2008 Bruce Springsteen

As both a rock singer and a folk singer, Bruce Springsteen has been described as following in the footsteps of both Elvis Presley and Woody Guthrie. His 2006 tour with the 17-member Seeger Sessions Band shows how The Boss, now an American icon in his own right, can rock the house while singing songs that have been around for generations. Fans of all ages and tastes will want tickets to hear Springsteen's exuberant renditions of songs they'll recognize, whether they first heard them at camp or at a protest rally.

In the fall of 1975, Bruce Springsteen finally broke through to national recognition after 10 years of hard work, and he was hailed as the savior of rock & roll, the single artist who brought together all the exuberance of '50s rock and the thoughtfulness of '60s rock, molded into a '70s style -- rocking as hard as Jerry Lee Lewis with lyrics as complicated as Bob Dylan's -- his concerts were near-religious celebrations of all that was best in music.

That year, Springsteen landed on the covers of Time and Newsweek, but both magazines were covering the phenomenon, not the music. Springsteen's album, Born to Run, became a hit, and he jumped to arena status as a live act, but as many people were turned off by the press campaign as turned on by the records and shows.

Two decades later, however, Springsteen is no doubt an established star who could look back on a career that had produced one of the best-selling albums of all time (Born in the U.S.A.), numerous sold-out stadium tours, Grammy Awards and an Oscar, and a group of imitators who constituted their own subgenre of popular music, Heartland Rock.

In 1999, Bruce Springsteen was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame, at which time he and the E Street Band performed to much acclaim. The event served as a prelude to a full-fledged band reunion tour, a two-year long intercontinental jaunt that won critical raves and resulted in 2001's Live In New York City, a live album recorded during the tour's close at Madison Square Garden. The band reunited again on 2002's The Rising, a widely praised studio set that showed Springsteen's stature as a songwriter still on the rise.

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band participated in Vote for Change concerts in the weeks leadng up to the 2004 national elections. According to the official Bruce Springsteen website, "Vote for Change is a loose coalition of musicians brought together by a single idea'”the need to make a change in the direction of our country." Other musicians and bands scheduled on the tour include Dave Matthews Band, R.E.M., Pearl Jam, John Mellencamp, James Taylor, and the Dixie Chicks.