I’m sitting out a Springsteen tour for the first time since 1978’s Darkness on the Edge of Town, the album where New Jersey’s poet laureate found his socially conscious voice.

You know all those songs about hard times and broken hearts, peppered with rhythm-and-blues, folk, and country references written by a scruffy, energetic fellow channeling equal parts Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, and Hank Williams while inviting his audiences to join him in a three-hour community of alternating jubilation and despair.