2025-10-21

Cain's Ballroom, Tulsa, OK, USA

Set List of Show:

Main Set List:

"Running to Stand Still"
"This Train is Bound for Glory"
"Mothers of the Disappeared"
"Sunday Bloody Sunday"
"One"
"Pride (In the Name of Love)"
"Jesus Christ"
"Yahweh"

During Moderated Discussion:

"One Life at A Time"
"This Train is Bound for Glory"

A Capella during Award Acceptance:

"A Hard Day's Night"

Additional Music

Snippets of Other Songs Performed by Bono and The Edge:

Description:

Bono and The Edge accept an award from the Woody Guthrie Center on behalf of U2.

Show Details:

Bono and The Edge are in Tulsa, Oklahoma to accept the 2025 Woody Guthrie Prize, being awarded to U2. The prize is awarded at Cain’s Ballroom. As part of the evening, Bono and The Edge speak about the music of U2 with T Bone Burnett.

U2’s award was presented at Cain’s Ballroom in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It was the first time Bono and The Edge returned to that venue since U2 had played the venue in 1981. The press release surrounding the Award shared “They look forward to legally buying their own pints this time around.” When U2 performed at Cain’s in 1981 Bono, The Edge, and Larry Mullen were all under the legal age to buy alcohol in the USA.

During the evening Bono and The Edge were introduced by the senior director of the Center, Cady Shaw. They were then given a welcome and introduced further by Anna Canoni, the granddaughter of Woody Guthrie, and President of Woody Guthrie Publications. Bono and The Edge then did a short 30 minute performance. The written set list listed “Running”, “Mothers”, “Sunday”, “One”, “Pride” and “Yaweh” all in one word titles.

The show opened with Bono and The Edge on “Running to Stand Still” with Bono doing a harmonica solo at the end. They moved into a short rendition of “This Train is Bound for Glory” a song popular in the 1920s, and first recorded and made popular by Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and later recorded by Guthrie. The song flowed out of “Running to Stand Still” but was longer than the typical snippet. The song title was used by Guthrie for his autobiography. The duo continued with U2’s own songs, “Mothers of the Disappeared”, “Sunday Bloody Sunday”, “One” and “Pride”. Up next was Guthrie’s “Jesus Christ”, a song that U2 had recorded for the Folkways: A Vision Shared tribute to Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly in the late 1980s. “Jesus Christ” was a shortened version of the song. They finished off with a shortened version of “Yahweh”. The whole performance lasted about 30 minutes.

After the performance, Bono and the Edge returned to the stage after a 10 minute break for a discussion with T Bone Burnett for a discussion about U2, music, the state of the world, and freedom. During the discussion, Bono did read out the lyric to a full new song as a poem “in the style of a protest song”. Bono introduced the song as “One Life at a Time” before reading the lyrics including, “history is written one life at a time.” They had discussed performing the song at the early portion of the show, but had decided against it since Larry and Adam were not present to perform it with them, and Edge claimed the “song isn’t finished yet.” Bono shared that the song title was inspired by a comment made by one of the directors of the film No Other Land, a film that shows the destruction of a Palestinian community in the West Bank. Also during this segment, Bono returned to the lyrics of “This Train is Bound for Glory” and sang the song in the style of both Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan.

The award presentation happened after the onstage discussion. They accepted the award, bowed, smiled for the audience to snap some photos and broke into a shortened a cappella “A Hard Day’s Night”. We will add additional information to this entry in the days ahead.

Ahead of the show a merchandise table was set up which included merchandise from the Woody Guthrie Center, from Cain’s Ballroom, and U2. U2 offered a green T-shirt with the band name on the front (White U, yellow 2 with “2025 Woody Guthrie Prize” printed over the 2), and a lyric from “Jesus Christ” on the back, and a green hat. There was also a poster sold.

The show was recorded, and shared via U2 X-Radio on Thursday, November 27, with airings at 12noon and 7pm ET (and also appearing on demand.) The live broadcast was complete with the exception of “Mothers of the Disappeared” which was not aired. Individual tracks from the performance are now in rotation on the station, and additional ‘live’ airings continue in the week following the debut.

Officially Released Tracks

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