Sunday, October 1, 2023 Entry #49
It’s been a month since my last post, and I apologize for the lag, which is mostly due to the fact that I got busy with High Holiday prep (including a Springsteen-heavy Yom Kippur sermon, but more on that much later).
My last entry before this one detailed my return home to St. Louis from my epic road trip to see the first four concerts on Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band’s 2023 tour, their triumphant return to live performances after the COVID interruption. Since then, I have seen 4 more Springsteen shows, which I will report on in later posts. But, there has also been a major development, which is that unfortunately in September, Bruce Springsteen was diagnosed with a peptic ulcer condition, and he has wisely decided to postpone all of the remaining concerts on his tour (he had dates in the US through the rest of September, and he was scheduled for concerts throughout Canada in November and he would have finished up the tour in California in December) in order to properly recover. When I wrote back in August that my #Springsteen Sabbatical was over but my #YearOf Springsteen would continue, I had tickets to three more concerts in 2023. Certainly, we are all hoping The Boss regains his health and that he is able to carry on with his plan to play the rescheduled dates and more in 2024. I guess I’ll need a new hashtag.
Before I get back to the timeline (I left off in February 2023), I thought that for this transition moment in this blog as I shift from my touring travelogue and reflections to more episodic concert reports and essays, I would write about a well-established and inspirational aspect of Springsteen’s touring. Way back in 1984, while playing a concert in Pennsylvania, Springsteen made a spontaneous $10,000 donation to a food bank for unemployed steelworkers in Pittsburgh. At the time he said:
“I was looking for some way to put my music to some service on a nightly basis. You go into a town, you play a little music, you leave something behind. That idea connected us to the local community. It was a very simple idea, but it really resonated with me.”
From that beginning emerged something of a movement. At each stop on every Springsteen tour going back decades, a connection is made with a local food bank or anti-hunger organization. Springsteen then donates premium tickets with VIP treatment that the organization can auction off, gives away hundreds more extra tickets that can be sold at a discount to people who donate food or funds in the days before the concert, and in addition, Springsteen continues to make his own personal financial contribution to the selected group at every single stop.
Most importantly, Springsteen makes a point to call out the organization during his performance, educating his huge, adoring, enthusiastic and newly inspired and hope-filled audience about the issues of hunger, food insecurity, and poverty, and giving them the opportunity to be of assistance and of service to their under-resourced neighbors and to the greater good. He’ll talk about the specific mission and outreach programs of the local organization he is partnering with that night, tell everyone that the group is doing “God’s work,” and informs the crowd that representatives will be out in the lobby after the show to hand out information and receive contributions.
“Feeding Tampa Bay provides healthy food and critical services to struggling families in West Central Florida, helping get them back om their feet. We are partnering with them tonight. When you see them on your way out, please be generous!
-Bruce Springsteen on the opening night of his 2023 tour
In this way, Springsteen is helping the very people who resemble many of the characters who populate his songs-working folks from all walks of life who sometimes fall through the safety nets during troubled times; migrants, newcomers, and oppressed peoples in need of some human grace and compassion; neighbors down on their luck looking for assistance and a glimmer of hope. As Springsteen reminds us in “Land of Hope and Dreams,” the ‘train’ that must carry all of us has room for “saints, sinners, losers, winners, lost souls, the broken-hearted, fools and kings.” And, many of us have been on both sides of those equations, and back again.
I certainly made a point of visiting with and donating to each partner organization in the four cities on my Springsteen mini tour. In Tampa it was “Feeding Tampa Bay”; in Atlanta, “The Atlanta Community Food Bank”; and in Orlando it was “Second Harvest.” In Hollywood, Florida, every fan who made a donation to “Why Hunger” (A local group that is “working to end the solvable problem of hunger in the US through solutions rooted in social, environmental, racial, and economic justice.”), received this pin of appreciation. which was pretty cool.
Bruce Springsteen’s activism as a private citizen and as a superstar artist and performer is extensive and well known. He has played benefits and advocated for nuclear disarmament, Amnesty International, increased voter registration, environmental protection, veterans rights, economic justice, police reform, progressive candidates for office, labor empowerment, and many more causes. But, this consistent and ceaseless support and promotion of local organizations who are battling food insecurity and poverty on the ground might be the most impressive of them all. He does this, not for one concert, or one tour, or one year. If there is a Bruce Springsteen concert anywhere at anytime, money and awareness is being raised for this crucial and lifesaving work.
Springsteen does indeed “leave something behind.”
“Where the eyes, the eyes with the will to see? Where the hearts, that run over with mercy? Where’s the love that has not forsaken me? Where’s the work that sets my hands, my soul free? Where’s the spirit that’ll reign over me? Where’s the promise, from sea to shining sea? We take care of our own!
-Bruce Springsteen “We Take Care Of Our Own”
Your Yom Kippur message was incredible, and the mash up of Springsteen lyrics at the end was too. Thanks for sharing it (I’m a Spring Nut).