We're very on it right now," Bruce Springsteen crowed to Rolling Stone last fall about the music he was making with his E Street Band — and that was just in rehearsal. By the time he and his New Jersey troupers — saxophonist Clarence Clemons, pianist Roy Bittan, organist Danny Federici, guitarists Nils Lofgren and Steven Van Zandt, drummer Max Weinberg, bassist Garry Tallent, singer-violinist Soozie Tyrell and Springsteen's wife, singer Patti Scialfa — formally opened their 2007-08 tour in Hartford, Connecticut, on October 2nd, Springsteen, 58, was at a new peak in his performing life, combining the politically charged fury of his new album, Magic, with the joy of early-Seventies bar-wars songs like "For You" and "Thundercrack." He started almost every 2007 concert with the rock & roll preacher cry in Magic's "Radio Nowhere" — "Is there anybody alive out there?" — then stayed in resurrection gear all night, singing with deep authority and punctuating his vocals with barbed-wire Telecaster licks against the soul-train locomotion of his band.

Springsteen has been opening recent U.S. shows with vintage optimism and highway thrills: "Out in the Street," "Spirit in the Night" and "Thunder Road." But he is also telling poignant stories on this tour about the state of our faith in this nation, bundling new songs about America under siege ("Livin' in the Future," "Long Walk Home") with enduring tales of great escape ("The Promised Land," "Badlands") in inspirational segues that recall the narrative arcs of Springsteen's epic Eighties shows.

There was a jarring note in November when Federici left the tour (he is being treated for melanoma). But he returned for a night in March, joining the E Street Band in Indianapolis, underscoring the ties that bind this extraordinary group, now in its fourth decade. "For a lot of our fans," Springsteen said last year, "part of the thing is when the world's falling apart, we're not. That's why people come to us" — and why they will never stop.