Hank Azaria has gone from Springfield to Springsteen to West Springfield. The longtime voice actor for “The Simpsons,” who has also had an enviable career in non-animated TV (starring in series from “Huff” to “Brockmire”), film (“The Birdcage,” “Night at the Museum”) and theater (“Spamalot” and Aaron Sorkin’s “The Farnsworth Invention” on Broadway), has spent the last year or so honing his deeply felt tribute to Bruce Springsteen.
Azaria brings the full-band show he’s calling Hank Azaria and the EZ Street Band to The Big E in West Springfield, Massachusetts for two shows on Sept. 22 and 23 at 8 p.m.
“At heart I’m a mimic,” Azaria said. “We’re trying to recreate that live sound as closely as we can, me vocally and them musically.”
What he’s not doing is a full-bodied impersonation, nor are the musicians onstage with him trying to replicate the looks and actions of Little Steven, Clarence Clemons, Max Weinberg, etc. “We’re not impersonating,” he made clear. But he’s bringing the same dynamic energy, growling vocals and full-bodied love for rock ‘n’ roll.
“In any given show we do 14, 16, 17 songs. It’s usually about an hour and 20 minutes. We’ve played up to two hours. It depends on the crowd and how we’re doing,” Azaria said. Also, since “a lot of Bruce’s live performance is him telling stories,” Azaria has developed a method of telling his own stories in Springsteen’s voice, occasionally breaking character when appropriate.
“A lot of Bruce’s live performance is him telling stories in a very poetic specific idiom and rhythm and cadence that he does that really helped raise me,” Azaria said. “So I tell stories in the course of the show about how a song was made or written or came together or my own personal connection to a song or whatever.
“I tell it as Bruce, so it’s kind of a strange one-man show.” said Azaria, slipping into his Springsteen voice. “It’s a fine line but I’m not really impersonating Bruce. I guess the distinction I make is that if I were cast to play Bruce in a movie or a play I’m trying to sound as much like him musically as I can to pass muster. I’m certainly adopting his speech and his mannerisms.”
Azaria said the idea of putting together a personal tribute to his favorite rocker was “a total lark, something to cheer myself up for my 60th birthday. Then it went well enough, and I enjoyed it so much, and we raised money for charity, that I thought ‘Why don’t we just keep doing this?’ But I did not anticipate how much I’d fall in love with doing it consistently, doing the whole thing. You know how some people, late in life, discover painting or something? It’s like creating a third act for myself.”
The Big E shows mark the first time the tribute has played a festival, though there already bookings for a few more. Azaria has particularly liked playing seated theater performances because “the storytelling aspect of it is more at home in that setting. And let’s face it, Springsteen fans tend to be of a certain age. They like to sit down and watch a show. But it’s nice to play clubs, too, with people standing. It’s really fun.”
Azaria said he became a Springsteen fan when he was 12 or 13 years old at camp. That would be around the time “Born to Run” came out and became an instant classic. “By the time I went to college, I was a huge Springsteen guy, as were a lot of people at that time,” he said. “They call it ‘dad rock’ now for a reason. I was into all that classic rock, but Springsteen was at the top of the list for sure.”
He said the first time he saw Springsteen live was “The River” tour in 1980.
Asked if there were Springsteen songs he wished he could do but found too challenging, Azaria said “I found them all tough at first. It was really a process that I’m still going through, unlocking his voice, adding the gravel, subtracting the gravel, learning to sing more full-throated. Soul singing, in the way he does it, can really tear your throat apart. There were a lot of songs that were challenging that became like Rosetta Stones, where, if I could sing those songs, I could unlock the right noises I’d need for a whole bunch of Bruce songs. It became like learning a language. In each new song there are always two or three words, movements, phrases that need you to learn a little something new. I’ve learned to sing Bruce songs in a way that works.”
Springsteen is not the first real person Hank Azaria has portrayed. He won an Emmy for playing journalist Mitch Albom in “Tuesdays With Morrie,” starred as composer Marc Blitzstein in Tim Robbins’ film “Cradle Will Rock,” voiced both Abbie Hoffman and Allen Ginsberg in the animated biodrama “Chicago 10,” portrayed Jewish activist Mordechai Anielewicz in the TV movie “Uprising,” was Apple CEO Tim Cook on an episode of “Super Pumped” and had a heartwarming role New Republic magazine editor Michael Kelly in the film “Shattered Glass,” to name a few.
It can be tough scheduling EZ Street Band gigs around Azaria’s obligations to “The Simpsons” and his other acting projects, but the band’s been able to play once or twice a month since forming last year. Azaria moved to New York City from Los Angeles a dozen years ago. Thanks to modern technology and workplace changes wrought by the COVID years, he’s able to record his “Simpsons” parts at home.
All the EZ Street Band shows raise money for the Four Through Nine Foundation started in 2021 by Azaria and his wife Katie.
“For years and years I’ve been raising money for education and — I’m a sober guy — for recovery causes and very much in the past few years for racial awareness, social justice, human rights. It became easier to form a foundation to give from. Then this became the most fun way I’ve discovered to raise money. Each performance we raise 10 or 20 thousand bucks for the foundation. It’s really nice, and it’s needed more than ever.”
Besides his EZ Street Band shows, Azaria shares that “I’m doing a weird little series with Mandy Patinkin that’ll be out in November called ‘The Artist.’ It’s streaming on a platform called The Network. ‘The Simpsons’ never ends, lucky for me. Oh, and I wrote a one-man show with my partner who I wrote the show ‘Brockmeier’ with. It’s pretty autobiographical. We hope to have it off Broadway next year.”
Right now, he’s busy being Bruce.
“It’s grown. It’s selling really well. I really love it. I never took singing seriously. I’ve had to sing a lot of times in my career but in ‘The Simpsons’ or ‘Spamalot’ it’s comedy characters singing so as long as it was semi in-tune or funny nobody really cared how it sounded. Nobody cares if P.C. Wiggum” — again, he starts doing a character voice — “sounds beautiful when he sings. For Bruce I had to learn to really sing and take it seriously.”