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The Boss is coming back.

(EPA/Tony McDonough)

From the moment that "High Hopes"was announced, you knew the tour was coming.

Unfortunately for local fans of the Boss, it's not coming to New Jersey. Or New York either.

The closest Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band will get to the Garden State in Spring 2014 is Uncasville, Ct. The outfit, which has been running in high gear since the winter 2012 release of the "Wrecking Ball" album, will play two shows at Mohegan Sun on May 17 and 18.

The two Nutmeg State dates come at the conclusion of a 15-show spring swing through the United States — the band's first skein of American concerts since 2012. (The E Street Band spent most of 2013 touring abroad.) The leg begins Apr. 8 in Cincinnati, and stops in many smaller cities that weren't graced with a show on the Wrecking Ball Tour: Virginia Beach, Raleigh, Sunrise, Fla., and others. The Boss will also do a show in a Pennsylvania tourist city that a little less than a three-hour drive from the Meadowlands: Hershey, Pa. The E Street Band will play Hersheypark Stadium on May 14.

Tickets to the Hershey and Uncasville concerts go on sale through Ticketmaster at 10 am on Feb. 14 — which make them a fine Valentine's Day present for a Springsteen enthusiast. Fanatics who absolutely must catch the first show (and I know you're out there) can get tickets to the Cincinnati date on Feb. 21.

Although Bruce Springsteen isn't calling this the High Hopes Tour, he'll be supporting his latest album — a collection of covers, re-recorded cuts, and "lost songs" which was initially greeted with mixed reviews from critics, but which, I notice, has been growing on E Street loyalists. "High Hopes" made its debut atop the Billboard charts, and the Boss has been playing songs from the set in Australia, where he's presently touring. Whether he'll extend the Wrecking Ball/High Hopes Tour to New Jersey and New York later this spring or summer is an open question, but it seems unlikely that the Boss would bring the band back to America to rock Raleigh and Uncasville and then call it a day. I'll bet he'll be roaring away in the swamps of Jersey before long.

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