imagery from the "Education of Bruce Springsteen" exhibit at The Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music - (photo by Shawn Poole) July 4, 2026 Editor's note: Today is not only the U.S.A.'s 250th birthday. It is also Vietnam War veteran, author, speaker, activist, and organizer Ron Kovic's 80th birthday, and this year marks the 50th anniversary of his groundbreaking, moving, and inspiring memoir Born on the Fourth of July. display at the "Education of Bruce Springsteen" ex

photo by Rob DeMartin (Atlanta; May 2, 2026) - used with permission July 2, 2026 Happy Birthday to "Professor" Roy Bittan, who turns 77 today, and best wishes for many more Happy Birthdays to come. Y'know, you'd think that a guy known as the "Professor" would have gotten some extensive teaching and tutoring experience under his belt by now. But it actually was only a few weeks ago when Professor Bittan finally began his first steady teaching gig. He currently can be found giv

July 1, 2026 On the upcoming Independence Day holiday weekend, which also will mark the U.S. semiquincentennial, Bruce Springsteen and The Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music at Monmouth University will be featured in a half-hour PBS News special entitled Bruce Springsteen: Finding America in Song. It's an expanded version of PBS NewsHour's recent report on the opening of the Springsteen Center. PBS NewsHour's Geoff Bennett interviewing Bruce Springsteen at the Spring

notebook with "Thunder Road" handwritten lyrics displayed at The Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music - photos by Shawn Poole June 29, 2026 Last Friday afternoon, I made my first return visit to The Bruce Springsteen Center For American Music. It was under very different circumstances than the very first time I got to visit the Center, which of course was for Letters To You's special advance tour. This time around, like many other regular visitors, I simply bought my o

Clockwise from top left: Felipe Rose, Spencer Battiest, Danielle “Redbird” Marrone, and Adrian Matthias Stevens and Sean Querino Snyder - photos courtesy of The Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music June 25, 2026 On Tuesday June 30, the final day of Pride Month 2026, The Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music will host a special - and free - panel-discussion event, entitled Voices of Pride: Identity, Representation, and the Power of Music, and co-sponsored by Hard

June 22, 2026 "Over here on E Street, we mourn the death of the great record man and close friend Clive Davis. At 22 years old, he changed my life when he signed me to Columbia Records. He treated me with the same respect and kindness as a 22-year-old nobody as he did after all my success. A great man. All our prayers and love." - Bruce Springsteen's social-media statement, issued on June 22, 2026

photo by Mark Krajnak (Philadelphia, PA - May 30, 2026) June 21, 2026 How fitting that this year, on his 75th birthday, Nils Lofgren's special day also falls on Father's Day. After all, Bruce Springsteen himself famously dubbed Lofgren onstage to be the E Street Band's "Godfather Of The Guitar, The Minister Of Heart And Spirit, the great, great Nils Lofgren!" More than a quarter-century has passed since Springsteen first used that "Godfather" line to describe Lofgren's musica

June 17, 2026 Bruce Springsteen certainly has come a long way from his days of playing supermarket grand openings with his early band The Castiles to the public opening of a new building named after himself - The Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music, of course - just last weekend. But tomorrow, Thursday, June 18, he'll help to open a building quite unlike any he's ever helped to open before: his first-ever gig at a U.S. Presidential Center's opening. Springsteen will b

photo by Mark Krajnak June 14, 2026 Below is our transcription of the narration provided by Bruce Springsteen for Thom Zimny's short introductory film The Ties That Bind: Bruce Springsteen’s American Music Journey, now playing exclusively in The Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music's Powell Soundstage theater: Welcome to New Jersey, the place where I was born, raised, loved, loathed, left, and returned to, and where I'll probably spend the rest of my life. Now I've bee

photo by Mark Krajnak June 13, 2026 Letters To You contributing photographer Mark Krajnak and I were fortunate to be granted a special advance tour of The Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music's new building, almost two weeks before its official public opening today. On June 3, the Center's Director of Curatorial Affairs, Melissa Kozlowski, and its Museum Educator, Aidan Vogel, were kind enough to give Mark and me a guided, private tour, even as they and the rest of the

June 12, 2026 As The Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music's official public opening occurs this weekend, Letters To You is presenting a three-part series of reports on the recent events that have led up to the big day. Here in Part 1, we cover the series of special concerts that the Center has held in anticipation of its public opening... ---------- photo by Melissa Lawlor - courtesy of The Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music May 29, 2026 - America 250: A Jerse

Washington, D.C., May 27, 2026 - photo by Pam Springsteen - used w/ permission June 10, 2026 To paraphrase what was the tour's nightly closing song - Bob Dylan's "Chimes of Freedom" delivered in its Byrds-inspired arrangement - as we listen one more time and watch with one more look, here are additional observations and insights from some of Letters To You's contributing writers and friends on Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band's 2026 Land of Hope & Dreams American Tour, a

June 6, 2026 On January 10, 2017, 35,000 items from the personal collections of Bruce Springsteen fans were gifted to Monmouth University in West Long Branch, New Jersey. In the years since, the University has built a 30,000-square foot archival center and museum upon this foundational donation. Now known as The Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music, it officially opens to the public on June 13, and the building gets officially dedicated later this morning. Between 2001

photo by the Springsteen Center's Museum Educator Aidan Vogel June 4, 2026 The Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music doesn't officially open its doors to the public until June 13, but yesterday Letters To You's editor/publisher Shawn Poole and contributing photographer Mark Krajnak got a sneak-peek of what's behind its doors. Director of Curatorial Affairs Melissa Kozlowski and Museum Educator Aidan Vogel were gracious enough to show them around the place, in the midst

photo by Shawn Poole May 31, 2026 "Philly, you killed it! This is the last night of our Land of Hope & Dreams Tour; it was good to be in Philadelphia. I want to thank our great crew and their fearless leader, George Travis, without whom the show would not go on. I want to thank the E Street Band for their commitment and for their courage in standing with me on this tour. I want to thank Tom Morello for guesting with us on this tour. I want to thank Jon Landau for fifty years

photo by Shawn Poole May 28, 2026 Last night, Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band brought their Land of Hope & Dreams American Tour to its ultimate "speak-truth-to-power" venue: the Washington Nationals' baseball park in Washington, D.C. It also marked the tour's only outdoor show, and while Mother Nature peppered the audience with light rain throughout the evening, fortunately she spared us of any of her lightning-bolts. What took place onstage was more than thunderous eno

May 26, 2026 Music journalist, critic, and author Erin Osmon's recently published book Won't Back Down: Heartland Rock and the Fight for America, couldn't have come along at a better time, especially with Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band - who indeed were and in significant ways still are major figures in the heartland-rock genre - wrapping up their historic Land of Hope & Dreams American Tour, a musical "fight for America" if ever there was one. Osmon's book focuses on

May 22, 2026 Directly preceding The Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music's two-nights (and now sold-out) Music America: The Songs that Shaped Us concert events will be a unique, free concert celebrating the rich history and enduring legacy of Indigenous music in America. The Center has partnered with Hard Rock International to produce The Native American Music Experience. This concert will take place at Monmouth University’s Pollak Theatre on Wednesday, June 3 at 7:30

May 21, 2026 Last night, the penultimate episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert closed with Colbert introducing a musical performance by Bruce Springsteen. Before he began singing a solo-acoustic version of "Streets of Minneapolis," Springsteen said the following: "Thank you. Stephen... I'm here in support tonight for Stephen because, uh, you're the first guy in America who's lost his show because we got a President who can't take a joke...and because Larry and David E

May 18, 2026 More than five decades have now passed between Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band's mid-1970s performances in the small New York town of Geneva, as captured by photographer James Fuller, and their most recent performance in New York City this past Saturday night, photographed for Letters To You by Mark Krajnak. Back then in Geneva, Bruce and his band were playing to no more than 1400 ticket-buyers per show. Last Saturday night, they performed to yet another so

Geneva, NY - December 7, 1974 - photo by James Fuller (used with permission) May 12, 2026 With Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band's return to New York this week, there's no better time to check out James Fuller's beautiful, high-quality book of photos, Spirit in the Light: Photographing Springsteen 1973-75. Three of the four concerts depicted in the book, captured in glorious black-and-white by Fuller as a young college student with a budding interest in photography, took

May 10, 2026 Just in time for Mother's Day 2026, our friend and Letters To You contributor Doug Bradley has published his latest book, All the Books She Never Wrote. It's a unique memoir about the special time that Doug got to spend with his mother, Lucy Bradley, in her final days. A few weeks after her ninety-ninth birthday, Lucy decided she was ready to die. After a series of health setbacks, she stopped eating, certain the end would come quickly. Instead, her extended good

photo by Rob DeMartin - (Chicago, IL; April 29, 2026) - used with permission May 4, 2026 Happy-birthday wishes go out today to Sister Soozie Tyrell, fiddler extraordinaire and - as an essential member of the current Land of Hope and Dreams American Tour - now freedom fighter, too. The late, great Gwendolyn Brooks' poem "First fight. Then fiddle." ends as follows: "...Rise bloody, maybe not too late For having first to civilize a space Wherein to play your violin with grace."

photo by Brian Samelson - used with permission May 3, 2026 Almost three years ago now, when this website was launched, I wrote an introductory "welcome" message as its editor/publisher. One of the things I touched upon was why Bruce Springsteen was and has remained such a significant and important musical artist for me. The penultimate reason, I asserted, was that in addition to my having been deeply affected by all of the artistic qualities in Springsteen's own music, Bruce

May 3, 2026 As per the official announcement, "Due to the NBA and NHL playoff schedule, the Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band concert at Xfinity Mobile Arena has been rescheduled for May 30. All tickets for the previous date will remain valid for the new date."

April 27, 2026 "Good evening, Austin! It's great to be in Texaaaaaaaaas! Welcome to The Land of Hope and Dreams American Tour. We begin tonight with a prayer for our men and women in service overseas. We pray for their safe return. We also send out our prayers of thanks that [neither] our President, nor anyone in the Administration, nor anyone attending was injured in last night's incident at [The White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner.] We can disagree, we can be cri

(L-R) Monmouth University President Patrick Leahy and The Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music's Executive Director Robert Santelli at the University's April 21st preview screening of Thom Zimny's short "welcome" film for the Center, The Ties That Bind - photo by Lisa Iannucci; used w/ permission April 23, 2026 This past Tuesday, an invitation-only event was held at Monmouth University’s Pollak Theatre to debut Thom Zimny's “welcome” film, The Ties That Bind (not to be

photo by John Cavanaugh - used with permission April 19, 2026 ...and American Music Past, and American Music Present. And its acronym is BSCAM . What a great night! Stay tuned for my full take (accompanied by plenty more photos, too.)

April 17, 2026 The latest issue of New Jersey Monthly features extensive coverage tied to this spring's opening of The Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music at Monmouth University 's new building, including a cover-story interview with Springsteen himself . In the interview with Jennifer Finn, Bruce shares his vision of what he's hoped the Center could become: "...something that was dedicated more to the overall story of American music... someplace that was an educatio

April 14, 2026 Today The Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music at Monmouth University announced a multi-act, two-night concert event celebrating America’s 250th birthday. Called Music America: The Songs that Shaped Us, the concerts will take place on June 4 and 5 at the OceanFirst Bank Center on the Monmouth campus, just prior to the grand opening of the new Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music building on June 7. This will be a major contribution to the nation