It’s a Tinseltown tale as old as time.
The performer — after a successful career of stockpiling Emmy wins, Tony nominations and sundry other awards; after voicing some of the most iconic and eminently quotable characters from America’s longest-running scripted prime-time television series; even after having Sir Al Pacino shout “Because she’s got a … great ass!” in his face in a legendary scene from the 1995 movie Heat — decides that, upon turning 60, the logical next step is to front a Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band tribute act.
But before you sigh and say, “Sheesh, that old saw?,” it’s worth mentioning that said performer is Hank Azaria.
Azaria is best known as the voice behind many of The Simpsons’ most beloved characters, including Moe the Bartender, Comic Book Guy and Professor Frink. Along the way, he’s also had memorable supporting roles in sitcoms like Mad About You and movies like Mystery Men, to say nothing of more recent work as the lead character in Brockmire, the story of the rise and fall of a baseball announcer who can’t quite seem to find redemption — a show with a cult following of its own.
And now, Azaria has brought his gift for mimicry to his Springsteen tribute group Hank Azaria and the EZ Street Band. These boys (not) from Asbury Park are kicking off their tour here in Orlando at the Plaza Live Thursday.
The EZ Street Band started as part of a, in Azaria’s words, “reverse surprise party” for his 60th birthday where attendees were told there would be a Springsteen tribute band, but not informed that Azaria would be performing as Bruce. But the roots of Azaria’s fandom — “I’m one of those fans,” he says — go much deeper than that.
“I was at summer camp,” Azaria says, “the summer I was 12, so it was 1976. My buddy David Blumenfeld is playing Born to Run. I think the song was ‘Backstreets’ and I said, ‘What’s that?’ and he said, ‘What do you mean, what’s that? That’s Springsteen! You don’t know Springsteen?’
“I then fell in love with that album and I was all about him after that. It was right at that age where you discover music. I remember that summer being all about Springsteen and Electric Light Orchestra.”
As a teenager, Azaria dug deep into the Springsteen oeuvre, even tracking down live bootlegs. Springsteen’s legendary monologues before and during songs, captured in full, struck a chord that helped set Azaria on his life’s journey.
“Bruce has that gift where he makes you feel like he’s talking to you personally. In his music and in his talks, a lot of his message back then was, ‘You can be who you are and you can be who you want to be.’ Which I took to mean that if I want to be a creative person, I can do that.
“And I got to tell him that,” Azaria adds, referring to the two times he met the Boss in person. Azaria’s fanboy awkwardness during those meetings is chronicled in his own monologues live with the EZ Street Band. “I really embarrassed myself because I was sort of gushing,” confesses Azaria.
It’s Azaria’s onstage banter while playing Springsteen favorites that sets the show apart from other tribute bands, Springsteen or otherwise. While most tribute bands aspire to total immersion and replication of the “experience” of the band they are portraying, Azaria remains Azaria.
So while Azaria does a spot-on imitation of Springsteen’s voice — “I’ve never worked harder on any vocal work than on this” — he didn’t buy a 1950s Fender Esquire and learn to play guitar like the Boss. And instead of monologues in which he, say, drops hard truths about how Reaganomics didn’t trickle down to the working people of this land, Azaria shares legendary Springsteen anecdotes like how he wrote “Dancing in the Dark,” or Azaria tells stories from his own life — for instance, using “She’s the One” to talk about how he met his wife.
While the concerts are joyous affairs, Azaria is unafraid to open “Darkness on the Edge of Town” — one of Springsteen’s more powerful songs about loss and struggle — by sharing his own struggles with addiction.
In using the show as a way to diminish the stigma so many feel in their own struggles, Azaria says, “I made a conscious decision a bunch of years ago, for a variety of reasons, that I’m OK talking about it in public. If I can send a message that there’s no shame in asking for help and that everybody struggles, I’m actually going to do that. It happens to be what ‘Darkness on the Edge of Town’ is actually about.”
On the whole, Hank Azaria and the EZ Street Band is a kind of celebratory passion project: a Springsteen obsessive performing for and with other Springsteen obsessives. “My goal is to sound as good as [the E Street Band] do,” Azaria says.
To accomplish this, Azaria assembled a band starting with his son’s piano teacher (the “Roy Bittan” of the group, if you will), who was then playing in a Genesis tribute band. The rest of the group are younger musicians who usually perform on the Broadway circuit and were converted to Springsteen’s music by Azaria’s infectious love for it.
“They didn’t know this music, and they now love playing it,” Azaria says. “It’s been fun to pass it along.”
When asked if the audiences are mostly from Springsteen’s or The Simpsons’ fanbases — fans known for being rather, ahem, obsessive, to put it mildly — Azaria says that it’s about 70% Springsteen to 30% Simpsons.
No matter the fandom, attendees at the Plaza Live show can expect a healthy mix of Springsteen classics and deep cuts, with proceeds from the show going to the Four Through Nine Foundation, a charity founded by Azaria that is “committed to social justice, education and recovery causes.”
For those wondering if Hank Azaria and the EZ Street Band can compete with the likes of other Springsteen tribute bands like Ska-sbury Park, the woman-fronted She’s the Boss, or local favorites Gersey Geoff and the Bumby Boys, Azaria insists that they can more than hold their own.
“We’re the best one!” Azaria says, effortlessly shifting into the unmistakable timbre and cadence of Asbury Park’s favorite son.
If you need even more Hank Azaria in your life, he will also be at MegaCon at the Orange County Convention Center for a signing on Friday.
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This article appears in Feb 5-11, 2025.