The Show
Material from the Seeger Sessions album dominated the set list of the 2½ hour shows. Especially in the numbers played first, such as "John Henry" and "O Mary Don't You Weep", the typically 18-strong band put up a huge sound, with a four-acoustic-guitar-led rhythm section creating a strong beat, punctuated by plenty of violin, banjo, and trumpet solos as well as multiple false endings. Audience participation was encouraged for the later "My Oklahoma Home" ("Blown away!") and sing-songey "Pay Me My Money Down", while "Jacob's Ladder" was musically illustrated by three or four key changes. The San Francisco Chronicle wrote, " used every trick in the trade to make these 100-year-old songs sound bigger than life."
To these album numbers Springsteen added more songs from the same cloth, such as Seeger's "Bring 'Em Home" (cast towards the Iraq War rather than the original Vietnam) and Blind Alfred Reed's "How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live?" (with Springsteen writing new verses regarding New Orleans and Katrina).
On the first two legs, Springsteen also played from four to eight of his own songs per show. A few were straightforward versions of recent material, such as "Devils & Dust", "Long Time Comin'", and "My City of Ruins". Others were drastically re-arranged takes on old material, such as "Atlantic City", "If I Should Fall Behind" (changed into waltz time), and "Ramrod". The most remarked upon of these was Nebraska's "Open All Night", whose already surreal lyrics about New Jersey's industrial landscape were brought to the level of a "showstopping rave-up" by being rapped against a big band swing arrangement and a pseudo-Andrews Sisters female backing vocal trio.
On the third, European leg, the enormous reception the band had received earlier in the year was not lost in the larger shows, and with Springsteen's arrangements of over ten of his original works into folk-like performances to add to the ever-expanding repertoire of Seeger-influenced songs. "The Seeger Sessions Band no longer the ragtag collection of fine individual players they were some months ago, but a tight unit here toward the end of the tour — a band," Backstreets.com reported. The shows were seen by many to be among Springsteen's absolute best. Late in the American leg, he had debuted the Irish jig-styled "American Land", which now closed many of the European shows. On November 11 at Wembley Arena, the band debuted a new Springsteen composition titled "A Long Walk Home", which was a ballad about the current state of American politics, which a special comments about the just-completed mid-term elections having restored "some semblance of sanity" to the country.
Read more about this topic: Bruce Springsteen With The Seeger Sessions Band Tour
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