Bruce Springsteen revealed that his long-awaited next box set will be comprised of unreleased material from the 1990's. During a chat with Rolling Stone, “The Boss” explained, “I have a box set of five unreleased albums that are basically post-1988. People look at my work in the '90s and they go, 'The '90s wasn’t a great decade for Bruce. He was kind of doing this and he wasn’t in the E Street Band. . . ' I actually made a lot of music during that period of time. I actually made albums. For one reason or another, the timing wasn’t right or whatever, I didn’t put them out.”
Springsteen, who just released his first soul covers collection, Only The Strong Survive, said of his unreleased works: “I spent time over one of the past winters completely cleaning out the vault. I have a series of Tracks albums that eventually we'll release. Some of it is older stuff that the band plays on, and some of it is newer stuff where I was conceptualizing during that period of time. It’ll give people a chance to reassess what I was doing during that time period. Also, a lot of the stuff is really weird. I can’t wait to see the response to some of it (laughs).”
The upcoming 2023 dates will see the E Street Band supplemented by a horn section and a few background singers, recalling to fans the 2012/2013 “Wrecking Ball” tour. The additional played will be on board so that the band can included tunes from the new covers set.
When pressed as to whether fans can expect songs from Springsteen's country-based Western Skies album to find their way into next year's setlists, he said, “I might do one, but the E Street Band is going to come out and put on a rock show. That’s what people want to see. That’s what I want to play. And that’s what it’s going to be.”
During Bruce Springsteen's recent appearance on NBC's The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, he shed light on his penchant for playing long shows with the E Street Band: “The great, great acts used to play 20 minutes. Now, they'd play 20 minutes — five shows a day. You can get what someone has to deliver in a short period of time, but we came up playing in bars where you played five hours a night. You played 50 minutes on — 10 minutes off — for five sets. So, we were used to playing a long time, y'know?”