Gavin's Woodpile- The Bruce Cockburn Newsletter Online

BRIEF BIOGRAPHY- 1970 to Present

While on hiatus from producing David Wiffen's 1973 album, Coast To Coast Fever, Bruce managed to record a breakthrough album called Night Vision... a very urban-sounding work, musically different from previous albums. In all, he released 10 albums during the 1970s, including his highly regarded early effort, High Winds White Sky, and Circles In The Stream, a double live album recorded during his first tour with a full band in 1977. The tour came on the heels of the release of In The Falling Dark, considered by many to be one of his finest works. In April, 1977, Bruce toured Japan with True North labelmate, Murray McLauchlan. He capped off the 1970s with one of his best-known albums, Dancing In The Dragon's Jaws, which is generally included on the "favorites" list of most who know his discography.  Bruce's overall sound during the 1970s was very acoustic oriented, but he would soon shift gears.

1980 would see him leave rural Ontario and move to Toronto, where he would become an urban dweller... thus setting the stage for influential world travels through the 1980s. He would visit developing nations such as Mexico, Chile, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Nepal and Mozambique. Sponsoring some of these fact-finding missions were OXFAM and USC Canada. Many songs from this era were driven by hard electric guitar work. With this sound he was off in a new direction, a trait which has become a trademark of his career. Many who know Bruce's work associate his most political songs with the 1980s. However, I think it's important to note that while the 1970s produced a fair amount of acoustic, spiritual, nature-oriented work, national and global politics were found in his writings even then. Songs like It's Going Down Slow, Burn, Gavin's Woodpile, Red Brother Red Sister and Feast Of Fools reflect this. Bruce released 10 albums during the 1980s, including several compilation albums. Perhaps his most notable were Humans, Stealing Fire and World of Wonders.

The last breaths of the 1980s saw Bruce flat against the wall with little to draw from for his writing. He took some time off to explore and came back with a milestone album in 1991's Nothing But A Burning Light. This would be his first album recorded and mixed outside of Canada (in Los Angeles). The return of a more acoustic sound, which had begun to reappear on 1989's Big Circumstance, continued through the next several albums.  He would release 8 albums in the 1990s, including a compilation album and two live albums.

The 1990s saw Bruce become very active in the campaign against landmines, and in 1995 he visited Mozambique for the second time to see firsthand the huge problem of landmines buried in the ground. The album that followed this trip was called The Charity Of Night, another standout effort from this decade. In 1998 he visited Mali to assess the loss of farmable land to the desert. A documentary called The River Of Sand chronicled his time there. The video is available at Maple Music.

In 1999 Bruce visited Cambodia and Vietnam to witness the affects of landmines that litter those two countries. The trip was organized by The Vietnam Veterans Of America Foundation's Campaign For A Landmine Free World.

In 2001 CBC Television produced an hour-long biography called The Life & Times of Bruce Cockburn, which is also available at Maple Music. That same year Bruce moved to Montreal after having been in Toronto for twenty years.

In 2002 he released a collection of singles called Anything Anytime Anywhere, which included two new tracks, My Beat and Anything Anytime Anywhere. You've Never Seen Everything, was released in June 2003 and was met with critical acclaim.

Bruce returned from a fact-finding mission to Iraq in January, 2004.

His current album,  Life Short Call Now, was released in July, 2006. Bruce is currently in the midst of touring to support the album.

-Daniel Keebler, 2004