes for a beautiful and thrilling mix.
“House of a Thousand Guitars,” from 2020, the only song on this setlist that Springsteen plays solo acoustic, was clearly written with Trump in mind (“The criminal clown has stolen the throne/he steals what he never can own”). Tonight, I heard the meaning of this song loud and clear. The ‘houses of a thousand guitars’ are Springsteen’s antidote to Trumpism. It’s in line with what he says at the beginning of the show, calling upon “the righteous power of art, of music, of rock and roll in dangerous times.” Springsteen believes that ‘souls coming from near and far,’ gathering in community and music, “from stadiums to small town bars,’ letting the ‘truth ring out,’ will help us ‘rise together ‘till we find the spark.’ That is something Springsteen knows he can do in the situation we find ourselves in, as he certainly knows how to “light up the house of a thousand guitars.” Springsteen is doing it tonight, as he has been for this whole intentional and purposeful tour. Towards the end of the show, Springsteen will give us a charge-”Say something! Do Something! Sing something!” You cannot say that the Boss doesn’t take his own advice!
Each night of the tour, Springsteen sits down on the stage, and over the instrumental gospel tones of what eventually will become the song “My City of Ruins,” he tells the audience something they surely already know. “We are living through troubled and troubling times,” he says. Springsteen then expresses a heartfelt lament over the various ways that he sees Donald Trump doing great damage to behavioral norms, integral institutions, and compassionate policy. He punctuates each of these with a disheartened and stern, “This is happening now!” Springsteen repeated all of the charges he made back when the tour started in late March, but given recent events, three more have been added (including one that hits very close to Springsteen’s beloved home state):
“The Supreme Court has gutted the Voting Rights Act, and has set back our historically hard-fought-for Civil Rights movement, a movement for which people marched, fought, and gave their lives. This is happening now. There are immigrants being held in for-profit detention centers around the country such as Delaney Hall in my own home state of New Jersey, where our own governor has been refused access to meet with the detainees about the conditions there. This is happening now. Our president wants to create a $1.8 billion fund to compensate and reward people who attacked our nation’s capitol, attacked our democracy, assaulted our police officers on Jan. 6. This is an American outrage and this is happening now.”
Before launching into the song, Springsteen once again extorted the crowd to, “Let ‘em hear you at the fucking White House!
Springsteen’s 1978 stomper “Badlands” is a song designed to give hope and faith even when times are bleak (“I believe in the love that you gave me, I believe in the faith that could save me/I believe in the hope, and I pray that some day it may raise me above these badlands.”). Moreover, this tour’s message highlights the song’s unfortunately prophetic line, “A king ain’t satisfied ‘till he rules everything!” “Badlands” also allows Springsteen to do one of the things he loves to do in concert, leading hearty sing-a-longs, while wading gleefully into the audience.
Like “Clampdown,” Springsteen’s 2006 Celtic-rocker “American Land” was not played in Minneapolis, but it has been part of the show ever since (it’s OK, we got to hear the Boss sing “Purple Rain” in the Twin Cities!). Although I like this song a great deal, musically and lyrically, I had never heard the it performed live before tonight. “American Land” is unabashedly pro-immigration and it gives voice to the idealistic hope, and the then sometimes brutal reality of the immigrant experience, past and present (it name-checks Ells Island, a place I visit with Conformation students from the synagogue on our annual journey to New York City). It’s also touchingly inclusive (and as a Jewish-American, it’s always nice to be included in the mix):
“The Blacks, the Irish, Italians, the Germans and the Jews. They came across the water, a thousand miles from home, with nothing in their bellies but the fire down below!”
Once again, an older Springsteen song reverberates in this time of President Trump, as in this “American Land” verse: “They died to get here a hundred years ago, they’re still dying now; the hands that built this country we’re aways trying to keep down.”
This concert even had Springsteen breaking some news. Perfectly timed for the midterm elections, Springsteen and Morello are returning to Washington D.C. and they are bringing a bunch of their friends. Here is what Springsteen announced from the stage tonight:
“I will be back in D.C. on October 3rd for another night of music and resistance. The first ever “Power to the People” festival will be announced to the world tomorrow, but you’re hearing about it here first tonight! Tom (Morello) will be there, Dave Matthews, the Foo Fighters, our friends the Dropkick Murphys will be there. I’ll be back guesting and playing on a few songs with Tom and his band. We urge you to come out and make a goddamn ruckus along with us.”
During “Dancing in the Dark,” I decided to create video evidence of the massive, sold-out crowd in case a certain Truth Social account decided to spread misinformation.
In an indoor arena, there is usually behind-the-stage seating, but in outdoor stadiums there is another large screen instead. So, I was able to capture this image of Jake Clemons playing his saxophone (far left in the picture), while above him, big as life, were images of his Uncle Clarence (of blessed memory) doing the same.
Near the end of these concerts, Springsteen has been getting sentimental, remembering out loud the first venue he played (in the early 70’s) in each city. Tonight was no different, so before playing his last song, Springsteen said:
“Thank you Washington, and thank you for coming out and supporting our band all these years. Oh, man. Now, I remember, the first time I came to Washington. God, I don’t remember the name of the place (Editor’s note: It was a club called Childe in December, 1973), but it must have been about 30 people. I was 23 years old. So thanks for a lifetime.”
Then Springsteen got personal in another way, acknowledging some of what he has been going through since Trump took office. Here’s part of what he said courtesy of a meme:
Springsteen never likes to leave us in a place of despair, so he continued:
“We needed to come to Washington and feel your strength and your hope and your faith! And we needed to bring to your city some strength and some hope and some faith and I hope that we did that tonight!”
I was definitely too in the moment to record that final speech, but here is a snippet of it, including the beginning of “Chimes of Freedom,” from YouTube:
Besides during his heartfelt expression of gratitude to the fans at Nationals Park for “a lifetime,” there were numerous other moments that I detected an extra dose of emotion in Springsteen’s voice in Washington D.C. tonight. When Springsteen talked about how the protesters Pretti and Goode’s deaths have still not been investigated, when he said that he feels the divisions in the country deeply and personally, and when he declared that the response to government overreach by the citizens of Minneapolis reminded him that, ‘This is still America!”, I heard it coming straight from Springsteen’s “kishkes” (Yiddish for “guts). When Springsteen said that “the richest men in America have abandoned the world’s poorest children to death and disease through the dismantling of USAID,” he choked up again.
Springsteen’s emotionality, as always, was contagious. I definitely had tears of awe and gratitude flowing during “Born To Run.” I also had to wonder, now that the tour was ending, when I would see Springsteen with the E Street Band again. It is true that I had the same thoughts and feelings back in November 2024 when I was in Canada as the previous tour was winding down, and here we were again, definitely sooner than anyone (including Springsteen) anticipated. You never know either way, I guess.
Rolling Stone, in a recent piece (headlined provocatively, “Bruce Springsteen’s tour is an American revival that succeeds where Democrats fail.”), ended on a dour note:
“The show began with a light lingering in an empty spot behind a mic stand, which Springsteen eventually stepped into for his opening speech. In the moments before his arrival, it was hard not to think about that void, and dread the day Bruce Springsteen won’t be around to fill it.”
But, back to the present reality, Springsteen said his goodbyes tonight, but they didn’t feel anything like the final ones. The Boss has already announced another D.C. appearance in the fall, and in the coming weeks he will be performing in two multi-artist concerts connected to the June opening of the Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music at Monmouth University. Springsteen has said repeatedly that he will keep going “until the wheels fall off.’
Still, it’s always hard for me to leave a venue after a Springsteen concert, and I lingered long after most everybody had streamed out of the stadium.
On my way out I had a chuckle. Only in Washington D.C. would there be a mural depicting the Mount Rushmore 4 (wearing baseball caps) saluting Bruce Springsteen!
The concert made the front page of the venerable Washington Post (the headline of the story inside the paper read “Springsteen taunts Trump from his own backyard”).
A few post-concert Facebook posts caught my attention:
Here’s mine for what it’s worth:
I will carry a lot with me from the two concerts that I saw on this tour, including watching so much of this show in the rain. Jewish spirituality teaches that too much rain or too little are both potentially destructive and serve as metaphors for harsh judgment. The right amount of rain, however, is life-giving, and thus a symbol for mercy and grace. Tonight’s gentle rain was mightily merciful, truly the “soft summer rain” as described in “Jungleland,” a gift I didn’t even know I needed that fell delightfully upon me.
I’d like to end this post with the impetus for the tour, Springsteen’s instant-protest anthem, “Streets of Minneapolis.” The Boss clearly wanted the song, and its message out there so people wouldn’t forget all that transpired in the “winter of ‘26.” Here is the snippet of the song that I recorded, it ends just as the band kicks in.
That’s all from Washington D.C. As Springsteen says, “Stay hard; Stay hungry; Stay hopeful!”
