WASHINGTON, D.C. – The New Year brings a new Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band tour, the first tour since his 2014 High Hopes tour. The River Tour (#TheRiverTour) starts on Jan. 16 at the Console Energy Center in Pittsburgh.

The tour is in support of the band’s recently released “The Ties That Bind: The River Collection,” a comprehensive look at the era of the 1980 “The River” album.  Offering fans a bit of pre-tour ear candy, Springsteen precedes the tour with a Dec. 19 performance on “Saturday Night Live,” his third appearance on the NBC show.

Meeting the demands of an Internet fan base that finds, and buys, their music online, each night of the tour will be mixed for release on Live.BruceSpringsteen.net. The songs will be available as CDs or 24 bit High Resolution downloads, CD-Quality FLAC or Apple Lossless downloads or MP3s.

“Springsteen 05051981 01 200” by Helge Øverås – Own work. Licensed under CC BY 3.0 via Commons

Fans who order all 24 nights of recordings will save 10 percent. FaRecordings will be available within days of each performance.

The original The River Tour began Oct. 3, 1980, two weeks before the release of Springsteen’s fifth album, and continued through Sept. 4, 1981. With sets that regularly approached the four-hour range, the 140-date international tour firmly established a reputation for Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band as marathon performers.

Having personally seen the tour’s Chicago date, if only one Springsteen tour is on your bucket list, I say this would be the one to catch.

“The Ties That Bind: The River Collection” includes 52 tracks on four CDs with a wealth of unreleased material and four hours of never-before-seen video on three DVDs. It contains the original “The River” double album; the first official release of “The River: Single Album”; a CD of 1979/80 studio outtakes; a brand-new documentary about “The River”; and a coffee-table book of 200 rare or previously unseen photos and memorabilia and a new essay by Mikal Gilmore.

The set also includes a two-DVD film of never-released, newly edited multi-camera footage from a November 1980 show in Tempe, Arizona, described by NPR as a “holy grail.”

“The Ties That Bind: The River Collection”  is available at Amazon and iTunes for perfect Christmas gift giving. Tickets to The River Tour went on sale Dec. 11.

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band 2016 US tour dates:

Jan. 16            Pittsburgh           Consol Energy Center

Jan. 19            Chicago               United Center

Jan. 24 & 27    New York            Madison Square Garden

Jan. 29            Washington, D.C.    Verizon Center

Jan. 31            Newark, N.J.           Prudential Center

Feb. 2            Toronto, Ontario      Air Canada Centre

Feb. 4            Boston                     TD Garden

Feb. 8            Albany, N.Y.                Times Union Center

Feb. 10          Hartford, Conn.          XL Center

Feb. 12          Philadelphia           Wells Fargo Center

Feb. 16          Sunrise, Fla.            BB&T Center

Feb. 18          Atlanta                    Philips Arena

Feb. 21          Louisville, Ky.         KFC Yum! Center

Feb. 23          Cleveland               Quicken Loans Arena

Feb. 25          Buffalo, N.Y.            First Niagara Center

Feb. 27          Rochester, N.Y.       Blue Cross Arena

Feb. 29          St Paul, Minn.        Xcel Energy Center

March 3         Milwaukee            BMO Harris Bradley Center

March 6          St Louis                Chaifetz Arena

March 10        Phoenix                Talking Stick Resort Arena

March 13       Oakland, Calif          Oracle Arena

March 15 & 17      Los Angeles    Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena