Recapturing his ‘Glory Days’: Why Hank Azaria became a Springsteen tribute singer

His City Winery New York birthday concert in front of 500 friends was such a success, Azaria decided to hit the road with his band Hank Azaria and the EZ Band. He will be coming to the 400-seat Eagle Theatre in Sugar Hill on Saturday, July 12. Tickets are available for $45 each at eagleatsugarhill.com.

“I am not a party guy,” Azaria said. “But it would be too sad to ignore my 60th. I brought my high school, college and camp friends and my Broadway friends and created an audience for myself. I wasn’t really even at my party. I was the entertainment!”

He said the entire conceit was a way to distract himself from the aging process. When he turned 40, people would tell him that was the new 30. He heard a similar trope when he turned 50.

“But I noticed as I was turning 60,” he said, “nobody said anything. It’s just 60.”

Azaria has been appearing in films and movies for decades, including smaller roles in shows like “Friends” and “Mad About You.” He had a dramatic Emmy-winning turn as author Mitch Album in “Tuesdays with Morrie” and lead roles in Showtime’s “Huff” and IFC’s “Brockmire,” which was shot in metro Atlanta.

But his calling card since the late 1980s is his ability to create multiple voices on “The Simpsons” including iconic characters like Moe the Bartender, Chief Wiggum and Comic Book Guy.

So why not Springsteen?

“This is an outgrowth of my mimicry bent,” Azaria said.

Credit: Leah Bouchier-Hayes

Credit: Leah Bouchier-Hayes

He said he is well aware music you grow up with as a teen and early adult shapes who you are.

At 12, Azaria was at sleepaway camp in 1976 when a friend began playing cassettes of Springsteen. He quickly embraced the man’s rugged authenticity. Through his teen years, Springsteen became a consummate live act, filling arenas with songs like “Thunder Road,” “Hungry Heart” and, of course, “Born to Run.”

“That nostalgia takes on a different meaning as you get older,” Azaria said. “It’s like a time machine. It takes you back to that time when you were young. It’s almost an aching joy and sadness mixed together.”

For six months before his 60th birthday, he learned how to sing like Springsteen.

“It was very organic to me,” he said. “It occurred to me as a mimic, I had never used this ability of mine. I also learned how to sing properly.”

A vocal coach helped him capture the Springsteen rasp. And his son Hal’s piano teacher Adam Kromelow became his musical director.

“I have a deep natural voice so I started way below Bruce’s key,” Azaria said. “I gradually worked my way up to his key or close to it. I would record myself and listen back and try to correct it. The impressions are based on what I heard during his live concert versions, which are always better and kind of easier to sing. He tends to sing at a higher key with less rasp on his albums. It’s less gritty. I’m better with the grit.”

Azaria, who has seen Springsteen live in concert 25 times and has met Springsteen in person a couple of times, said he already had Springsteen’s speaking voice down going back to his teen years.

“A lot of my impressions came out of my hero worship of Bruce,” he said. “My young Al Pacino from ‘Dog Day Afternoon’ was also hero worship. Fun fact: if you take my young Al Pacino on one end and my Bruce on the other, split it in the middle, you get Moe the bartender. He’s a mashup of the two!”

If you attend the concert in Sugar Hill, Azaria will play about 105 minutes of Springsteen classics culled largely from his 1970s and early 1980s catalog.

“I went with the songs I love the most,” he said. “We have about 20 we can do.”

That isn’t enough music to play a three-hour marathon like Springsteen himself, but Azaria said “every time I sing through it, it gets easier. It’s like building a muscle.”

And while he has no wig or prosthetics to resemble Springsteen, he tries his best to match his mannerisms, and, of course, his voice.

“I tend to dress like Bruce anyway,” Azaria said. “I’ll be in a black T-shirt and jeans. In all, it’s a very strange one-man show because I’ll offer up some fun facts about songs in Bruce’s voice, but, obviously I am not Bruce.”

Credit: CONTRIBUTED

Credit: CONTRIBUTED

Azaria, by the way, is not doing this for money.

“All the next proceeds go to charity,” he said. “I gotta pay the kids in the band. They gotta eat. And then after that, the venue takes a cut.”

Whatever is left over goes to his Four Through Nine Foundation, which funds youth programs.

“I’m the luckiest man,” Azaria said. “‘The Simpsons’ gig has me taken care of.”

If you go

Hank Azaria and the EZ Street Band

8 p.m., Saturday, July 12, $45, The Eagle Theatre, 5029 W. Broad St. NE, Sugar Hill. 770-945-6929, eagleatsugarhill.com.