'DEVILS & DUST'
review by Ed Vincent
Pensive, thoughtful, and entertaining, with a little
bawdy behavior for some extra spice. Devil & Dust is
fun, unless perhaps you're from Reno and you paid
more than $250.00. I do miss that good powerful sax
of the Big Man, and the EStreet in general, but this
is a fine selection of written ballads with a whole
host of topics. The fans of Bruce will love this and
other people who like folk, country, and ballads
should give it a try.
'DEVILS & DUST' TO DEBUT AT #1 ON THE BILLBOARD 200
Bruce Springsteen enters at #1 in 10 countries, including the United States
Bruce Springsteen's 'DEVILS & DUST' (Columbia Records) will
enter Billboard's Top 200 albums chart at the top spot next week.
The new album will also debut at number one in Austria, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, Italy, Germany, The Netherlands, The United Kingdom,
and Ireland.
'DEVILS & DUST' has earned outstanding reviews from critics and fans alike. Rolling Stone wrote, "'Devils and Dust' sparkles in the right places like stars in a clear Plains sky," while People magazine exclaimed, "Springsteen has hit another bull's-eye." Meanwhile, Entertainment Weekly stated, "When it come s to combining a
literary quality with a colloquial voice, nobody does it better." The
Los Angeles Times declared, "The CD is filled with the compassion and craft that have made Springsteen such an invaluable figure in rock."
In today's Wall Street Journal, Jim Fusilli writes, "[Devils & Dust is]
a vivid and perceptive work fashioned by a master craftsman, one whose greatness is best revealed in whispers and searing asides."
Columbia Records released 'DEVILS & DUST' in DualDisc format
on April 26.
DEVILS & DUST HAS BEEN RELEASED AND IS AVAILABLE EVERYWHERE
Bruce Springsteen's new album "Devils & Dust" has been released
by Columbia Records!
SPRINGSTEEN SETS SOLO TOUR DATES
Bruce Springsteen will celebrate the release of his latest album, 'Devils & Dust' (April 26; Columbia Records) by touring the United States and Europe this spring. The tour will be entirely solo and Springsteen will perform in theaters and in arenas scaled down to theater format. This will be his first solo tour since the 1996-1997 'Ghost of Tom Joad' tour.
Columbia Records will release Bruce Springsteen's nineteenth album, 'Devils & Dust,' on April 26. 'Devils & Dust' was produced by Brendan O'Brien, who first worked with Springsteen on the acclaimed CD, 'The Rising.' The new album will be released in DualDisc format in the U.S.; the full album CD is on one side, and both a film directed by Danny Clinch and a bonus 5.1 surround sound mix of the album are on the DVD side.
Bruce Springsteen Spring 2005 U.S. and European Tour
See the Live! page for set lists and discussions.
April 25 Detroit, MI Fox Theatre
April 26 'Devils & Dust' Release Date
April 28 Dallas, TX Nokia Theatre at Grand Prairie
April 30 Phoenix, AR Glendale Arena
May 2 Los Angeles, CA Pantages Theatre
May 3 Los Angeles, CA Pantages Theatre
May 5 Oakland, CA Paramount Theatre
May 7 Denver, CO Lecture Hall at Colorado Convention Center
May 10 St Paul, MN Xcel Energy Center
May 11 Chicago, IL Rosemont Theatre
May 14 Fairfax, VA Patriot Center
May 15 Cleveland, OH CSU Convocation Center
May 17 Philadelphia, PA Tower Theatre
May 19 East Rutherford, NJ The Theater at Continental
Airlines Arena
May 20 Boston, MA Orpheum Theatre
May 24 Dublin, Ireland The Point
May 27 London, UK Royal Albert Hall
May 28 London, UK Royal Albert Hall
May 30 Brussels, Belgium Forest National
June 1 Barcelona, Spain Pavello Olimpic Badalona
June 2 Madrid, Spain Palacio De Deportes de la Comunidad
June 4 Bologna, Italy Palamalaguti Arena
June 6 Rome, Italy Palalottomatica Arena
June 7 Milan, Italy Milan Forum
June 11 Hamburg, German Color Line Arena
June 12 Berlin, Germany ICC
June 13 Munich, Germany Olympia Hall
June 15 Frankfurt, Germany Festhalle
June 16 Dusseldorf, Germany Phillipshalle
June 19 Rotterdam, Holland Ahoy
June 20 Paris, France Bercy
June 22 Copenhagen, Denmark Forum
June 23 Gothenberg, Sweden Scandinavium
June 25 Stockholm, Sweden Hovet
Expect an announcement of additional U.S. tour dates later this year.
ROLLING STONE COVERS THE TOUR
from rollingstone.com:
Bruce Kicks Up "Dust"
Springsteen to launch acoustic tour behind stark new disc
"I've been happily busy," says Bruce Springsteen, taking a break from rehearsals for his spring tour. "When you're not working a lot, there is always one reason: You don't have the songs. But I have music to sing."
Springsteen will launch a solo acoustic tour in Detroit on April 25th, the night before he releases the spare new studio album Devils and Dust. "It's the opposite of playing with the E Street Band," he says of his second-ever solo outing.
Recorded without the E Streeters, Devils combines whispery acoustic story songs with stripped-bare, folk-and-country-inflected rock tunes. In many ways, Springsteen says, the album is a sequel to 1995's hushed The Ghost of Tom Joad, which inspired his first solo tour. "I wrote a lot of this music after those shows, when I'd go back to my hotel room," he remembers. "I still had my voice, because I hadn't sung over a rock band all night. I'd go home and make up my stories."
Springsteen recorded the basic tracks with producer Brendan O'Brien on bass and Steve Jordan (who's worked with Keith Richards and Springsteen's wife, Patti Scialfa) on drums, with recent E Street Band addition Soozie Tyrell overdubbing fiddle parts. At various points, the album employs a string section, horns, organ and electric guitar. But it all feels stark and sepia-toned. "I wanted to keep it raw," Springsteen says. "I think that's what's slipped out of a lot of modern country music, that certain sort of chill-to-the-bone sound."
As with Joad, many of the songs are set in the Southwest, with Spanish phrases studding the lyrics. "The lives of the new migrant population were interesting stories for me," Springsteen says. "I was just interested in the way the West and the Southwest feel in my imagination."
Springsteen had most of these tunes nearly finished by 1997 but put them aside in favor of a 1999 reunion tour with the E Street Band, which led to 2002's The Rising. The inspiration for reviving the solo material, Springsteen says, was a new song, "Devils and Dust," that he wrote in 2003 at the start of the Iraq War. ("I've got my finger on the trigger/But I don't know who to trust," it begins.) "It is basically a song about a soldier's point of view in Iraq," Springsteen says. "But it kind of opens up to a lot of other interpretations."
Springsteen tried recording the title track as both an angry rock song and an acoustic ballad, but it took the help of producer O'Brien - who also worked on The Rising - to bridge the gap. "Brendan found something that put it in the middle, where it picks up a little instrumental beef as it goes," says Springsteen. O'Brien took a similar approach to the rest of the album, helping Springsteen ditch Joad's low-fi sound and minimal arrangements for a more fleshed-out approach.
Among the standout tracks is "Reno," a disquieting ballad about a man's visit to a prostitute - with an explicit reference to anal sex that won the album an "adult imagery" warning on its back cover. ("It's just what felt right for the song," Springsteen says.) "Long Time Comin'" is an exuberant, rocking love song; "All I'm Thinkin' About" is a buoyant, falsetto-laden lark; and "All the Way Home" is a soul ballad that Springsteen wrote for a 1991 Southside Johnny album, revisited here as a country-rock shuffle.
As he prepared for the Devils tour, Springsteen considered taking a small band on the road. "Nils [Lofgren] and some other folks came in for rehearsals to give me a sense of if I wanted to go with something bigger," he says. "But what tends to be dramatic is either the full band or you onstage by yourself. Playing alone creates a sort of drama and intimacy for the audience: They know it's just them and just you."
The tour - which hits venues as large as 5,000-seaters - will focus on the new album, along with material from Joad and 1982's Nebraska, and stripped-down takes on songs from The Rising. "It's not about acoustic versions of my hits - that's what's not going to happen," says Springsteen, who will also perform on an April 23rd episode of VH1's Storytellers. "I want to forewarn potential ticket buyers: I'm not going to be playing an acoustic version of 'Thunder Road.'"
Springsteen last broke out his hits on last fall's Vote for Change Tour, followed by solo sets at rallies for John Kerry. What did he take away from his stint in partisan politics? "I've tried not to think about it," Springsteen says. "But it was an experience that I'm glad I put myself into. There was a lot of idealism out there - I took a lot of that with me."
Meanwhile, Springsteen has already written songs that he says could form the basis for another E Street Band album and tour. "I've got some [rock] things, but I haven't heard them back yet," he says. "You've always got to hear them back to know if they're good or not. I'm not sure if it's the very next thing. But I certainly imagine we'll be doing that sooner rather than later."
BRIAN HIATT
BILLBOARD MAGAZINE COVERS THE TOUR
from Billboard:
Bruce Springsteen will begin a solo acoustic tour April 25 in Detroit,
in support of his upcoming Columbia album, "Devils & Dust." The
first North American leg of the tour will play 2,500- to 5,000-seat theaters and theater configurations in arenas through May 20 in Boston, to be followed by a European run that begins May 24 in Dublin.
The Boss will finish in Europe on June 25 in Stockholm, with more North American dates likely. "Our hope is that sometime by the fall
we will come back to the U.S. and make some additional appearances in our biggest Bruce markets," longtime Springsteen manager Jon Landau tells Billboard.com.
Initially, the plan is to quickly showcase the new album, due April 26. "Bruce has a beautiful new CD that we're very excited about and we want to get out and show the colors right off, touching base with as many cities as we can conveniently do," Landau reports.
Ticket prices are still being finalized, but Landau says they will be in the $85 range for the premium seats. Springsteen last toured solo in support of the 1995 album "The Ghost of Tom Joad." On that outing, he played only acoustic guitar and harmonica; this time around, Springsteen will also play some piano, Landau says.
"Bruce is rehearsing the show right now, creating a very specific perspective for it," Landau says. "As is always the case with Bruce, the set will evolve right up until the last show." Tickets for some
shows go on sale this weekend.
Landau says the new album "has a combination of rock music and acoustic music, but as a body of work we thought that the intimacy of the solo show wound up best serving the CD as a whole. The full rock version of some of the new songs is sure to be part of the next E
Street Band tour."
On Monday (April 4), Springsteen taped an episode of the occasional VH1 series "Storytellers" at the new Two River Theatre in Red
Bank, N.J. He previewed the title track of "Devils & Dust," as well
as "Jesus Was an Only Son," and touched on material from across
his career, including "Thunder Road," "Brilliant Disguise" and "The Rising." The broadcast premiere is scheduled for April 23.
DOWNLOAD BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN'S NEW SONG "DEVILS
& DUST" FROM THE iTUNES MUSIC STORE
"Devils & Dust", the title track from Bruce Springsteen's
forthcoming album, is now available for download from the iTunes Music Store
http://www.brucespringsteen.net/albums/devils.html
© Oak Park Journal
published by Suburban Journals of Chicago Inc.
STARSHIP SUBS,
Soups, Catering, and more...