Bruce Springsteen, at top, and Dropkick Murphys pulled off a long-distance collaboration from Fenway Park in Boston, May 29. Springsteen appeared on the stadium’s video screen.
Bruce Springsteen made a long-distance guest appearance at Dropkick Murphys’ May 29 concert at Fenway Park in Boston, staying at home in New Jersey but appearing on a video screen to sing and play on his own song, “American Land,” and Dropkick Murphys’ “Rose Tattoo.”
The performance came near the end of an approximately two-hour live stream by Dropkick Murphys that raised money, via text donations, for the Boston Resiliency Fund as well as Feeding America and Habitat for Humanity. (To make a donation, visit accelevents.com/e/textCladdagh.)
Dropkick performed in a socially distanced manner, with group members spread around the infield and no one in the stands. There were only 35 people allowed in the stadium, including the musicians and those involved in the production and the streaming of the show. The performance was shown on the band’s web site and social media outlets, and was also carried live on SiriusXM satellite radio’s E Street Radio channel.
Springsteen and the veteran Celtic-punk band have collaborated before. He sang “Rose Tattoo” with the band on Dropkick Murphys’ 2013 EP, Rose Tattoo: For Boston Charity, released soon after the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013.
Springsteen sang on the traditional Irish song, “Peg o’ My Heart,” on the 2011 Dropkick Murphys album, Going Out in Style. He also performed on that song — as well as “I’m Shipping Up to Boston” (a song that Dropkick Murphys members wrote using lyrics by the late Woody Guthrie) and “Badlands” — at a 2011 Dropkick Murphys show at House of Blues in Boston.
Also, in 2009, Dropkick Murphys member Tim Brennan proposed to his girlfriend at a Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band concert at the TD Banknorth Garden in Boston and sang on “So Young and in Love,” and several Dropkick Murphys members joined the E Street Band for “American Land” and “Glory Days.”
The Springsteen performance begins at about the one hour, 55-minute mark here:
CONTRIBUTE TO NJARTS.NET
Since launching in September 2014, NJArts.net, a 501(c)(3) organization, has become one of the most important media outlets for the Garden State arts scene. And it has always offered its content without a subscription fee, or a paywall. Its continued existence depends on support from members of that scene, and the state’s arts lovers. Please consider making a contribution of any amount to NJArts.net via PayPal, or by sending a check made out to NJArts.net to 11 Skytop Terrace, Montclair, NJ 07043.
