April 28, 2026 – Bruce Springsteen at the Moody Center in Austin, TX (04/26/26)

I spent a very hot and humid weekend in Austin, Texas to see one of my most favorite active live acts around: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. This wasn’t the closest city he was playing to Omaha, but with the show taking place on a Sunday, it was best suited for my schedule. This was my fifth time seeing Bruce, and about a year and eight months since the last time I saw him, during an impromptu stop in Pittsburgh during my cross country roadtrip in the summer of 2024. At that show, I had only just learned about it jot even 24 hours earlier, as I was packing up my Philadelphia hotel room, ready to start the long trip back to California the next morning. A scroll through Facebook led me to an ad for the Pittsburgh show happening the next night, and I knew I couldn’t say no to it. I decided to take a chance and chose the first row in one of the rear sections. My last experience sitting behind the stage had been at Harry Styles’ show in Inglewood in 2017, which had not been a good experience, with a good portion of the show being completely blocked off by a moving screen. I knew I’d be ok doing so at a Bruce show though, due to the simplicity of the show production, which I’ll talk more about in a bit.

Anyway, that experience was so great that I decided to go it again in Austin! Initially, the first row was sold out, so I got a seat about five rows back, but during my pre-show Mexican dinner, I checked the Ticketmaster app to see if any last minute seats had popped up, and sure enough, most of the first row of the middle rear section was available at face value! It pretty much allows you to be in the first row without paying the highest prices. Trust me, you won’t miss a thing!

This show was vastly different from the other four times I’ve seen him. Over the course of nearly three hours, the set consisted largely of material I had not heard live before, which was a welcome change. I was especially excited to hear him pull out numbers like “Born in the U.S.A,” “Darkness On the Edge of Town,” and an solo acoustic version of “House of a Thousand Guitars.” Of course, plenty of time was dedicated to the bigger songs like “Badlands,” which is a biblical experience to hear in concert. It was actually the only song I removed my earplugs for, because I just had to hear 15K people shout “Badlands!” with raw ears. The band was also joined by Tom Morello for a few songs, including his stellar version of “The Ghost of Tom Joad,” which I consider to be superior to the original studio version.

The thing about sitting behind the stage and seeing what the band sees is that you notice things on stage that you otherwise wouldn’t. There were several spots on stage with a screen that had the lyrics to each song scrolling up so that the backing singers could follow along. I also couldn’t help but find one of the keyboard setups interesting, with one being placed right on top of the acoustic piano.

So, the thing is, I’m really glad that a show like this still holds up today and keeps a large number of people engaged. With the standards for live entertainment expanding year by year with places like the Las Vegas Sphere and technology like IMAX screens, lasers, and moving stages, it’s heartwarming to see a show like this not fall out of favor and, if anything, move people more than it ever has. The E Street Band doesn’t rely on anything but the music and showmanship of the musicians to keep its audience engaged. There’s barely any light projections, and the only time a stage screen is used is when they project Clarence Clemons during the “Tenth Avenue Freeze Out” line, “When the change was made uptown and the Big Man joined the band.” A show like this is one that reminds you of why concerts are so special in the first place. It reiterates the healing powers of music and its never-ending success in bringing people together. A show like this is a musical celebration, and a live concert brought back to its truest and purest form, a kind of holy matrimony between band and audience. I’m thrilled to see Bruce still able to perform nearly three hours, intermission-free, with such energy and passion, and I hope he continues to be able to do so for a long time. We need The Boss.