Author: Ryan Storm

The latest from the Bruce Springsteen archives comes to you from Vancouver, BC from 2005’s “Devils & Dust Tour.” Stream this show, along with the full archival catalog, exclusively on nugs.net.

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MAN ON WIRE

By Erik Flannigan

In a career as long as Bruce Springsteen’s, how does an artist continue to challenge himself? Writing new songs and exploring uncharted genres in the studio is one way. Throwing down the gauntlet to “stump the E Street Band” in concert is surely another, keeping folks on their toes and adding appealing spontaneity, but that was largely a test of muscle memory and each band member’s encyclopedic mental jukebox.

For 2005’s Devils & Dust tour, Springsteen designed the most demanding performance approach of his career: an intimate set centered around a new album of stripped-down, at times lyrically brazen, character-driven story songs; surrounded by an ever-changing catalog survey that increasingly eschewed the familiar for the obscure; played (often for the first time ever) on instruments ranging from banjo to pump organ.

And he did it by himself.

Vancouver, August 13, 2005 captures one of the more daring nights of Springsteen’s seven-month high-wire act. Though it’s the final date of his summer tour, his growing fearlessness is a big part of the attraction in both song selection and chosen arrangements, which is made clear from the jump as he opens with one of his best and least played songs since the ’90s, “Living Proof.”

After requesting “as much quiet as I can get” from his organ bench, Springsteen pumps a melodic drone out of the instrument, and each rich chord change offers a visceral wash of solemnity on top of which he sings about the joy and purpose unlocked by the birth of a child. Unlike theatre dates on the 2005 tour, for Vancouver he’s playing in a massive, cut-down hockey arena, making that organ swell sound even bigger.

Sonic exploration extends to “Reason to Believe,” sung into a bullet microphone to yield a disembodied vocal that wouldn’t sound out of place on the soundtrack to a film by the late, great David Lynch. The title track of his new album shifts the set back to center and Springsteen gives it a classic, singer-songwriter reading. The same approach carries “Lonesome Day,” which works brilliantly in solo acoustic form and he sings it with directed emotion. The last utterance of the title itself comes in a gritty, moving falsetto, a vocal technique he’ll revisit thrillingly a few songs later. 

Our troubadour moves off microphone to encourage the arena audience to lean in during “Long Time Comin’,” a fitting song for families, as Springsteen’s son Evan handles roadie duties in Vancouver. 

“Every night I’ve been trying to do something I haven’t done before” is a sentence hardcore fans long to hear, and with that, Springsteen delivers a true change up, “Because the Night” on electric piano. A storming rocker in the hands of the E Street Band turns moody and introspective here, an entrancing interpretation played for the first and only time on the tour. It’s one of the show’s many highlights.

Back on the grand piano, Springsteen honors a special request for “The Promise.” Unlike the others done on keys, it’s a track Springsteen has played by himself on piano before, notably early shows in 1978. As he settles on his tempo, a reflective rendition of the always welcome Darkness outtake takes shape. 

Sticking with piano, “The River” comes to a head like the beginning of a play’s second act, signaling to the theatre audience that there’s been a momentous change. “The River” and “The Promise” can be viewed as kindred ruminations on loss that took wildly different journeys: one became the centerpiece of a major album, the other waited more than 30 years to be resurrected back to significance by a box set.

To electric guitar for another gem of the evening, the eerie, slow-burning “State Trooper,” with Springsteen’s falsetto adding to its intrinsic disquiet. Nebraska’s scariest song conjures one of Lynch’s most indelible film images: the dark highway at night, illuminated only by the headlights of a car driving into the unknown. This is one of only 36 “State Trooper” performances ever.

Speaking of rarities, Tunnel of Love opener “Ain’t Got You” has only featured on two tours, 1988 and 2005. Springsteen takes it on a self-deprecating ride enlivened by guitar that gives the song a rootsy, ’50s feel. Rarer still, “Cynthia” makes one of its six appearances on the Devils & Dust tour and just 11 all time. Just prior to the closing lines, “You make me holler, yeah, yeah, alright,” Springsteen pays homage to song’s biggest influence, asking, “What did that guy say in that other song” before recalling, “oh yeah” followed by his own version of Roy Orbision’s signature vocal “hurrrrrrrrrrrrrr.”

Springsteen pairs one of his finest border stories, “The Line” from The Ghost of Tom Joad, with a song that carries those aforementioned “brazen” lyrics, “Reno.” Markedly different scenes to be sure, yet despite its provocative story, “Reno” shares an intertwined humanity with “The Line” as characters find themselves in compromising positions of their own creation.

“Janey, Don’t You Lose Heart” provides a sweet palette cleanser, played liltingly on electric piano, before the tone darkens for what is the last performance to date of “Paradise,” The Rising’s heartrending tale of a suicide bomber. Springsteen starts on electric piano, innocence still intact, then switches to piano to match the gravitas of the actions that follow, before closing on electric fleetingly in a riveting, elegiac performance. Masterful.

“Real World” seeks to restore our faith and though Bruce’s voice is breaking a little by this point, that only adds to the tenderness of the moment. On an evening of gorgeous piano performances, the underplayed classic is a standout.

With a wealth of deep cuts delivered, Springsteen brings the main set to a satisfying conclusion through “The Rising,” the riveting, 12-string Christic arrangement of “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” an amusing “What If” version of Jesus’ life as an intro to “Jesus Was An Only Son” and a quick “Two Hearts” before closing the set with a pair of character studies from Devils & Dust, one narrative (“The Hitter”), the other movingly impressionistic (“Matamoros Banks”).

For the encore, “Blinded By the Light” and “4th of July Asbury Park (Sandy)” transport the Vancity faithful from the west coast to the east before Springsteen draws the evening to a meditative close. “The Promised Land,” hypnotically rendered on acoustic guitar strings and body, sets the table for a return to the pump organ. “Dream Baby Dream” billows Saints Vega, Orbison and Lynch to the nosebleeds. Then, Springsteen, his work done for the evening and the summer, took his bow and walked off just as he’d entered that night, by himself.

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