The Boss will be back on the road next month with the E Street Band in support of the new reissue of the 1980 record The River, entitled The Ties That Bind: The River Collection.
The River Tour will boast 24 stops, beginning January 16 in Pittsburgh, PA. The stint will be the legendary rocker’s first full tour since 2014’s High Hopes tour, in support of Springsteen’s eighteenth studio record of the same name. According to Springsteen’s website, all of the 2016 tour dates will be also released on Live.BruceSpringsteen.net as high quality downloads and CDs within days of each performance.
Released today, The Ties That Bind: The River Collection is an impressive 4 CD and 3 DVD collection including the original double album, the first official release of The River: Single Album, a CD of outtakes from 1979 and 1980, The Ties That Bind making-of doc on DVD, a two DVD film of his famed 1980 show in Tempe, AZ, and rare tour rehearsal footage.
The River, which featured such hit tracks as The Ties That Bind, Hungry Heart, Cadillac Ranch, and Out in the Street, was Springsteen’s fifth record and his first to top the Billboard charts. “It was a record where I first started to tackle men and women and families and marriage,” said Springsteen during a concert at Madison Square Garden in 2009 (via Rolling Stone). He further explained that songs from The River, including the title tracks Stolen Car and Tunnel of Love, were the inspiration for some of his later records.
Springsteen has been performing with the E Street band since 1972, and Billboard has called the New Jersey-born 66-year-old one of the most “prolific touring artists in music history.” And the numbers provided by the music industry publication prove it: he’s raked in over $1 billion over 564 shows since the turn of the century.
Tickets for The River Tour go on sale next Friday, December 11. Up next for The Boss and the E Street Band is a December 19 appearance on Saturday Night Live.