Big Easy festival lands the Boss
In an 11th- hour surprise, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band will perform April 29 at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. It’s a first for E Street but an encore for Springsteen, whose emotionally wrenching debut was the festival’s standout in 2006.
Springsteen’s 17th studio album, the 11-track Wrecking Ball, arrives March 6, and the Jazz Fest date is a late stop in a string of U.S. dates starting March 18 in Atlanta.
The 2012 Jazz Fest, already a rock-heavy affair with a Beach Boys reunion, Tom Petty, the Foo Fighters, the Eagles, and Eddie Vedder was completely booked with all time slots inked when producer Quint Davis received word in early January that Springsteen wanted in.
“That stood the whole thing on its axis,” Davis says. “But doing the impossible is something we never shy away from.”
Springsteen’s camp told Davis that waiting for confirmation of Wrecking’s release date delayed the request. With talent funds depleted, Davis went to the Jazz Fest board for a hefty budget increase. Next came the jigsaw challenge. “This festival is already booked and programmed hour by hour, and here’s someone who plays closer to three hours than two,” he says. “And everything has to fit just right.”
John Mayer agreed to play earlier in the day and relinquish Sunday’s closing slot, other adjustments were made, and Springsteen landed in the same spot he held six years ago.
“It seemed poetically and historically correct,” Davis says. “What he did that day was transformative, one of the transcendent moments in Jazz Fest history. He put away his Boss hat and was Right Reverend Springsteen, ministering to the crowd.”
Performing with the folk-leaning Seeger Sessions Band, Springsteen captured the grief and tenacious optimism in post-katrina New Orleans with How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live, My City of Ruins and a prayerful When the Saints Go Marching In. “It was an absolutely cathartic human experience that speaks to the depth of his spirit and artistry,” Davis says.
Jazz Fest takes place April 27-29 and May 3-6. For details, go to nojazzfest.com.