Riding through the mansions of glory

STRAP YOUR HANDS ACROSS MY ENGINE: Singer/guitarist Dean Shaw rocks out as the Boss with his band in the Bruce Springsteen tribute concert that rolls into Gisborne next week. Picture supplied

Baby we were born to run . . . to the War Memorial Theatre where not the Boss, but someone like him, is about to bring a kick-arse Bruce Springsteen tribute show.

Four years in the making, The Boss stars Dean Shaw as Springsteen. Shaw and eight more musicians and a gang of technicians will stage a three-hour show that features the entire Born in the USA album plus more than 20 of Springsteen's greatest hits.

Shaw was possibly on the screaming highway and ripping through some broken dream, gas/coal-fired power-station town — Huntly, maybe — when the Guide called, so wasn't available, but his band's bass player, truck driver and show founder Adrian Dittmer was.

“The show came about because I was playing in covers bands and wanted more of a challenge,” says Dittmer.

“I love Springsteen and no one had done a Springsteen tribute show in this country. Dean does a fantastic job. Before he came along I'd just about given up. Then when I got the line-up together it all just clicked. The live show is dynamic.”

Manawatu Guardian reviewer Damian Thorne, who saw the show in Palmerston North, agrees, despite some initial trepidation.

“Tribute acts always make me apprehensive; until the first guitar lick, the first vocal, it's impossible to know if these guys are going to salute the chosen superstar, or end up slapping him mediocrely in the face.

“As Born in the USA filled the theatre I was suddenly and immediately at ease with a sound mix picking up all nine musicians, and a vocalist in Dean Shaw who was so Bruce Springsteen that if you closed your eyes, as we did often, you'd think you were listening to the man himself.

“The talent on stage was such that it transcended mimicking the E Street Band, instead enthusing their own personality, wit and musical prowess to make everything they played seem like their own.”

What was even more remarkable about that concert was it came about because the Covid alert response meant the Napier show had to be cancelled so it was instead livestreamed from the Globe in Palmerston North while those in the auditorium were socially distanced.

No one was asked to pay but they did fork out donations for the Mental Health Foundation. Volunteers gave their time and expertise for the livestream, sound design and a “light show, the likes of which the Globe has never seen before” for free, writes Thorne.

“This was no longer about making money, it was about getting the show on stage, with the added layer of live streaming it to all the centres which missed it, and the world at large,”

The three-hour concert with its nine-piece ensemble concert was joyous, breathtaking in places, says the reviewer.

“A show I'm certain Bruce Springsteen himself was sitting at home in Rumson, New Jersey, enjoying via the live stream.”

The Boss — the Bruce Springsteen tribute show's nine-piece ensemble rocks out the hits at the War Memorial Theatre on Saturday, May 1, 7.30pm. Tickets from i-SITE or ticketek.