Legendary voice actor just wants to be The Boss

An earlier version of this article appeared on The Examiner News website Jan. 19, in advance of Hank Azaria's Jan. 23 performance.

Hank Azaria brought his renowned vocal skills and passion for Bruce Springsteen to Peekskill on Jan. 23 to perform at the Paramount Hudson Valley Theater.  

By ADAM STONE

Back in the summer of ‘76, while at Camp Towanda in the Pocono Mountains, 12-year-old Queens native Hank Azaria was just hanging out with his friend David Blumenfeld by the tennis courts, listening to tunes, unaware that a musical obsession was about to be born. 

The year before, Bruce Springsteen had become a star. But young Azaria didn’t yet know the Jersey rocker’s music. 

Blumenfeld popped in a cassette, pressed play on a boombox, and Azaria’s life was forever changed, captured by Springsteen’s soulful sound and masterful storytelling.

“I’ll never forget, I remember looking through a chicken wire fence, listening to a lot of the album “Born to Run,” the 61-year-old Emmy award-winning artist recounted in a recent phone interview. “I just sat there, like, mesmerized.”

He’s been mesmerized ever since. And a half century after that transformative sleepaway camp moment, as his 60th birthday approached in April 2024, Azaria was feeling a deep sense of nostalgia. Not usually a party person, he decided to throw a massive bash, inviting 500 people (including camp buddy Blumenfeld) to City Winery in downtown Manhattan.

This wasn’t any party. He was inviting camp friends, high school friends, college friends, and Broadway friends — a massive reunion of Azaria’s colliding social universes. While he did tell his pals he had a unique Springsteen tribute band anchoring the New York City event, knowing tons of them were also massive Bruce fans, there was also a secret he kept.

“I didn’t tell them that I’d been working for months to front the band,” the legendary voice, TV and movie actor and part-time Bedford resident told me.

Hank Azaria & The EZ Street Band was born that night in Manhattan, and the group has been playing shows for the past year-and-a-half. And on Jan. 23, Azaria and company brought their talents to our neck of the woods for a show at the Paramount Hudson Valley Theater in Peekskill.

“I think one of the most fun things about it is that we really do recreate the sound of the E Street Band in a more intimate venue,” Azaria emphasized in the interview several days before the show. “And, you know, I just really love it. I love sharing this music with people.”

It’s personal

When Azaria first had the brainstorm about starting the group, he called his son’s jazz piano teacher, Adam Kromelow, a professional musician who also leads a Genesis cover band.

“I said, ‘Dude, I got this crazy idea,’” Azaria recalled. 

Turns out, it wasn’t so crazy. Kromelow helped assemble a collection of professional musicians, with Hannah Juliano on backup vocals, Alden Harris-McCoy on rhythm guitar, Tim Basom on guitar, Jeff Koch on bass, Dustin Kaufman on drums, Christian Nourihanian on organ, and Evan Harris on sax.

But the show doesn’t exclusively entertain audiences with music. Azaria incorporates personal stories and comedic flair. It sounds more like a theatrical rock show than an impersonation. And any net proceeds from the shows benefit Azaria’s charity, the Four Through Nine Foundation, which supports social justice, education and recovery causes. He has been dedicated over the past decade to social justice causes and celebrated his 19th sober birthday on July 10.

“As I kick off year 20,” he posted to social media on July 14 from Nashville, Tenn., “I had to commemorate the occasion with a little ‘Darkness on the Edge of Town’ with Hank Azaria and The EZ Street Band,” sharing a video of the emotional performance.

Azaria’s initial focus for the group was just creating the best possible Springsteen tribute band. Yet even at that first show at City Winery, it dawned on him that while many in the audience were already fans of The Boss, some were not.

“So I felt like maybe I should describe some of the songs or tee them up or set them up or tell what they meant to me or how Bruce wrote them or whatever,” explained Azaria, who splits his time between Bedford and New York City with his wife, retired actress Katie Wright (now a family therapist), and their 16-year-old son, Hal. “And that became kind of a template for the show. I tell these stories as Bruce, even when they’re personal about me.”

‘The talks’

Anyone familiar with Azaria’s vocal abilities knows what he’s capable of comedically, dramatically and vocally. He’s famous for voicing legendary characters from “The Simpsons” like Moe, Chief Wiggum and Snake Jailbird, among many others, not to mention Gargamel in “The Smurfs” movies. But he also stars in Brockmire, and has played iconic supporting roles in movies and shows such as “The Birdcage,” “Along Came Polly,” “Grosse Pointe Blank,” “Ray Donovan” and “Friends.” (Or my personal favorite: “Shattered Glass,” an all-time great journalism movie). 

In our Jan. 15 interview, Azaria seamlessly slipped into various voices, including a pitch-perfect “Dog Day Afternoon” era Al Pacino. As for absorbing and internalizing Springsteen’s raw, raspy voice, Azaria has been studying the Jersey legend since he was a kid, gobbling up vinyls from record stores, and mimicking his musical hero.

Yet the aspect of Springsteen that has really grabbed Azaria and his friends since adolescence is The Boss’s monologues and storytelling, what they call “the talks.”

Actually, it was that deeply personal storytelling from Bruce that inspired Azaria’s creative life in the arts from the jump, ultimately leading the native New Yorker to Massachusetts, to attend Tufts University and study drama, graduating in 1987, just two years before his voice burst onto the pop culture scene with “The Simpsons.”

It had been Springsteen’s stories about loneliness as a teenager — along with the other challenges of his upbringing — that spoke most profoundly to a young Azaria. 

“I sort of tell my stories similar to how Bruce delivers those talks,” Azaria explained about his shows. “And I developed the imitation a little more exactly when I started doing that. But I’ve been doing it my whole life.”

For the love of the game

Before the more formal part of our interview started, I told Azaria how I’ve seen him around Mount Kisco at least three times in relatively recent years. I considered bothering him all three times, knowing he is a fellow Mets fan, with cats named Mookie and Wilson. But I prudently resisted. 

In our phone conversation, I told Azaria that a potential fourth encounter would be the charm, and I would be sure to say “hey.” I attended his fantastic show with family on Jan. 23, and was wowed by the musical prowess of his band, and the spirit and energy Azaria delivered for the packed house in Peekskill. However, I did not get an opportunity to talk to him after the show. Yet if we do ever connect in person, hopefully I’ll be slightly more composed than Azaria was the two times he met his musical idol.

When he was in the cast of “Spamalot” (which opened in 2005), Springsteen came backstage, and Azaria “fanboyed so hard, I really made an idiot out of myself.” He subsequently saw Springsteen about eight years ago at Bruce’s Broadway show, and told himself not to “blow it this time.”

“And then before he could even say hello, I just started screaming at him like a Beatlemania fan,” Azaria recalled. “It was absolutely ridiculous. I vowed if I ever get lucky enough to meet him again, I will calm down.”

You have to think Springsteen will eventually want to check out Azaria’s tribute in person. But my money is on Azaria melting again. After all, he’s been mesmerized by The Boss since the age of 12. 

But let’s hope three times is a charm.

Adam Stone lives in Mount Kisco and is publisher of The Examiner News.