Bruce Springsteen, Pontiac Theatre, Vancouver, BC, August 13, 2005

Setlist: LIVING PROOF / REASON TO BELIEVE / DEVILS & DUST / LONESOME DAY / LONG TIME COMIN' / BECAUSE THE NIGHT / THE PROMISE / THE RIVER / STATE TROOPER / AIN'T GOT YOU / CYNTHIA / THE LINE / RENO / JANEY, DON'T YOU LOSE HEART / PARADISE / REAL WORLD / THE RISING / DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN / JESUS WAS AN ONLY SON / TWO HEARTS / THE HITTER / MATAMOROS BANKS / BLINDED BY THE LIGHT / 4TH OF JULY, ASBURY PARK (SANDY) / THE PROMISED LAND / DREAM BABY DREAM

An official archive release

“Evening Vancouver! It’s nice to be here, thanks a lot. I guess my only request is for as much quiet as I can get tonight, that way I can give you my best. So enjoy yourselves!”

In 2005,  Bruce Springsteen embarked on a tour to support Devils & Dust. The tour was just Bruce, a guitar, and an assortment of instruments through which he fashioned an evening that was acoustically-based. Like on the Ghost of Tom Joad tour, he’d ask for quiet, both from the stage and via handouts distributed to the audience. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. But tonight in Vancouver he has an audience who is willing to listen to Springsteen’s presentation of revamped catalog material alongside more conventional presentations of both new and old songs.

With that as the background, it’s not just remarkable that Bruce pulled out “Living Proof” as an opener, it’s that it was performed on a small pump organ, tight and compact, and set the stage for the evening, demonstrating that it was going to be different than a usual evening with Bruce Springsteen, where he would be performing what he’d later refer to as his magic trick, conjuring these songs into life through manual effort and breath and air. 

The writer Anne Lamott published a book in 2012 titled Help Thanks Wow, because that was how Lamott distilled the main themes of prayer. In its original form, “Living Proof” fit into that category although it probably wouldn’t be your first impression. But on the pump organ, and without those ringing guitar-thronged verses and bridges, it was an offering, it was undeniable. 

Aside from a series of electric and acoustic guitars, the main instruments Bruce Springsteen utilized for the Devils & Dust tour were, as follows: electric piano, pump organ, dobro, autoharp, ukulele, a “stomping board” and a type of banjo (it isn’t a banjo, it’s a “banjitar,” which is a 6-string guitar with banjo strings and the same resonance as a banjo, so you’re not having to learn a completely new instrument). There was an offstage keyboard player (Bruce’s keyboard tech, Alan Fitzgerald) when necessary, some additional secret sauce triggered by guitar tech Kevin Buell offstage, and also various loops and other prerecorded techniques that Bruce could trigger through effects pedals. This is all important to know before the next song, one of the tour’s trademark transformations that would then spill over into later outings, “Reason to Believe.”

“Reason to Believe” on D&D was manifest from the bare minimum, a harmonica and a bullet microphone with a healthy dose of distortion alongside a sustaining organ chord continually looping alongside the aforementioned stomping board for a rhythm section. “Reason to Believe” is -- it was always -- a blues, and now he’s stripped it down to component parts and put them back together. 

It feels like these creative remixings have largely gotten memory-holed in the ensuing 20 years. Not that he inverted or pioneered this kind of deconstruction in rock and roll but people go to a Bruce Springsteen show for certain things, and instead of just rolling out the tried and true, Bruce and an acoustic guitar and maybe a harmonica, he decided instead to see where he could take the songs apart and put them back together in a slightly updated way that also caused you, the audience, to appreciate the song from a different perspective, for it to enter your ear canal and your brain in a completely unfamiliar way. 

20 years ago, this was not what many people were hoping to see when they bought a ticket to see Bruce Springsteen, and it was regarded as both heresy and betrayal at some level to certain folks, who still showed up. (In some ways, it’s not that far away from how some people feel about going to see Bob Dylan in the last 20-30 years.) There was also a camp of folks who thought it was all a big joke and wouldn’t (or couldn’t) take it seriously. With the benefit of time and distance, this official archive release from the concluding run on this tour grants us the ability to examine this outing anew. I think that Bruce Springsteen is one of our greatest living songwriters and that his songs are durable enough to be reconfigured and reexamined and that they benefit from this type of experiment, and I’d like to see more of it, not less.

The third song in the set is a straight-ahead rendition of “Devils & Dust” on 12 string acoustic guitar and you can almost hear the relief in the applause at the intro: oh, okay, the whole show isn’t going to be like that. Bruce is smart and understands how an audience works. He’s going to take advantage of the audience’s initial welcoming enthusiasm at the start of the show for two songs in unconventional arrangements, before giving them a handful of acoustic numbers. 

With this song in particular I’m struck by how good a song this is, and how Bruce doesn’t get enough credit for this era of protest songs. He was critical of the people in power while never ever turning his back on the men and women who had the responsibility of carrying out their orders, or the impact these actions on everyday people. He wasn’t trying to hide or obscure his opinion but there’s no way he couldn’t be thinking about what happened 20 years earlier when he tried to have a public opinion in a more obvious fashion. No politicians are quoting “Devils & Dust” or “Living In the Future” or “Hey Blue Eyes” when they make speeches but it doesn’t mean they aren’t as important as “Born In The USA.”.