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November 13, 2024 This week will close with some important dates for two charitable organizations long supported by Bruce Springsteen. On Friday November 15, beginning at 10am ET, the general on-sale for tickets to Light of Day Winterfest 2025 will commence. The Winterfest 2025 events, scheduled for mid-January of next year, also will mark the 25th anniversary of the organization's main event. Over the past quarter-century, Light of Day will have raised more than $6.5 million to combat Parkinson’s disease, ALS and PSP. The first official Light of Day concert was held at Asbury Park’s legendary Stone Pony venue in November 2000 and primarily featured local, unsigned artists. Joe Grushecky and the Houserockers (managed by Light of Day founder Bob Benjamin) headlined the show, which featured a surprise appearance by Bruce Springsteen, who joined the Houserockers for a raucous, hour-long set. The announced lineup for the January 18 "Main Event - Bob's Birthday Bash," taking place at The Count Basie Center for the Arts in Red Bank, NJ, includes John Rzeznik (Goo Goo Dolls,) Brian Fallon (The Gaslight Anthem,) Brian Baker (Bad Religion,) Pete Steinkopf (The Bouncing Souls,) Dramarama, Willie Nile, and Joe Grushecky and the Houserockers, with additional special guests yet to be announced. Ticket packages will be available via theBASIE.org , the Basie Center box office onsite at 99 Monmouth Street in Red Bank, and through Ticketmaster.com. Click here for more information on purchasing Light of Day Winterfest 2025 ticket packages. On Saturday night, November 15, the Kristen Ann Carr Fund (KACF) will hold its annual "A Night to Remember" fundraising event at Tribeca Grill in New York City. More than three decades have passed now since Bruce Springsteen first supported KACF  with a sold-out benefit concert in New York City's Madison Square Garden arena. The fund was organized in memory of the older daughter of former longtime Springsteen co-manager Barbara Carr and music-writer/Springsteen-biographer Dave Marsh. In early January of 1993, Kristen Ann Carr died at 21 of sarcoma. This year's "A Night To Remember" event will be the first to honor a sarcoma survivor: Jeff Gendel, who will be honored along with his wife Wendy. "We honor this family," reads the official event announcement from KACF , "that has been the direct beneficiary of the wonderful work of KACF and can truly trace their successful outcome back to the doctors and researchers that have received funding from our generous donors. "Jeff Gendel was diagnosed with a difficult case of dedifferentiated liposarcoma in July 2018. Almost immediately after the diagnosis, he and Wendy connected with KACF. Virtually their entire medical team has received funding from KACF – and since the initial diagnosis and surgery, they have benefitted from expanded knowledge and treatment options for rare sarcomas. During treatment, Wendy and Jeff agreed to allow his cancer cells to be researched in the Sam Singer Lab at MSK, funded by KACF, to help others impacted by sarcoma. The entire Gendel extended family have been enthusiastic supporters of our organization ever since that first diagnosis and have jumped in with an attitude of 'how can we help?' "Wendy and Jeff are a shining example of how KACF’s efforts can literally save lives, and bring a tangible component to the specific impact of your donations over the years. It is our extreme pleasure to celebrate them as our honorees at this year’s A Night to Remember." The event also will feature musical performances from special guest Brian Fallon of The Gaslight Anthem and house band JO & the Highland Express . And whether you purchase a ticket-package to attend or not, you still can support this important fundraising effort through the online-auction option , featuring lots of cool items (more than a few of them Springsteen-related) at a variety of bidding levels. Click here for more information.

November 12, 2024 Hey, Springsteen fans, Rhonda Bernadette wants to ask you a few questions... Bernadette, a longtime fan and founder of Circuit Records , is writing a book entitled Shouts From the Crowd: The Bruce Springsteen Fan Journey , and is inviting fans of all ages, backgrounds, nationalities, etc. to participate in her fan survey . "For decades," Bernadette recently told us, "Bruce Springsteen has continued to say, 'I’m in a long conversation with my audience. It will be a lifelong journey for both of us by the time we’re done.'" She envisions Shouts From the Crowd as another "passionate expression of the Springsteen audience conversation as told by fans around the world... Through research and interviews, we will learn how Springsteen’s music has been a constant companion. Fans are asked how they've been influenced by the man, the music, the lyrics, and the performances. We also will learn what fans would want to talk about if they got to spend a bit of time with Springsteen himself. Generations of fans will share personal stories, and the book will be filled with unique photographs from fans all over the world." The survey has been designed to be fun and easy for fans to take. Survey participants can choose either to record their voice responses, or type their responses. Each participant also will receive a special Circuit Records discount code for 15% off the order total on their next Circuit Records purchase, in appreciation of their individual contribution to the book-creation process. Here are some examples of the kinds of questions asked in the survey: How has/have the music, the lyrics, the storytelling and/or the performances impacted or influenced you? How has Springsteen's music been there for you along your life journey? What would you talk about if you spent a couple hours with Springsteen on the Jersey shore? If you had to pick one album as your favorite, could you do it? What would it be, and why? Click here for more information, to take the Shouts From the Crowd survey, and to be part of this special book project.

November 12, 2024 During his four-song solo acoustic set at last night's 18th Annual Stand Up For Heroes event, besides each sometimes mildly "dirty" Dad joke he delivered before each song, the only other words he spoke onstage were "This is a small prayer for our country," said just before he began singing the set-closing "Long Walk Home." In fact, since Springsteen brilliantly and beautifully let his music do virtually all of the talking when it came to the serious stuff, the entire set - not just "Long Walk Home" - could be taken as a beacon of belief, hope, and prayer offered up against despair, national and/or personal. An extremely appropriate one, as well, regardless of one's spiritual and/or political beliefs, because Stand Up For Heroes, which Springsteen has long supported, is all about helping to ensure that U.S. military veterans, service members, and their families never again have to face hopelessness, hunger, and poverty alone. Last night's sold-out event, held in New York City's David Geffen Hall at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, raised over $29 million for The Bob Woodruff Foundation , which was founded in 2006 to ensure that U.S. armed-forces veterans, current members, and their families have stable and successful futures. Besides Springsteen, other performers who appeared at the event were Jim Gaffigan, Norah Jones, Mark Normand, DJ Questlove, Jerry Seinfeld, and Jon Stewart. Also billed to appear was Patti Scialfa, who unfortunately was not in attendance. In the four YouTube links embedded below, you can watch fan-filmed video of Bruce's entire set, complete and in sequential order, Dad jokes and all: Lee Woodruff hugs Bruce at the end of his performance - photo by Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images for The Bob Woodruff Foundation - used with permission

November 11, 2024 Springsteen on Dylan: "Bob Dylan is the father of my country. Highway 61 Revisited and Bringing It All Back Home were not only great records, but they were the first time I can remember being exposed to a truthful vision of the place I lived. The darkness and light were all there, the veil of illusion and deception ripped aside. He put his boot on the stultifying politeness and daily routine that covered corruption and decay. The world he described was all on view, in my little town, and spread out over the television that beamed into our isolated homes, but it went uncommented on and silently tolerated. He inspired me and gave me hope. He asked the questions everyone else was too frightened to ask, especially to a fifteen-year-old: “How does it feel...to be on your own?” A seismic gap had opened up between generations and you suddenly felt orphaned, abandoned amid the flow of history, your compass spinning, internally homeless. Bob pointed true north and served as a beacon to assist you in making your way through the new wilderness America had become. He planted a flag, wrote the songs, sang the words that were essential to the times, to the emotional and spiritual survival of so many young Americans at that moment. I had the opportunity to sing 'The Times They Are A-Changin’ ' for Bob when he received the Kennedy Center Honors. We were alone together for a brief moment walking down a back stairwell when he thanked me for being there and said, 'If there’s anything I can ever do for you...' I thought, 'Are you kidding me?' and answered, 'It’s already been done.'” -Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run Did Bob Dylan mean what he sang in “Idiot Wind?” Doesn’t the "we" in The Animals’ song “We Gotta Get Out of This Place” refer to the American people and our getting out of the Vietnam war? Why did a U.S. Army machine gunner from Buffalo, New York write a letter to Bob Dylan asking to meet him when he got home from Vietnam? Is there a shared soundtrack for today’s veterans? “This always happens,” I smile and say to my co-presenter and co-author Craig Werner. He nods in agreement. We’ve just made a Veterans Day Weekend presentation at The Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and members of the audience are anxious to know more, share more, respond to what they’ve just heard... And we’re all too willing to keep stirring the pot. That’s because, thanks to Craig, an emeritus professor of African-American Studies at UW-Madison, our work is rooted in the African-American cultural practice of “call-and-response.” That’s the beauty, too, of our award-winning book We Gotta Get Out of This Place: The Soundtrack of the Vietnam War . It’s based on the responses from hundreds of Vietnam veterans about the music of that time and their responses to that call. It’s also inherent in our presentations to audiences like the one at The Dylan Center this past Saturday. You could even make an argument that “question and answer” sessions like Saturday’s are actually “call and response” sessions. Audience members, especially the veterans and their families, are always moved because the music allows them to be grounded. To be safe. To be heard. How’s that for an appropriate way to observe Veterans Day? And maybe a good way to salute our veterans each and every day... our response to their service and sacrifice. All of that and more were present in Tulsa on Saturday, as they’d been previously in Seattle and Saginaw, Memphis and Minneapolis, and places in between. Being where we were close to Veterans Day 2024, we emphasized Dylan’s music, the contributions of other Tulsa-bred musicians like Leon Russell and David Gates, and the stories we heard from veterans, many of them Native Americans, from the various Oklahoma tribes. These elements bring a relevancy and intimacy to the conversations that help audience members relax, be centered, and be ready to respond. And maybe there’s no better responder to the world and the events around him than Bob Dylan. While Dylan made few, if any, explicit statements about the war in Vietnam, he saw through the hypocrisy of politicians, the hostility of generals, the foolhardiness of the public, and the tragic consequences of war. He warned us about the hard rain that could fall, pushed back against the masters of war, and railed against the idiot wind blowing "from the Grand Coulee Dam to the Capitol.” In collaboration with co-writer Rick Danko, Dylan even harnessed the resentment of Vietnam veterans as a "wheel" that "shall explode” in The Band’s version of “This Wheel's on Fire.” Powerful responses. Iconic songs. Masterful storytelling. That’s Bob Dylan. When you’re in Tulsa, stop by the riveting Bob Dylan Center, and also go next door to celebrate Dylan’s mentor Woody Guthrie at The Woody Guthrie Center . Hear the call...and help bring a veteran home. Our Dylan Center Veterans Day Weekend 2024 presentation's playlist: "All Along the Watchtower" (Bob Dylan's version; written by Bob Dylan) "All Along the Watchtower" (The Jimi Hendrix Experience's version; written by Bob Dylan) Dylan as a touchtone for generational consciousness: JFK’s War- "Masters of War" (Bob Dylan; written by Bob Dylan) LBJ’s War- "Like a Rolling Stone" (Bob Dylan; written by Bob Dylan) Nixon’s War- "Idiot Wind" (Bob Dylan; written by Bob Dylan) Oklahoma connections: "King of the Road" (Roger Miller; written by Roger Miller) "These Boots are Made for Walkin’" (Nancy Sinatra; written by Lee Hazlewood) Native vets-Kiowa Gourd Dance Veterans and Veterans Day: "We Gotta Get Out of This Place" (The Animals; written by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil) "This Wheel’s On Fire" (The Band; written by Bob Dylan and Rick Danko) "Leaving on a Jet Plane" (Peter, Paul, and Mary; written by John Denver) Click here to read Doug Bradley's 2023 Veterans Day essay for Letters To You, as well.

November 8, 2024 If you're going to be within traveling distance of The Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, OK tomorrow, Saturday November 9, you're strongly encouraged to check out the special Veterans Day programming that's happening there. Our friends Doug Bradley and Craig Werner, co-authors of We Gotta Get Out of This Place: The Soundtrack of the Vietnam War (named Rolling Stone 's Best Music Book of 2015,) will present "Wisdom From the Watchtower: An Afternoon of Music and Stories for Veterans Day." (Bradley also has contributed essays to Letters To You.) For this afternoon program that honors all veterans and gives voice to their pasts and legacies, Bradley and Werner will provide a brief overview of how music functioned during and after the Vietnam War; share songs by Bob Dylan, Bill Withers, Jimi Hendrix, and other era-defining musicians; relate firsthand accounts from a chorus of veterans; and engage the audience in a Q&A session, all in a nonjudgmental environment of sharing, listening and understanding. Free admission to the event is included with admission to the Center this Saturday, and admission to the Center tomorrow is also free for all military veterans and active military personnel. Here, too, are tomorrow's admission rates for all other visitors: Adults: $15 Adults Dual Tickets*: $22 Seniors (55+) and students (18+ with ID): $12 Youth (17 and under) and K-12 teachers: Free Limited-capacity general admission seating will be available for "Wisdom From the Watchtower: An Afternoon of Music and Stories for Veterans Day" on a first-come, first-served basis. Click here for more information.

November 6, 2024 “I don’t know what you guys think about what happened last night, but I think it’s pretty frightening...You guys are young; there’s gonna be a lot of people depending on you coming up, so this is for you...” -Bruce Springsteen, introducing "Badlands" onstage at Arizona State University on November 5, 1980, the night after Election Day

November 5, 2024

November 3, 2024 (UPDATE: Make that a TRIPLE-shot! Thom Zimny has confirmed with us via email that he directed the "Hopes and Dreams" and "An American Tyrant" videos, and there's an additional November 1 social-media-posted "Dancing in the Dark"/"I'll see you on higher ground!" video, featuring Pam Springsteen's direction and photography, that we've since added below.) We're now just around the corner to Election Day 2024 here in the U.S., and within the past few days Bruce Springsteen has shared online two more official videos supporting the Harris-Walz campaign for the U.S. Presidency and Vice-Presidency. Both videos utilize footage of Springsteen speaking onstage during his appearance and performance at the October 28 Harris-Walz campaign rally in Philadelphia, PA . The more recently released video, entitled "Hopes and Dreams," combines edited multi-camera footage of Springsteen's onstage speech with footage of Harris and Walz reaching out to supporters and potential voters on the campaign trail, as part of the officially released studio version of "Land of Hope and Dreams" from Wrecking Ball effectively plays over it all. Clocking in at exactly one minute, it's the official Springsteen endorsement video that plays most like a traditional electoral-campaign television ad. "Hopes and Dreams" was preceded two days earlier by "An American Tyrant," a spoken-word-only video clip which consists of an unedited, single-camera presentation of Bruce's entire just-under-two-minutes onstage speech preceding his October 28 solo-acoustic performance of "Land of Hope and Dreams." The campaign-rally footage used in both videos differs from the video feed provided by and to various news outlets that covered the rally live and/or in subsequent reports. Given the excellent quality of this footage, it's likely that it was shot by Springsteen's own camp, possibly involving his longtime film/video collaborator and archivist Thom Zimny, who directed Bruce's initial Harris-Walz endorsement video, which was released on October 3 . (UPDATE: Zimny has confirmed with us via email that he directed the "Hopes and Dreams" and "An American Tyrant" videos, and there's an additional November 1 social-media-posted "Dancing in the Dark"/"I'll see you on higher ground!" video, featuring Pam Springsteen's direction and photography, that we've since added below.) Click below to watch both "Hopes and Dreams," released on November 1, and "An American Tyrant," released on October 30, both directed by Thom Zimny, and newly added... the November 1 social-media-posted "Dancing in the Dark"/"I'll see you on higher ground!" video, featuring Pam Springsteen's direction and photography:

October 29, 2024 Last night in Philadelphia, PA, Bruce Springsteen made what is most likely his final campaign-rally appearance in support of the 2024 Kamala Harris-Tim Walz Presidential/Vice-Presidential ticket, given his scheduled concert appearances in Canada before next Tuesday's U.S. Presidential election. Just as he did last Thursday in James R. Hallford Stadium just outside of Atlanta, GA , Springsteen appeared in Philadelphia's Liacouras Center arena at Temple University with former U.S. President Barack Obama and performed three of his songs in solo-acoustic versions: "The Promised Land," "Land of Hope and Dreams," and "Dancing in the Dark." Introduced to the stage by Pennsylvania's U.S. Senator Bob Casey, Jr., who's also running to be re-elected next week, Bruce's Philly campaign-rally appearance and performances closely mirrored those he gave last week in Georgia, albeit with a few notable wrinkles. This time around, when he delivered his short speech between "The Promised Land" and "Land of Hope and Dreams," he added this sentence to it: "Now I understand folks having different opinions about things, but this election is about a group of folks who want to fundamentally undermine our American way of life." When introducing "Dancing in the Dark," Springsteen said, "I'm gonna do this for my brother John Legend [who also appeared and performed at the rally.] John does the most beautiful version of this song I have ever heard." And in Philly Bruce also soulfully stretched out the song's final "You can't start a fire..." section of the chorus, transforming it into an audience sing-along, as well. Even his farewell statement before leaving the stage took on a soulful tinge, incorporating a Stevie Wonder lyrical reference: "Let's vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz November 5th! I'll see you on higher ground!" The full pro-shot video from PBS is embedded below, and cued up to Bruce Springsteen taking the stage, just after Senator Casey's introduction:

October 29, 2024 I joined the Spring-Nuts Facebook group on October 17, 2017, about two years after it began its existence, and when I launched this website last year, Letters To You "joined" and became an officially approved "member" of the group, as well, allowing us to connect regularly with many fellow Springsteen fans. After all, even now Spring-Nuts remains one of the largest (though no longer THE largest) of the Springsteen-focused Facebook groups, numbering over 18,000 members worldwide. Much of what has occurred within Spring-Nuts over the past three-and-a-half weeks, however, has had me, as well as a significant number of other fans, greatly concerned. It's led me to question and think very differently about its leadership's actions (and, at times, in action) around some very important issues, involving the treatment of both Bruce Springsteen and his fans with the respect and transparency they deserve. It wasn't so much how the Spring-Nuts administrators handled the posting of (then un -posting and re -posting of) Bruce Springsteen's endorsement video for the Harris-Walz campaign , though I think that now-you-see-it-now-you-don't-but-wait-here-it-is-again approach definitely was bumbling at best. I mean, to this day, I fail to understand why it took so long for the Spring-Nuts administrators to decide to simply share Bruce's video on Facebook with comments limited or closed, if they didn't want to deal with the task of extensive, ongoing comments-moderation. After all, that's exactly how we at Letters To You (and at least a few other online Springsteen-focused groups) handled it , albeit with a much smaller number of viewers/commenters, but still... It certainly seemed ironic - to say the least - witnessing the group's online administrators attempting to over-enforce its "No Politics Whatsoever" rule after already having broken it, all under their banner-posted group motto, "Taking Care of Our Own Since 2015," which of course paraphrases (or is that perverts?) one of Bruce Springsteen's most political songs ever. One also has to wonder if once Bruce's video got pulled from the Spring-Nuts Facebook page (an act that, regardless of whatever the administrators' intent was, ended up giving at least a temporary victory of sorts to those who opposed Bruce's message and wanted him censored for it,) it might never have appeared on that page again without Amy Lofgren's important role in putting a much-needed spotlight on the video's removal/absence . (Lofgren, who is of course the spouse of Nils Lofgren, also faced some extremely disrespectful and abusive flak online for having done so. I, for one, think that she handled all of that with nothing but bravery, reason, and dignity, much to her credit.) Nevertheless, as I already noted above, what concerned me much more were the things that came to light after the endorsement-video drama ensued. In the midst of the various online debates and discussions about how Spring-Nuts handled the situation with Springsteen's endorsement video and some other recent issues of concern, several current and former Spring-Nuts members involved in those debates revealed that they had received abusive/bullying private Facebook messages from one of Spring-Nuts' "Group Experts." (As per Facebook's online community guidelines and procedures , "Admins can recognize knowledgeable members as group experts, making them stand out with a new badge." The Spring-Nuts Facebook group currently has 47 such recognized members.) Each of the private messages from the Group Expert was a slight variation of the following: "I heard you left SN [Spring-Nuts.] Good riddance! You fucked with Howie Chaz [Howie "Howie Chaz" Chazanoff is the founder/organizer/key-leader of Spring-Nuts,] proving you are a loser. Howie is a good man and you are a fool." Another one, addressed to a current member who remains in good standing, read, "do us all a BIG favor and get the hell out of SN. You are a loser and a liar and there's no room for your constant negativity. Why stay in a group that you hate....JUST LEAVE!!!!" The Spring-Nuts Facebook group has five basic rules. The first two posted rules are: Be Kind and Courteous No Hate Speech or Bullying Yet incredibly, no serious consequences whatsoever appeared to have been issued to this Spring-Nuts Group Expert for his online behavior. Not only was/is he still a Spring-Nuts member, but as of this writing he still retains his Group Expert designation. About a week after sending those messages, he posted on the Spring-Nuts Facebook group page a public apology for his actions, including a general/collective apology to the members he had private-messaged. Yet two of the former members are unable to see such an apology, and none of the affected members has yet claimed to have received any kind of personal apology message from their bully. Another online thread began questioning just how much of the money raised by Spring-Nuts through its annual "Spring-Nuts Seaside Serenade" in-person gatherings, merch sales, etc. actually goes to the charities that Spring-Nuts supports. The allegations made online, as well as the data and computations behind them, also raised more than a bit of concern on my part. So I decided to contact Howie Chaz directly about all of this. Not only have I known of Howie since I joined Spring-Nuts seven years ago, but I've also known him informally as a friendly acquaintance since my days as a Backstreets Magazine/website contributor, etc. In the early afternoon of Friday, October 18, I emailed Howie an official media/press inquiry in my capacity as Editor/Publisher of Letters To You. I asked him, as the leader/organizer (aka "The Warden") of Spring-Nuts to provide on-the-record replies to the following five questions: 1. What consequences/penalties, if any, has or will [the Group Expert in question] receive(d) from Spring-Nuts for his bullying, inappropriate messages to several other Spring-Nuts members, past and present? (It appears that as of this writing, [he] has yet to receive from Spring-Nuts any consequences whatsoever.) 2. As you can see from the attached screenshots, some serious questions have been raised regarding the level of Serenade 6 charitable donations, in comparison to how much Serenade 6 money actually was collected through ticket-sales, etc. for an event that was advertised as one in which "All proceeds will go to" charitable organizations. It's estimated that ticket-sales alone generated much more than $36K, given Asbury Lanes' capacity, yet only $36K in donations was announced. Why such a discrepancy? Exactly how many Serenade 6 tickets were sold? What exactly happened to all of the Serenade 6 money generated by those ticket-sales, sales of merch and/or other items, etc.? 3. I also have attached several Spring-Nuts online-store screenshots of Spring-Nuts apparel items that incorporate photographic images of Bruce Springsteen. Did Springsteen and/or his representatives give approval for the use of his likeness in this way? I'm especially curious/concerned about this because none of these items - not even the Serenade 5 item - have explicit statements on their website pages indicating that any of the money from sales of these items gets earmarked for any charitable items: 4. Where does all of the money raised from sales of the apparel items referenced in my third question go? 5. A full week has now passed since Spring-Nuts attorney Jane Weisbecker Arnone tweeted , "A full post of Spring Nut charitable contributions will shortly be linked to the FB page." Have I missed the occurrence of such a posting? If not, how much more time is expected to pass before this promised posting occurs? As of 8:30 a.m. on Tuesday October 22nd, Howie had not replied to any of these questions, so I sent a follow-up message informing him that if I received no response from him within the next twelve hours, I would presume that he had declined to reply. At 11:42 a.m. that day, I received a message from Howie simply asking me to call Joe D'Urso of Rockland-Bergen Music Fest , Spring-Nuts' organizing/presentation/promotional partner for at least some of its events. An hour later that day, Joe also called the Letters To You office and left a voicemail message explaining that he could answer "one" of my five questions. In a pair of followup email messages to Howie, I explained that before I spoke "on-the-record" with Joe about any aspect of this matter, I first needed Howie to confirm specifically in writing (via reply email) that he was designating Joe to be his official spokesperson on one of the five questions I was asking, and for which specific question he would be doing so. Howie never provided any such confirmation to me. Instead at 5:34 p.m. on Wednesday October 23rd, he posted openly on Facebook approximately two-and-a-half pages worth of what reads very much like he wrote it in response to my emailed questions listed above, though of course neither Letters To You nor I ever get mentioned specifically in what Howie wrote. (If you're a member of Spring-Nuts, you can read for yourself what Howie wrote by clicking here .) Far more important, there's a LOT more than just the words "Shawn Poole" and "Letters To You" missing in what Howie's written in his Facebook "reply." First off, he claims that when they first posted Bruce's Harris-Walz endorsement video, somebody on the administrative team at Spring-Nuts somehow forgot to do so with the comments option turned off, even though - as he also claims - the no-comments policy is and always will be Spring-Nuts policy in regards to any posts concerning political statements by Bruce Springsteen. Then, according to Howie, in order to correct this incredible administrative oversight via apparent amnesia, they took down Bruce's endorsement video "temporarily," and re-posted it/pinned it without the comments option. Yet he never gets around to explaining exactly why it "temporarily" took more than twenty-four hours after the video was removed for it to get re-posted, and - interestingly - only about five hours after Amy Lofgren had publicly criticized the absence of any version of Bruce's Harris-Walz endorsement video on the Spring-Nuts Facebook page. As for Howie's defense of how he handled the case of the bullying Group Expert... Well, giving the bully a second chance and keeping him in the group doesn't necessarily mean that you also have to let him keep his Group Expert title, especially when it took him almost an entire week to issue any kind of apology for his actions, and a very weak one at that. (And again, as of this writing, he has yet to apologize personally to any of the bullied folks whom I interviewed, even the ones who are no longer Spring-Nuts members and can't see directly the apology he posted on the Spring-Nuts page.) But apparently Howie and I have very different measures of what indicates someone truly understanding that what they did was unacceptable and reprehensible. Nevertheless, hands-down the most mind-blowing part of Howie's October 23rd Facebook post is his response - or more accurately the overwhelming lack thereof - to the questions about Spring-Nuts' Serenade 6 charitable donations, merch sales, and financial transparency in general. Four of the five questions we asked Howie to answer had to do with these subjects, yet he only responded to the one about the Serenade 6 charitable donations. And what he wrote in response ain't exactly reassuring. $27,397 in expenses for a single fundraising event?! Seriously?! Dude, that is an absolutely ridiculous, virtually impossible-to-believe amount. You're telling us that more than 43% of the money you raised at what was billed as a charitable event went to yet-to-be-itemized-publicly "expenses?!" And incidentally, any experienced, reputable organizer of such events should know the difference between using the phrases "All proceeds (meaning all $63,397 raised will go to...") and "All net proceeds or all profits (after covering more than $27K in expenses) will go to..." But in either case, claiming $27,397 in expenses related to having only about 500 folks gather basically to just eat (at an inexpensive buffet,) drink (at a cash bar,) score a t-shirt that probably cost around $5 to produce in bulk, and dance/sing to recorded music for several hours at a relatively small Asbury Park venue, on a date/time at which the venue normally wouldn't be making much money anyway and therefore likely to be very open to negotiation, is still just... ludicrous. Since Howie's Facebook post also confirmed openly (finally!) that Joe D'Urso/Rockland Bergen Music Festival, Inc. is the person to whom any follow-up questions about Spring-Nuts' Serenade 6 expenses, donations, etc. should be addressed, I attempted to do exactly that. On the afternoon of last Friday, October 25, I called Joe at the number he left for me in his October 22nd voicemail message. This time I got Joe's voicemail, and left a message for him, stating that Letters To You had several follow-up questions related to Howie's October 23rd Facebook post, and that I wanted to arrange an on-the-record interview with him. Joe has yet to respond to my request. Yesterday afternoon, I also emailed Howie to inform him of my attempt to arrange an interview with Joe. Howie simply replied that he has no control over Joe's availability to answer or return phone calls. And left completely unaddressed, by either Howie or Joe or anyone else at this point, are our questions about whether Spring-Nuts has any permission from Bruce Springsteen or his representatives to use Bruce's likeness on some of the Spring-Nuts apparel sold in their online store , and what happens to the money raised from the sales of such apparel. (Sales of these items, incidentally, appear to have been very successful, with several items listed as being at or near sellout status. Selling such Springsteen-image-adorned apparel at prices ranging from $35 to $50 each, when each item costs far less than that to produce, can generate much additional revenue indeed.) Furthermore, the "full post of Spring Nut charitable contributions," promised by Spring-Nuts attorney Jane Weisbecker Arnone almost three weeks ago, still doesn't appear to have been posted on Facebook or anywhere else, for that matter. (Incidentally, regarding those charitable contributions, it's worth noting that since Spring-Nuts isn't a non-profit corporation, as Howie himself confirmed in his posted statement, nobody who bought a ticket to the Serenade can get a tax-deduction for any portion of their ticket purchase from Spring-Nuts. But Spring-Nuts itself can still write off any and all of the charitable donations they make to non-profit organizations from their Serenade ticket-sales. Not a bad little deal for the Spring-Nuts corporation, eh?) Therefore, at this point, in light of all that I've witnessed, experienced, researched, and reported above, I feel that I have no reasonable choice other than to terminate both my individual Spring-Nuts membership and Letters To You's institutional "membership" in the group. This was by no means an easy decision to make, and I hope to maintain my personal connections and friendships with many other folks who may choose to remain members of Spring-Nuts, whom I consider to be fine folks and fellow fans. Some even may contribute to this website, as well, and will remain welcome to do so, of course. But I no longer can have myself or this website be officially connected in any way to a group with leadership that has repeatedly failed to provide any serious answers to most if not all of the reasonable questions listed above, and appears to have strayed way too far from what it means to be a fan of Bruce Springsteen and his key collaborators. Bruce, his associates, their many fans worldwide, and the various charitable organizations that they/we support deserve far better than this.

October 31, 2024 On a much lighter note... Happy Halloween 2024 to every one of our readers celebrating it! Here's hoping you enjoy our appropriately mischievous and playful alterations to the cover of what remains Bruce Springsteen's most recently released "new" album, giving Only The Strong Survive  a Transylvania twist, and bringing in a whole new scaaaaaaaaaaary layer of meaning to that album's title. Of course tonight's biggest Halloween 2024 treat for Springsteen fans will be handed out in Montreal, where he and the E Street Band will resume this year's tour with their first performance on Canadian soil in more than eight years, followed by seven more Canadian dates in November to close out their 2024 itinerary. We hope that everyone in attendance tonight will have a great time, and perhaps even score at least one special Halloween-themed addition to the setlist. But no matter what happens or doesn't happen this evening, the wise exhortation of a rather famous Transylvanian count still stands as very good advice to follow, in relation to Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band: “Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make!"

October 28, 2024 EDITOR'S NOTE: To supplement our recent streaming-debut-weekend coverage of Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band , we are pleased to present to our readers London-based journalist and Letters To You contributing writer Herpreet Grewal 's edited transcriptions and photos from the London premiere of the film, which took place on October 18 at the city’s Ham Yard Hotel. There was a post-screening Q&A hosted by Scottish radio and television personality Edith Bowman, featuring Bruce Springsteen, Jon Landau, Stevie Van Zandt, and Thom Zimny. Since we already have posted our own extensive conversation with Zimny about his film , Herpreet has edited her transcriptions of the Q&A to supplement that conversation with a focus on just Bruce's, Jon's, and Stevie's October 18 comments, which not surprisingly were interesting, insightful, moving, and - at times - downright hilarious. Enjoy! Bruce: “The way we made this picture was we started to rehearse, and we called Thom Zimny. I said ‘Thom, bring your camera down.' And that was pretty much it; that was the beginning of the picture. Thom then films things and sends me pieces of things, and puts them together, and things start to take shape. Thom’s emotional instincts about how things fall together are really excellent. We’ve been working together now for twenty-four years, and done a bunch of other films, too. Thom has given me a visual language that we didn’t have previously... He’s a collaborator, someone with the visual skills, and Thom gave that to me. We’ve been great partners for a long time. We didn’t film in the first iteration of the band, which I regret now, because I was so superstitious about it. Once the band got back together, I said we’re going to film everything we do and make one film for every section of our work life. If we use some of them, they are there, and if we don’t, they are there in the archives. So we’ve been doing that over the past twenty-four years.” Stevie: “It was important because of the theme. Our show always has a great range of emotions, but this one a little bit more focused because the album [ Letter to You ] was a bit more focused. So I think it's one of the greatest albums of all time. When you really look at this thing as a songwriter, its really incredible. The depth…It's the most personal record, you know, that we’ve ever made, and so the challenge is to get this across, and because it was a theme about mortality…we knew we had to balance it out with vitality. Yes, we’re closer to the end than the beginning, but we’re not going out quietly... We had to bring a hurricane... There was going to be that one moment in the middle, which Thom captured so beautifully, from '...on the backstreets' to 'I’ll see you in my dreams.' Everything else was going to be like, 'Bam!,' and hit you in the face… We need to bring that every time… We need to transport people to another place for three hours… and then transform people and give them more energy when they leave than when they came. Bruce has always spent time thinking about what is going to be said on the tour. That’s what he needs to spend his time on. So the music... he doesn’t have to worry about it. He took care of the music with the songwriting, and then we made the records. The music is fine; the E Street Band produces themselves. I’ll fix a few things, he may come in and change a few things, but basically the music is going to be there, so Bruce has to spend his time where it counts, which is thinking about what is going to be said, how is he going to say it... And that is what he should be spending his time on, rather than having to worry about the music. He doesn’t have to worry about that anymore.” Bruce: “Yeah, why do I have to rehearse anymore? It doesn’t make any sense.” (laughter from the audience) Jon: “It makes me nervous.” (more laughter from the audience) “We actually shoot every night, and our in-house director [Chris Hilson,] who does the screening every night... Thom picks certain locations where, in terms of where he would go for the backstage story and also where we would enhance and get different angles beyond what we do on a nightly basis, and one of the things you can see in the film is the approach to the audience… when Bruce is communicating, and the importance of communicating what Bruce is feeling, right there, right then on that stage, in that moment, in your town. The other side of it is the audience. Thom shows the crowd and the big exciting mass of people, but when you see the film, what he is really looking for are the faces in the crowd. And so during these montages, like for example, where we had 'The Promised Land,' we had the tracking shot that just goes down the line and we see every individual in that crowd, but you see every individual’s personal reaction to the song and the exchange that is two ways that is going from Bruce to audience, but then from the audience, also, back to Bruce and the band. I think throughout the film, the focus on the faces and the eyes and the vignettes with the fans from all over Europe… those five individual people who were so wonderful, and so captured the spirit of the audience and what we hope for the audience... It was a combination of many elements there.” Bruce: “The key is - I’ve said this for such a long time - you have to look into the audience and find yourself every single night. I look into the audience, go down the line, and I find myself in this kid, or that person, or a hundred people. I spend a lot of time looking at individual faces, and the audience has to look up at the stage and recognize themselves in what you are singing, in what you are doing, and the friends you are there with and this, amongst our group and our audience is a deep, deep, deep, deep, deep experience, because they are looking at me and Steven on stage, and I’ve been with Steven for sixty years. Then they’re seeing me with Roy and Max and I’ve been with them for fifty years. Mr Landau has been around for fifty years - I don’t know how he did it, but he hung in there! So that’s the key... The night you look out and don’t recognize yourself, and the night they don’t recognize you, that’s the night you go home. I have to remind myself I exist every night! That’s really the reason I am up there. ‘Am I really here?’ I got to go up there and prove it.” “We have a long narrative. It began with [ Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ ...] I was interested in continuity... of records rubbing against each other and creating new meanings and third meanings, because my film heroes like John Ford made trilogies, different films based on the same themes, and so I kind of like that. So I wanted to make records that kind of fall into one another. Darkness on the Edge of Town falls into The River . The end of The River actually falls into Nebraska . Nebraska exploded into Born in the U.S.A. ... so I liked the continuity. What you are doing on stage... you are bringing your history to your audience, while at the same time you are focusing on your latest narrative. So we’re bringing our entire history, and focusing a little more on Letter to You , because that was our last record with the band, because it was a great record and dealt with the idea of rock ‘n’ roll, time, mortality and illness, and that is a big part of all our stories. So I wanted to make sure that was at the centre of the shows. The show peaks not with the rock songs, but... with 'Last Man Standing' and 'Backstreets' - this is what I am talking about. And the rest of the show is... this is how I respond.” Jon: “One of the things about the documentary form, the convention of it... you don’t need full songs. So pieces of songs can work as well, or even better, than the entire songs, and also the number of songs we were able to include… The film is one hour and forty minutes and in my biased opinion, it flies by, and you know there is so much music actually in it, but it is different than a concert film. We’ve never done this before; it feels right.” Bruce: “The film is also about the rewards of a band staying together. The actual arc of rock and roll bands is to break up, not stay together. Think about it. How many bands stayed together against how many who broke up? It’s waaaay 90/10. Forget about bands; you can’t get two people to stay together. Simon hates Garfunkel. Sam hates Dave. Hall hates Oates. Phil hates Don Everly… Oh, Noel and Liam; how could I forget them ?! It’s challenging - very, very challenging - but the film shows the rewards. It's a separate art, staying together; it's a separate art itself. You got to imagine... you’re in high school, and those four people you hung around with in high school... how about them being the same four people you’ve worked with every single day of your life until you are 75?! That’s insane to expect any sane person to be able to stand, but the art is, you know, to make it happen.” Edith Bowman: How do you stay together? Bruce: “I pay a tremendous amount of money. That greases the wheels pretty good, and I am a pretty nice boss. The truth is, you needed to cast your band well, you know, with people who have the same sort of respect and feeling and seriousness about what they were doing and what you were doing. Everyone has to hold that music in a very high place, and there are certain boundaries; we don’t fuck with that. So the band has to be cast very well. Steve and I have been friends for sixty years… A musical companion... It's not like anything else. Jon and I, fifty years... but it's an art. That’s an art. Each and every one of those relations... there are more than one moment[s] where it could have gone the other way. So that appeals to me in [ Road Diary ...] watching a bunch of people work together for that long.” Edith Bowman: "Stevie, you said a great thing in the film... This kid you grew up with, and him being a really shy introvert, but on stage he commands these people... Is it still a wonderful thing, as his friend, to see what he achieves and what he does on stage? Stevie: “It’s a miracle. First of all, part of what makes it stay together is that democracies don’t work in bands. This is a benevolent monarchy, and that’s how it needs to be, and that’s how it works." ( MUCH laughter from the audience) “Most of all, this thing... From the beginning, Bruce has had a bizarre career, if you look at it. It was never a commercial enterprise, which changes everything. It’s been an artistic adventure from the beginning. So that’s what he means when he says to cast the band well…you have to do that with that in mind, because if you are strictly concerned with commercial success, you have to cast it differently, because you’re going to be interested in short-term revenue and all that, but this was never the case for Bruce. From the very first album, his music had nothing to do with what was going on. Never fashionable, never trendy, completely unique from day one. It was a personal artistic adventure, so anyone joining that thing knew what they were getting themselves into. Luckily we have had some commercial common ground along the way, which was great, but that was never the intention. That intention of communicating something important and personal artistically is what has kept this thing so vital and important for the audience, because they understand that.” Bruce: “It was the funniest thing… In [late] 1972, my first record was about to come out and I am at a place called Kenny's Castaways in New York. It's a little club. I am there by myself. A buddy from another band walks in, and he’s got a mink coat on, and a nice-looking girl by his side. I’d performed with them before in and around New Jersey. So he sees me by myself on stage at Kenny's Castaways, playing to about twenty-five people, and after I was done, I came down [to see him.] He says ‘What the fuck are you doing?! We saw a half-hour act from you!’ And I said, ‘Yeah that was great, but you know, I think I know what I am doing now.' I played the long game. [I had thought] well, first two records didn’t do very well, third one kept us in the game. I always played the long game, and if you do that right, other things work out. Money comes, money goes, but if you do it right, other things come your way, or if you get the art right, the band right, the music right, and the performances, where you go out and play every night like it's your last night on Earth... That was the serial philosophy of the band, and we’re sticking to it.” Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band  is now available to stream on Hulu  and Disney+ . All photos by Herpreet Grewal - used with permission