Live in Dublin

Artist	Bruce Springsteen with the Sessions Band
Format	CD
Genre	Rock
Label Name	Columbia
Release Date	2007 06 05
Song List	1: Atlantic City (5:10) 2: Old Dan Tucker (3:31) 3: Eyes on the Prize (6:03) 4: Jesse James (5:35) 5: Further On (Up the Road) (5:54) 6: O Mary Don't You Weep (6:57) 7: Erie Canal (4:34) 8: If I Should Fall Behind (5:13) 9: My Oklahoma Home (8:25) 10: Highway Patrolman (5:47) 11: Mrs. McGrath (5:03) 12: How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live [Bruce Springsteen Version (3:20) 13: Jacob's Ladder (6:59) 14: Long Time Comin' (4:48) 15: Open All Night (8:04) 16: Pay Me My Money Down (5:59) 17: Growin' Up (4:31) 18: When the Saints Go Marching In (5:12) 19: This Little Light of Mine (3:08) 20: American Land (4:22) 21: Blinded by the Light [*] (4:43) 22: Love of the Common People [*] (4:39) 23: We Shall Overcome [*] (5:46)
Style.Categories	Pop/Rock, Singer/Songwriter, Rock & Roll

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Live in Dublin by Bruce Springsteen with the Seeger Sessions band documents the final show of the group's long tour in support of the album that took them across the U.S. and Europe. Along with performances from the album itself, the show is peppered with Springsteen's own tunes. The deluxe double-CD contains 23 songs performed by a 17-piece band that includes a full horn section, backing chorus, numerous guitars, dobro, banjo, keyboards, accordion, field drums, sousaphone, euphonium, pedal steel, fiddles, standup bass, and more. The most prominently featured members of the band include Soozie Tyrell, Marc Anthony Thompson, and, of course, Patti Scialfa (who all offer wonderful duet performances). This recording stands in sharp contrast both musically and emotionally to the studio offering. We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions was recorded by a band that captured immediacy and intimacy: there is a certain raw savoir faire resulting in a bristling kind of joyous energy that only a large group of musicians unfamiliar with one another can provide. Springsteen's a perfectionist; some of the rough edges left on the studio album are a welcome surprise. Here, many of those same songs -- many of which come from out of history and time -- are performed by a band that became a spit-shined, polished, and utterly professional unit. Live in Dublin offers dazzling versions that have been honed and sharpened. This is a long way from Pete Seeger and his solitary banjo playing singalongs for folk festival audiences all over the globe; and yet, somehow not. But there is something more detached about this show -- and the video doubly enhances that studied feeling -- though its sheer musicality and virtuosity is a wonder. The horn charts are brilliant; there is room in some of these tunes, such as "Erie Canal," for old New Orleans jazz-styled soloing and interplay; the mannered time keeping is captured not only by drums and bass, but by the chorus' vocal phrasing. The show opener, "Atlantic City," is radically rearranged; it's now a near-monotone blues song. In this way it resembles the kind of re-tooling that Bob Dylan often gives his songs live to keep them interesting. Other tracks from Springsteen's catalog on the first disc include "If I Should Fall Behind." This one is done -- at first -- as a tender 19th century waltz between Scialfa and her husband. Then it transforms itself seamlessly into a communal sing, and in this way becomes a different song altogether, less intimate, but perhaps more profound. The pedal steel guitar treatment in "Highway Patrolman" is enhanced with upright piano, multiple acoustic guitars, and pedal steel. Springsteen's new version of Blind Alfred Reed's "How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live" premiered at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in 2006. It's complete with added lyrics that highlight the plight of Hurricane Katrina survivors; here it remains raucous and forceful. "O Mary Don't You Weep" is more fully a gospel tune here, its dynamic is over the top. "Jacob's Ladder" (a Seeger original) closes disc one. It's a wild Dixieland cum gospel romp with full-on horns (including Sousaphone), popping field snare, and bass drum. Tyrell's great violin break -- sometimes it seems as if she "gets it" in terms of the historical nature of these songs better than anyone else in this band -- and wide ranging call and response chorale are a breathtaking finish. "Long Time Comin'" from Devils & Dust opens disc two, and this reading is a far more compelling one. Like "If I Should Fall Behind," it's so much bigger than the songwriter. It belongs not only in this mix, but in the way it's performed to the culture as shared experience.