October 19, 2026 On Saturday, October 17, TeachRock, the great organization founded by Stevie Van Zandt, held its inaugural Teachers Hall of Fame celebration ("where teachers are the stars") at The Count Basie Center in Red Bank, NJ. The sold-out event not only gave some great teachers the spotlights they deserve, but also raised additional funds for TeachRock's important, ongoing work, through the sales of tickets and special ticket packages. Bruce Springsteen was in attenda

photo by Matthew Geller/Monmouth University - used with permission October 18, 2026 As today we officially celebrate the 100th anniversary of Chuck Berry's birth, we also celebrate The Bruce Springsteen Center For American Music at Monmouth University's recent Chuck Berry at 100 daylong symposium/concert, held in Monmouth University's Pollak Theatre on Saturday, October 11. Chuck Berry at 100 marked the first time that the Center held such an event centered around an artist o

October 14, 2026 After taking a bit longer than expected (since its trailer dropped almost two weeks ago,) Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band: Land of Hope & Dreams American Tour (Philadelphia Freedom Cut) [part 3 of 4] is finally here. As is the case with ...part 1... and ...part 2..., it has been made available at no charge for streaming via YouTube, Vevo, Spotify, iTunes, Tidal, and more. (Click here to explore your streaming options.) You also can watch the embedded Yo

photo by Matthew Geller/Monmouth University - used with permission October 13, 2026 Happy 72nd birthday to the E Street Band's Charlie Giordano, who was... ahem... a key participant in The Bruce Springsteen Center For American Music's Chuck Berry at 100 symposium/concert this past Saturday. We'll soon have much more to share at Letters To You about Saturday's event overall, but for now, on Charlie's special day, we want to focus first on how well he provided all of those tast

October 6, 2026 Last Tuesday night, Thom Zimny delivered his first "From The Vault" presentation at The Bruce Springsteen Center For American Music's intimate, state-of-the-art 250-seat Powell Soundstage theater. While he's previously delivered many such presentations at Monmouth University's Pollak Theatre, this was his first one inside the Center's own on-site, Dolby Atmos-equipped theater, designed and built with much input from him, as well. Not surprisingly, Zimny delive

October 6, 2026 Even before Bruce Springsteen took the Merriweather Post Pavilion stage in Columbia, MD at Saturday's Power To The People Festival, he already had made the first weekend in Rocktober 2026 a busy and extra-interesting one for Springsteen fans. To wit... On Friday, the trailer for Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band: Land of Hope & Dreams American Tour (Philadelphia Freedom Cut) [part 3 of 4] dropped. As you can see it in embedded form right below, part 3 is "

September 26, 2026 Writer, poet, and musician David Starkey, who also served as Santa Barbara’s 2009-2011 Poet Laureate, is the author of a recently published book in Sonicbond Publishing's on track... series entitled Bruce Springsteen 1973-1987. Click here for more information on and to purchase the U.S. edition. Click here for more information on and to purchase the U.K. edition. Starkey’s book provides a brief information/critical-analysis entry for each and every track on

September 25, 2026 MS NOW, one of the news organizations that as of yesterday STILL were facing illegal White House bans, has announced that it will offer full, free streaming access to watch the sold-out Power To The People Festival, featuring special guest Bruce Springsteen and taking place at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, MD on Saturday, October 3, beginning at 12:30 p.m. ET. Below we also have MS NOW's free YouTube channel stream already embedded, so you can hav

Lights, camera(s,) ACTION! - from Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band: Land of Hope & Dreams American Tour (Philadelphia Freedom Cut) [part 2 of 4] September 23, 2026 Well, to paraphrase what he sang in theTunnel of Love outtake "Lucky Man," Bruce Springsteen's odometer rolls straight sevens today. And without a shred of the dark irony to be found in that song, we are very glad to report that he is indeed a lucky man, and we are indeed lucky fans. There's no better way to c

September 20, 2026 Start With Hello Week 2026 will begin tomorrow (Monday, September 21) in schools across the U.S. It is one of the key programs of Sandy Hook Promise, the anti-gun-violence organization co-founded by musician Mark Barden, whose seven-year-old son Daniel was among the twenty first-graders killed, along with six adult staff members, at the December 14, 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School mass school-shooting in Newtown, CT. Click here to watch on YouTube (free o

September 20, 2026 This coming Friday night, after a successful launch earlier this month with Stevie Van Zandt and The Making of Sun City, The Bruce Springsteen Center For American Music will resume its Music + Film series with esteemed filmmaker and writer Greg Mitchell in the house. In an event entitled Woody Guthrie and the Ghost of Tom Joad Now, Mitchell will discuss and screen his excellent one-hour film Woody Guthrie and the Ghost of Tom Joad Today, which begins and en

September 19, 2026 Next Wednesday, September 23, Bruce Springsteen - as well as his loved ones and many fans, ourselves included, of course - are set to celebrate his 77th birthday. But in a bit of pleasant birthday role-reversal, one of the biggest "birthday gifts" issued that day actually will be coming instead from the birthday boy himself (and his collaborators,) and instead be given to us fans/listeners/viewers. For on that day, Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band: Lan

September 15, 2026 With all of the excitement surrounding the release of the Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band: Land of Hope & Dreams American Tour (Philadelphia Freedom Cut) film (Part 1,) I am excited to inform you, my fellow Springsteen fans, that there’s more coming. It’s over-the-moon kind of stuff, and something that my fellow movie-lovers can look forward to. Last week, while attending The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF,) I walked into a screening of the

September 14, 2026 Okay, right off the bat, let's address that omission/misspelling stuff in the closing credits, concerning poor Max and Charlie, respectively... "The Mystery of The Missing Max," aka "Where's Weinberg?" Sorry, Charlie... apparently someone thought your last name had two "a"s instead of two "o"s. Coincidentally, this year just happens to mark the 25th anniversary of my first significant writing "gig" for Backstreets Magazine (R.I.P.) Back in 2001, I happily a

September 8, 2026 As per today's official announcement: Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band’s Land of Hope & Dreams American Tour has been called “one of the most unflinching acts of musical resistance in the nation’s history” (TIME Magazine) and tomorrow, September 9, official video will be shared in sequence from the first seven songs of the tour’s Philadelphia finale. With that May 30 show filmed in its entirety — and planned for release in three additional, in-sequence

September 7, 2026 The Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music at Monmouth University will host Chuck Berry at 100: Exploring the Life, Music, and Legacy of an American Original, a daylong symposium and concert on Saturday, October 10. The symposium will celebrate the enduring influence of Chuck Berry, of course, one of the most important and transformative figures in American music history. Just in case anyone reading this might not know or remember how important and esse

September 7, 2026 On Friday, Bruce Springsteen kicked off Labor Day Weekend 2026 with a very pleasant surprise indeed. The trailer for Land of Hope & Dreams Tour: Philadelphia Freedom Cut dropped, and it appears to be a full-length, professionally filmed/recorded version of the final night for Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band's 2026 Land of Hope & Dreams American Tour: As per the trailer itself, the film will begin streaming this coming Wednesday, September 9. No further

photo by Mark Krajnak for LettersToYou.net September 4, 2026 Forty-one years ago, Steven Van Zandt wanted to do something... He had stepped away from the E Street Band, and was looking for what was next. "I needed an identity, so I thought, 'I’ll be the political guy,'" Van Zandt told Founding Executive Director Bob Santelli on Tuesday night during The Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music’s inaugural installment of its Music + Film Series. Their conversation followed a

September 2, 2026 Bruce Springsteen, in conversation with Brian Fallon, can be seen throughout guitar-manufacturer Fender's newly released film The Fender Telecaster: The One That Started It All. The film, appropriately running just over 75 minutes, celebrates the 75th anniversary of Leo Fender's introduction of the Telecaster guitar model. (The model, originally dubbed the "Broadcaster," was first introduced at The National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM)'s annual show

September 1, 2026 While we've been diving deep recently on the subject of significant anniversaries this year, there is yet another major 2026 anniversary that should be remembered and celebrated appropriately within Springsteen fandom: the 45th anniversary of Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band's 1981 European tour. Europe '81 was their first major European tour (having played only four European gigs on the '75 Born to Run Tour and no European shows at all on the '78 Darkn