We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming to bring you this: Bruce’s 2006 Jazz Fest set is on YouTube, in its entirety, for us all to enjoy.

Now I wasn’t there. I was in high school and juuust coming on to the Boss’ stuff in 2006. But, it was a special show, and you don’t have to take my word for it.

---

There was one show in America that stood out as not only one of the finest of but one of the most meaningful of my work life: New Orleans. I’d been invited to play the first post-Katrina New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival as a headliner…

… I thought of the city’s unofficial theme song, “When the Saints Go Marching In.” I was compelled to seek out all the lyrics. I saw most of them had never been heard and that this was a much deeper piece of music than what had been popularly known over the years. I slowed the song down to a meditation on resilience, survival, and commitment to a dream that lives on through storm, wreckage, and ruin…

… We walked on to a nice round of applause … I immediately sensed the crowd was not going to be easy. They were seeing something even our fans who were there to support us hadn’t before… So we went to work…

… It turned into a beautiful evening. We were in the last hour before sundown and the weather was glorious. Gradually, things moved, loosened up…

… We closed exactly at sunset. I walked to the front of the stage, where to my left, over the field’s rim, the sun sat, a red ball on the horizon. I let its golden light wash over me like no spotlight could and I felt the band and the crowd fall into each other’s arms. We finished with our prayerful arrangement of “Saints”.

– from Bruce Springsteen’s autobiography, Born to Run

---