Guitarist Nils Lofgren joined his buddy Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band in 1984 for the mammoth "Born in the U.S.A." world tour. Lofgren was better prepared than most to step into that hurricane: At 18, he was recruited by Neil Young for the "After the Gold Rush" tour.

Guy AcetoNils Lofgren, left, and his Boss, Bruce Springsteen, are bound for the New Orleans Jazz Fest.

During nearly 30 years with the E Street Band, Lofgren has colored arrangements with an array of stringed instruments. He also sustains a vibrant solo career on the side. In November, he released his eighth studio album, "Old School," featuring guest turns from ex-Foreigner singer Lou Gramm, Bad Company's Paul Rodgers and Sam Moore of Sam & Dave.

The prevailing theme, according to Lofgren? "The good and bad that comes with being around for a while."

At 60, he should know. After a double-hip replacement, he can no longer leap off drum risers and pianos. And last year, he buried his friend and longtime E Street bandmate, saxophonist Clarence Clemons.

But Lofgren, who will be at Springsteen's side when the E Street Band closes out the Acura Stage on Sunday, April 29 at the New Orleans Jazz Fest, considers himself fortunate.

"Despite all the goodbyes that come with being around for a while, I've had a beautiful career. Not only doing my own music, but getting to play in these other great bands. I'm very grateful. "

During a recent interview from the road, he expounded on the E Street Band's onstage dynamic, the recent Springsteen TelePrompTer controversy, and why he's so excited to follow Dr. John at Jazz Fest.

TP: So how have the early shows on the "Wrecking Ball" tour felt?

Lofgren: It's been the best start to a tour that I can remember. I am used to, after 10 or 15 shows, everything getting to a new level of comfort and inspired recklessness. That happened the first night.

I'm not sure why. It doesn't matter. It bodes well for the rest of the tour that we came out of the gate a lot further on than I expected. It kind of threw me for a good loop. It was exciting, and remains so.

As always, we're doing a lot of different songs, changing the show. Bruce is calling audibles and changing arrangements as we go. Everyone seems to be rising to the occasion. Everyone seems to be playing their best, and I've never seen Bruce better.

Of course, with the terrible loss of Clarence....I miss him every night. I stood next to him for 27 years. That being said, I know he's rooting us on and his spirit is happy that we're out here sharing the music.

Replacing him with a horn section adds a new component to the band.

Jake (Clemons, Clarence's nephew) and Ed Manion, on the other sax, are doing a great job. We use them most of the night.

Something that I didn't want was to have anybody standing next to me playing the horn. That's what Clarence did for 27 years. (A horn section) is a beautiful way Bruce came up with to ease the burden for the audience and the band. Because there is no Clarence II.

With all the singers we've got, and new songs - there's 23 unreleased tracks from the 'Darkness on the Edge of Town' (deluxe reissue) package that we never put into a show -- and the brand new album..... That's three-and-a-half albums of music that have never been incorporated into our live work, and the hundreds of other songs we've been through.

For a lot of people, membership in one of the greatest rock 'n' roll bands of all time would be plenty. But it's important to you to have another outlet with your own music.

As a bandleader, I bring a unique perspective as to how to be in a band. I give my bandmates freedom to surprise me. I give them direction, but stay hands off enough to have them feel freedom to contribute.

Having gotten my new "Old School" record out, I think I'm in better shape to do my job in the E Street Band.

You opted out of record companies in the '90s to release your records yourself, and even more music on your web site.

It was a function of the business. Not having made hit records or made the company a lot of money, they started getting hands-on about the music. That wasn't good for me. I got out before it got complicated.

(With "Old School") I was coming up on my 60th birthday, 43 years on the road. I needed to make an authentic record. The song "Miss You Ray" uses Ray Charles as a metaphor for loss. Sadly, three months later I'm burying Clarence on my 60th birthday.

I'm pretty darn blessed. It's a beautiful musical dream I get to live. But at the same time, I'm living it on a troubled planet. When I was younger it was much easier to keep your head in the sand and just play music.

How many instruments do you travel with?

I've got over 50 instruments on the road. Pedal steel, dobro, lap steel, six-string banjo, an army of acoustic and electric guitars, 12-strings, baritones. It's crazy. I'm like a kid in a candy store.

How many of those 50 instruments do you use a night on average?

Anywhere between 15 and 20. Right now we haven't delved into bottleneck (slide) and pedal steel yet except in sound checks, but that will happen. Usually I change guitar almost every song.

"Outlaw Pete," which was a big part of our last tour, I had three different guitars in the course of that one song, with different tunings and sound effects. It's an endless jigsaw puzzle.

I usually go in a few hours ahead of the band to work with my tech and change foot pedal sounds. We'll keep changing the show and arrangements. I think last tour we played 192 different songs. The way Bruce has come out of the gate, no doubt we'll get somewhere in that ballpark by the end of this year, too.

Over the years has he given you more freedom to improvise? Did you have to earn that right?

I don't want to speak for Bruce, but from my perspective, we've always had that right. Most of the last 44 years, I've been a bandleader. I always picked people that I felt I had to do the least amount of coaching, because it's exhausting.

If you have a great musician in your band, their natural instincts are pretty good. A great drummer is going to not only play the groove, but surprise you with great ideas that I don't' have -- I'm not a drummer.

The same holds true for any great band. Next month is 28 years in the E Street Band for me and Patti (Scialfa, the backing vocalist who eventually married Springsteen). The freedom was always there. I just think I'm better at using it and reading Bruce, the song, the feel.

As one of four guitar players, I'll immediately look at what guitar Bruce and Steve (Van Zandt) have on and pick the next sound. It might not always be a guitar. It might be a lap steel or dobro.

Sometimes Bruce will decide not to play guitar on a song and just be a performer and sing. So he'll ask me or Steve to cover the main part. But it's very organic. There's always been freedom to improvise as long as what you're presenting does the emotional job. And all of us have great instincts.

Sometimes I get jealous. When we change keys, I don't transpose that well. I've got to sit there with my chord charts. I'm more of an osmosis guy -- let me go to my hotel room and play the song for a couple hours. Roy (Bittan, the band's keyboardist) can play any genre in any key at any time at the drop of a hat, transpose at will and seems to have a photographic memory

Having guys in the band like that is a formidable tool. More than the actual skill of playing our instrument, the No. 1 thing we all bring to the table is an understanding and love of Bruce's songwriting. I'm just not going to hear some great lick that steps all over the vocal. I'm listening to a song being sung. I want to play things around the song and lyric.

That's the main gift we all bring to the band: The ability to understand the soul of the song and enhance it, rather than just looking for a place to fit licks in.

Did your experience with Neil Young prepare you to work at that high level with Bruce?

I hit the road when I was 17 in 1968. A year later, I did the 'After the Gold Rush' record. It was a beautiful accident where I realized that I'm happy to be the bandleader, but not being the boss every day is nice. To wake up and be in a great band and be able to play a cool piano part or an acoustic rhythm or sing a harmony is fun. It's also a break from all the non-musical responsibilities of a bandleader, which can be exhausting.

Bruce and I talked about it as friends long before I ever joined the E Street Band. I'm just one of those guys - I love to be in a great band. I mean, I'll play tambourine.

Sometimes, Steve and Bruce will be on two electric guitars, so I'll pick up an acoustic and just play rhythm. You become this giant shaker with this breathing, acoustic rhythm part. You're trying to crawl inside (drummer) Max (Weinberg)'s's hi-hat and just stay there and get into this hypnotic trance and don't come up for air. That's not something I can do as a bandleader.

It's all good. We all bring a love of the music and enough expertise to make it an extraordinary band. Bruce is very into not only challenging us, but himself.

He gets inspired in front of the audience. At 7 o'clock at night, you write a set list. You know that at 9 o'clock, after an hour in front of a great audience, he might be inspired to do something different. Not just songs, but arrangements. He'll point to me or to himself or Steve or Roy to play a solo. He might not point to you for 20 more shows, but you better watch. That makes it exciting and fun.

Whether you're doing the solo or not, it's just fun to interact with that type of band. It's visceral and instant. It's natural. We all grew up playing thousands of hours in cover bands and original music in nightclubs in the '60s. We're one of the last generations of bands that grew up having to play in front of people, and that was it - that was the only game in town.

It serves us greatly now as a band, to let Bruce improv the set list and arrangements on the fly, and follow him.

Do you give him feedback on what works and what doesn't?

We'll kick around ideas at the sound checks and all pipe in with opinions once in a while. All the ideas at this point are musically sound. But Bruce still has to follow his gut about what's best for the show. Because he's the one who has to present it.

Even he may improv some songs that, the next day, he might feel could be put in a different order. But at that particular night, it worked for him.

We're all free to chime in with our opinions. None of us are short on them. But he's the bottom line, the guy that has to go out and do the heavy lifting every night.

We all learned long ago that even if it seems like a whacked out idea, the best thing to do is to play it immediately and listen to it. We do that regularly at sound checks. It's a very efficient way of not belaboring or debating, (based on) collectively, hundreds of years of experience. It's great to cut to the chase. It's an organic, beautiful, ever-changing musical jigsaw puzzle that ends every night in this fabulous three-hour show.

After the Washington Post published an editorial criticizing Bruce's use of a TelePrompTer, you wrote a letter-to-the-editor defending him. Did you tell him in advance you were writing that letter?

No. Bruce probably doesn't even know I did that.

So why did you feel the need to respond?

I grew up in Washington D.C. The night before our show there, I happened to be at my brother Mark's house, celebrating my mother's 85th birthday. I happened to see the Washington Post open, and I saw something about Bruce's name and a TelePrompTer.

I read the article and recognized that Bruce was being lumped in with your standard I-can't-be-bothered-to-memorize-30-songs TelePrompTer use, which completely misrepresented what we do with that as a tool.

I pulled my iPhone out and wrote a letter to the guy who posted it and tried to politely say, "Man, you really missed the boat with your article." They called me and said they wanted to put it on a blog, and then in the letters to the editor page.

I was happy for that. But I didn't mention a word to anyone at (the band's) management. I just wanted to set the record straight.

The E Street Band has not performed in New Orleans since Bruce's landmark appearance with the Seeger Sessions Band at the 2006 Jazz Fest, the first after Hurricane Katrina. Is there talk in the camp of the significance of his return?

Just the normal talk of, "Hey, we're going to New Orleans, and we're not just doing our own show. We're doing the Jazz Fest."

When we did the Apollo show, it was a completely different show tilted and crafted for that hallowed building. When we did South by Southwest, we worked up a half-dozen Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger songs.

So it's not like we need to talk about it. I'm just assuming that I'll have a lot of homework to do. A few days before we get to New Orleans, I'll probably get a list of songs and some of Bruce's ideas that might be tailored for that specific festival.

We do have that five-piece horn section which can do that great Dixieland, soul, church, gospel thing. And we've got great singers, a lot of voices.

I'm assuming that there will be a half-dozen or more songs that Bruce will want to at least have on call to add in and create a show that has a nod toward the Jazz Festival.

At the 2006 Jazz Fest, he did incredible versions of "My City of Ruins" and "When the Saints Go Marching In."

We're doing "City of Ruins" every night, so that's in good shape, ready to go. He's got hundreds of great songs, authentic in different genres. We've got this massive 17 piece band, 18 when Michelle Moore comes out and sings that beautiful vocal on "Beautiful Ground," probably my favorite track on the new record.

It's very organic. In the E Street dressing room, we've got the notebooks and CDs to study up on the next batch of songs. We might get word before the show to look at a couple songs that may or may not appear that night. Maybe you'll see them in two weeks.

It's a massive jigsaw puzzle of old school meets new school. We're using a lot of technology, but old school in the sense that it really comes down to people creating the sounds with instruments. I can't imagine a more formidable tool box in rock 'n' roll history than Bruce and the E Street Band.

He challenges himself. He has great instincts. In the middle of a show, he'll yell at someone, usually Roy or Charlie (Giordano), to put on an accordion. He might point at the pedal steel guitar, and I know I've got to get on it. I don't know what I'm going to play. I don't know what song we're doing. But I know he pointed at it.

He's got a great sense about pushing everyone. Not to push us off a cliff and have a train wreck. But to push us into musical moments that are challenging not only for us, but him, knowing that collectively we're up to it, as long as we're all paying attention. Which is pretty easy to do when you're in front of a great audience.

Have you ever been to Jazz Fest?

I have not. It's obviously a mythical collection and celebration of music in a historic music town, one of the great ones.

Another part of Jazz Fest for me is I know I'm going to run into great musicians that I normally wouldn't see. Dr. John and I were in Ringo Starr's first band together for four months, which was a huge honor.

You guys are playing right after Dr. John on the same stage.

There you go. I'll get to see Dr. John. One of the highlights of my life was on that Ringo tour. Any time there was a sound check, and Dr. John would be noodling at his piano, I'd ask him right away, "Can I just sit on your piano bench and noodle with you?" He said, "Any time."

So if I was in the building and heard him playing, within 30 seconds, I'd be on his piano bench. Watching him play, soaking it in, playing along on my guitar. He's one of the masters that's out there still doing it.

Some folks will have a hard time choosing between the E Street Band and Al Green, who is on at the same time.

Yeah, that's rough. I've seen Al Green, and he's amazing.

But it won't be rough for me. We've got a job to do.

Music writer Keith Spera can be reached at kspera@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3470. Follow him on Twitter @KeithSperaTP