Bruce Springsteen Transforms Our Civic Hell Into the Land of Hope and Dreams

“That’s why we’re here tonight,” admitted Bruce Springsteen after shedding tears not once but twice before a final protest anthem Sunday night at a sold-out Moody Center. “I needed to see you and feel your hope and your strength.”

Funny, that’s precisely the reason Texans (and Jerseyites, apparently) showed up literally to the rafters for the sole Lone Star stopover of the E Street Band’s 20-date Land of Hope and Dreams tour.

“Always great to come to Austin,” an obviously moved Boss of bosses grinned, Bob Dylan’s “Chimes of Freedom” waiting to close out the 26-song, 170-minute rally. “The first time I came here, I was 26, 27. This was just a little tiny college town. [There] wasn’t much here – except that thing, you know?”

Oh we know. It happened again just last night – like any day in the Live Music Capital. Our audio oasis remains a perfect match for some live-wire proselytizer from the back streets of Asbury Park, New Jersey, now 76 and NOT a billionaire, as the right-wing press likes to jeer.

Contrary to what Republicans preach, the American press is conservative, not liberal. Subtitled “No Kings” on some branding, the tour addressed exactly that in nearly every song and standout lyric – the lies, deceit, and outright murder during this surreal season of civic hell and social civil war. Even Springsteen’s pop hits took on a political cast in a fairly set tour playlist gathering its author’s greatest musical op-eds.

At the crack of 7:30pm sharp, the singer’s immediate acknowledgement of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting 25 hours earlier didn’t set the tone for the 18-member troupe’s politically motivated trek from Minneapolis to the nation’s capital. He doused it with kerosene.

Credit: John Croxton (@croxton_music)

“We can disagree,” said Springsteen in his opening address, the frontman laying in a fistful of concert carve-outs to document human rights abuses by the current U.S. government. “We can be critical of those in power and we can peacefully fight for our beliefs, but there is no place in any way, shape, or form for political violence of any kind in our beloved United States.”

He decried authoritarianism trumping democracy and quickly concluded, “Ethics over unbridled corruption, resistance over complacency, truth over lies, unity over division, and peace over … 

“WAR.”

Edwin Starr’s 1970 indelible, written for Motown by label standard-bearers Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong, proved no less the cannonade as show-starter than it did when the E Street Band debuted its cover of the anti-Vietnam anthem at the tail end of the Born in the U.S.A. tour in 1985. Growing up Jersey, Springsteen’s sociopolitical bent manifested in-bred for an artist who followed in Dylan’s footsteps at Columbia Records in the early Seventies. Yet the songwriter’s political demonstrativeness grew dramatically over successive LPs Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978), The River (1980), and Nebraska (’82) before peaking on the title track to Born in the U.S.A. two years later, at the heart of Ronald Reagan’s presidency.

Indeed, “Born in the U.S.A.” placed second on the current tour roll call and shook the Moody Center despite Springsteen’s historical reticence to stage the grandiose rock version of a tune widely misinterpreted as straight-up patriotism. Drastic times call for dramatic songs, however, so dust off those Cold War missives for the current siege. “Death to My Hometown” stuck the dagger in next, its words chilling in the ICE age:

Oh, no, cannonballs did fly, no rifles cut us down

No bombs fell from the sky, no blood soaked the ground

No powder flash blinded the eye, no deathly thunder sound

But just as sure as the hand of God, they brought death to my hometown

Anthems of youth took on new meaning, Springsteen and consigliere Silvio Dante – er, Steve Van Zandt – howling into the mic on fourth cut “No Surrender.” Then “Darkness on the Edge of Town” reminded one and all that darkness now lives downtown in a high rise, while rejoinder “Streets of Minneapolis” brought home the deaths of Alex Pretti and Renée Good, whose images seared the giant LED screens.

Every song landed, but 50 minutes in, Boss and ESB leveled left/right combo “Youngstown” and “Murder Incorporated.” On the former, lit red and menacing, third guitarist Nils Lofgren’s fire and ice solo brought down the house. For the latter, second axe Van Zandt cracked his own piece of molten firmament.

Bruce Springsteen and Tom Morello at the Moody Center on April 26, 2026 Credit: John Croxton (@croxton_music)

Guest six-stringer Tom Morello then obliterated the revival of “American Skin (41 Shots),” released by Springsteen in 2001 following the NYPD gunning down unarmed 23-year-old Guinean student Amadou Diallo.

Afterward, the avalanche fell hard and topical (“My City of Ruins”), but always raucous (“Because the Night”) and never burdensome (“The Rising”). As poignant as any moment, Springsteen’s solo acoustic “House of a Thousand Guitars,” a composition released during the pandemic and of which its author said addresses the “spiritual life of the nation,” stilled while sticking its universal takeaway:

The criminal clown has stolen the throne

He steals what he can never own

May the truth ring out from every small town bar

We’ll light up the house of a thousand guitars

Following Born in the U.S.A., Springsteen eventually disbanded the ESB, resurrecting them following what felt like eons just prior to 9/11 and twin presidential terms under a second Bush. Presciently, somehow, about the decade ahead, the band demolished Moody Center precursor the Frank Erwin Center in 2000 at the end of Clinton’s boom years. “Life is good here in the promised land,” began the Chronicle review.

To quote Dylan, things have changed. 

That includes Bruuuuccce, who cried quoting Renée Good’s final words – “I’m not mad at you,” delivered to her killer – and looked genuinely shocked toward the end of the town hall when he called on Austin-dwelling Jerseyites and all of Moody cheered (“No wonder we sold the place out”). Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band, forever fighting kings and other false idols.

Bruce Springsteen’s set list at Moody Center, April 26, 2026

“War”

“Born in the U.S.A”

“Death to My Hometown”

“No Surrender”

“Darkness on the Edge of Town”

“Streets of Minneapolis”

“The Promised Land”

“Two Hearts”

“Hungry Heart”

“Youngstown”

“Murder Incorporated”

“American Skin (41 Shots)”

“Long Walk Home”

“House of a Thousand Guitars”

“My City of Ruins”

“Because the Night”

“Wrecking Ball”

“The Rising”

“The Ghost of Tom Joad”

“Badlands”

“Land of Hope & Dreams”

ENCORE

“American Land”

“Born to Run”

“Dancing in the Dark”

“Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out”

“Chimes of Freedom”

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