Light of Day 2026: ‘A wild one’ with Springsteen, Bonds and more (REVIEW, PHOTOS, VIDEOS)

JOHN CAVANAUGH

Gary U.S. Bonds and Bruce Springsteen at the Light of Day WinterFest concert at The Count Basie Center for the Arts in Red Bank, Jan. 17.

You knew there was a good chance Bruce Springsteen would show up. His old friend and musical comrade Gary U.S. Bonds was on the bill, after all, at the main concert of the 26th annual Light of Day WinterFest — as a guest performer during the set by another longtime musical partner, Joe Grushecky, and Grushecky’s band The Houserockers.

And The Boss did indeed show up and support the fundraising concert’s cause, Jan. 17 at The Count Basie Center for the Arts in Red Bank. He performed two songs with Bonds — “This Little Girl” and “Jolé Blon” — and a lot more.

“Bonds is fucking 86 years old,” said Springsteen, 76, marveling out how well the rock ‘n’ roll pioneer still sings. “I got at least 10 more years in me!”

Springsteen had made an appearance earlier in the evening, performing Willie Nile’s anthemic “One Guitar” with him. And after Bonds left the stage, he kept going with Grushecky and the Houserockers for nine more songs before the night-capping “Light of Day” (with basically all of the evening’s performers helping out) and then “Happy Birthday to You” (in honor of Light of Day founder Bob Benjamin) and the always majestic “Thunder Road,” featuring Springsteen on lead guitar and vocals, and everyone else singing along.

“We’ve got a wild one for you tonight,” Grushecky had said after performing his own first song, “Until I See You Again.” Indeed, the set included — in addition to the songs with Bonds, who also sang “New Orleans” before Springsteen joined him — rarities such as “I’m Not Sleeping” (co-written by Springsteen and Grushecky, and not performed live by Springsteen since 2014) and “Lucky Town”; a playfully animated sermon about love by Springsteen during “Savin’ Up”; and a speech by him about the “incredibly critical times” we are living through, as a country, before “The Promised Land” (you can read the complete text HERE).

JOHN CAVANAUGH

Bruce Springsteen at the 2026 Light of Day concert.

Springsteen also stretched out on his guitar solos throughout the evening, playing loud and long. And he was in a casual enough mood that he took a moment in the middle of “Johnny 99” to ask photographer Danny Clinch to put down his camera and join in on harmonica.

This was the 14th time Springsteen has showed up at a Light of Day concert; along with his appearance at last year’s show, this represents the first time he has appeared two years in a row since 2014 and 2015.

Light of Day — which has raised more than $7.5 million, over the years, for the fight against Parkinson’s disease and related disorders — continues with more shows in Asbury Park today, and a final show at Outpost in the Burbs in Montclair, Jan. 24.

The Basie show began at 6:10 p.m. (before its scheduled starting time) and ended around 12:30 a.m. There were 15 sets of music during that time — nonstop, with short acoustic performances between the band sets as well as occasional duo performances by the show’s host, Remember Jones, accompanied by pianist Bobby Lynch.

I thought this change from Light of Day tradition worked very well. Jones and Lynch are both energetic performers, and really helped keep the crowed engaged between the band sets. Songs they performed, at various points in the evening, including Stevie Wonder’s “Knocks Me Off My Feet” (Jones will perform Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life double album in its entirety at The Basie, April 18); Jones’ own “Let ’em Look”: Elton John’s “The Bitch Is Back”; Leon Russell’s “Dixie Lullaby”; and a medley of Little Richard’s “Lucille” and “Good Golly, Miss Molly” and the Joe Cocker hit, “Feelin’ Alright.

Besides the Springsteen/Grushecky set, the longest performance of the night was by Goo Goo Dolls frontman John Rzeznik, who performed that band’s biggest hits (“Iris,” “Name,” “Slide”) with his usual low-key charm, as well as lesser known songs such as “Miracle Pill” and “Sympathy.”

JOHN CAVANAUGH

Adam Weiner of Low Cut Connie at the 2026 Light of Day concert.

In his casual between-song commententary, Rzeznik touched on the state of the nation — as Springsteen would do later, and as Adam Weiner of Low Cut Connie had done, very powerfully, in his previous solo set.

Weiner opened with “Death and Destruction,” singing:

Everybody’s acting like an asshole
These lunatics are messing with the vibe
Terroristic putzes in the castle
The feelings ain’t easy to describe

You describe it with
“Death and destruction in the country
Death and destruction all the time
Death and instruction, it’s not funny
Death and destruction on the mind”

In a spoken-word interlude, Weiner added: “Every day, I wake up, I look at my phone, it’s like getting touched in the face. I can’t take it no more.”

Before performing his second song, “Revolution Rock ‘n’ Roll,” he talked about resiliency, and the need to “be tough and compassionate at the same fucking time.” During the song itself, he added another spoken-word segment, saying, in part: “This is going to be a hard year. We’re gonna need each other, boys and girls.”

The other acts stayed away from political messages, though perhaps you could take Jill Hennessy’s solo cover of Springsteen’s “No Surrender” that way. But the concert as a whole was undeniably — as Springsteen said during his set — a “beautiful display of love and care and thoughtfulness and community.”

Light of Day has been exactly that since its start, more than a quarter of a century ago, and surely will be — as organizers remind every year — until a cure for Parkinson’s disease is found.

Other performers in the show included Fantastic Cat, The James Maddock Band, Dramarama, Joe D’Urso & Stone Caravan, Williams Honor, Amanda Cross & Derek Cruz, Will Dailey, Emily Grove, Matt & Eryn O’Ree, and Miss Emily. Also, Adam Ezra and Jake Thistle joined D’Urso for his hopeful ballad, “Hold On” — sung, as is the Light of Day tradition, in the last acoustic slot before the closing band set.

JOHN CAVANAUGH

Bruce Springsteen and others perform the song “Light of Day.”

Here is the Springsteen/Grushecky setlist. Springsteen appeared on all songs from “Jolé Blon” on.

“Until I See You Again”
“New Orleans” (with Gary U.S. Bonds)
“Jolé Blon” (with Gary U.S. Bonds)
“This Little Girl” (with Gary U.S. Bonds)
“Darkness on the Edge of Town”
“Savin’ Up”
“I’m Not Sleeping”
“Pumping Iron” (also featuring Danny Clinch)
“Lucky Town”
“Atlantic City”
“Never Be Enough Time”
“Johnny 99” (also featuring Danny Clinch)
“The Promised Land” (also featuring John Rzeznik)
“Light of Day” (with ensemble)
“Happy Birthday to You” (with ensemble)
“Thunder Road” (solo guitar-and-vocals version, with ensemble singing along)

Here are some videos and, below them, a gallery of photos taken by John Cavanaugh:

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