After six-long years away, Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band are officially back on the road. The band kicked off its 2023 tour last night (February 1st) at Tampa, Florida’s Amalie Arena, and was supplemented by the four-piece E Street Horns — along with the three-person E Street Choir — for a two-hour and 38-minute show.

Bruce Springsteen explained that hitting the stage primed to excite and entertain is a huge part of what great live music is about: “It’s the ‘showtime’ — y’know, I think people are frightened of the word ‘show’ sometimes, but that’s what it is. And also, I think it’s perceived when you say ‘show’ for some reason, it gets mixed up with the idea that it’s false. But really, it’s just a series of tools that allow you to communicate what you’re trying to say to the audience, y’know? It’s a bridge to the audience when employed correctly. And I love all my favorite entertainers — they were serious, they were clowns, and they did all kinds of — they were showmen, and that’s just a part of our background. And it was essential when you played in a lot of bars in New Jersey where the audiences could be hostile.”

Steven Van Zandt explains that today, although Springsteen maps out a basic theme for each tour, he still leaves enough pockets for spontaneity to create its own magic: “At some point, he’ll decide. . . I wanna talk about this this tour. This is the subject, this is the ‘theme,’ if you will, and then we fit the other stuff around that. But then there will be segments of the show where as always anything goes, and that’ll change every night. We always change a good third, I’d say. There’s spontaneity built in, y’know?”

Nils Lofgren says that although Springsteen has always allowed spots for one of his legendary “anything can happen” moments, in recent years, the fan requests and covers were a way to keep the show evolving: “We’ve always done an improv show, but usually there’s a theme to the set. And you can always read Bruce and he kinda surprises you, but the setlist has some function. I think after months out on the road when he started dragging like 30 signs in a pile on stage. But I think after he stared doing that, he just, I think — I’m not speaking for him — it’s almost that he fell into this. . . to challenge himself and us, to keep himself excited and engaged, the next frontier was just starting to call the whole set audibly. I mean, he started changing the first song on the way to the stage.”

Drummer Max Weinberg has always maintained that playing in and a group like Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band was exactly what he fantasized about doing when he was 13-years-old: “Well, he’s very inspirational to all of us. I’m sure we play better with him than we do with anybody. You wanna play great. You wanna play the best you can. And it’s not hard; you get up there and hitch yourself to Bruce’s energy, and it pulls you along and you create your own energy.”

Last night’s Tampa setlist:

No Surrender
Ghosts
Prove It All Night
Letter To You
The Promised Land
Out In The Street
Candy’s Room
Kitty’s Back
Brilliant Disguise
Nightshift
Don’t Play That Song (You Lied)
The E Street Shuffle
Johnny 99
Last Man Standing – solo acoustic
House Of A Thousand Guitars
Backstreets
Because The Night
She’s The One
Wrecking Ball
The Rising
Badlands

Encore:
Burnin’ Train
Born To Run
Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)
Glory Days
Dancing In The Dark
Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out
I’ll See You In My Dreams – solo acoustic