One theme that was apparent in the show was the ongoing late-2000s recession. The early part of shows contained a "recession pack" consisting of "Seeds" (brought back from the 1980s), "Johnny 99" (elongated with incongruous train "woo-whoo's"), and either "Youngstown" or "The Ghost of Tom Joad" (both featuring fiery guitar solos from Nils Lofgren). Encores began with a rendition of Stephen Foster's 1850s classic "Hard Times Come Again No More" – which provided one of the few featured spots for King and Mizelle, who otherwise played a lot of tambourine – and later included both of Springsteen's reunion-era encore epics of American struggle, survival and hope, "Land of Hope and Dreams" and "American Land". Van Zandt said that the emergence of the recession theme was in part why the concerts did not showcase the Working on a Dream album. However, one regular moment of optimism was the playing of "Waitin' on a Sunny Day" from The Rising, with Springsteen holding a microphone down to one or more young children in the front of the pit area to sing along to the chorus.
