Gavin's Woodpile- The Bruce Cockburn Newsletter Online

2009 MEDIA

2004-2008 media are in the ARCHIVES section

Shuffling, Swooping and Gliding So Much, You Don’t Always Need a Melody

Lovers In A Dangerous Time The film will be screened in Toronto on June 26, 2009. This romantic ‘Canadiana’ tale centers around two former childhood friends; Todd, a small town could-have-been, and Allison, an overly nostalgic children’s book illustrator, who are reunited at their ten year high school reunion and embark on a childish yet romantic adventure recapturing the life they use to live. However, major questions arise, like “what does it mean to have shared a bathtub at three?” and things get even more complicated when Todd’s younger hockey star brother returns home. The result has them spiraling into delinquent behavior where scorching campfire antics, teenage bush parties and childhood memories only delay their impending return to adulthood. In the end, it’s a story about those that are unwilling to let go of their youth and the means they will take to hold on to it. The title song is  a cover by JBM.

Posted: May 19, 2009
JamBase

Bruce Cockburn: Water Into Wine
by Dennis Cook

These fragile bodies of touch and taste
This vibrant skin, this hair like lace
Spirits open to the thrust of grace
Never a breath you can afford to waste

A tireless veteran live performer, he's never achieved U.S. recognition on the same level as contemporary Neil Young, but the two share a number of striking similarities: a distinct voice in a art field that makes individuality difficult, wicked guitar playing skills, a ribald and rebellious nature and an embrace of most of the finest, enduring traits of human beings. While widely celebrated in his native land, in the States he's only occasionally popped up on the mainstream radar with singles like "If I Had A Rocket Launcher." However, he's developed a devoted core audience in the U.S. and around the world that understands the pervasive oomph of his massive catalog and always-intimate concert appearances.

His newest release, Slice O Life (released March 31 on Rounder Records), is a double disc live collection that's as fine an introduction to Cockburn's work as any assembled. It presents his potent baritone tackling pieces from all across his career as well as signature influences like Willie Johnson's "Soul of a Man," with the lot embellished by entertaining, informative anecdotes that offer off-handed insight into one of the most complex, poetic men in contemporary music. Culled from live performances and soundcheck explorations, Slice O Life provides a winning snapshot of an artist of tremendous stability and unbroken quality.

Few things are simple with Bruce Cockburn. He likes to qualify and broaden his ideas and answers, but in the way the Japanese admire, where complication and clouding in language rarely points to one meaning, one destination. In this way, Cockburn's music is spacious, diverse and capable of mutable forms, drawing readily from blues, jazz, rock and folk to create a flexible, inviting hybrid overlaid with vivid imagery and open feeling.

Given JamBase's own love of variety and intense talent, we are tickled several shades of pink to have scored an hour of Cockburn's time, where we discussed spirituality, playing solo, his influences and much, much more.

JamBase: One of the challenges now after 30-some albums and almost 40 years of professional work is where does one jump in? That's a lot of music, man [laughs].

 Bruce Cockburn: It's a challenge for me when somebody says, "Where do I start? What should I listen to?" I don't know [laughs].

JamBase: The new live album provides a pretty good foot in the door. It offers a pretty wide cross-section of what you've done.

Bruce Cockburn: It sorta does go back to the beginning, so I guess it is that [introduction], partly because it's solo and that strain of what I've done over the years, which is how I started.

One man, one guitar. There's something very pure about that.

I don't think I was thinking purity, exactly, at the time [laughs]. There certainly is simplicity, in musical as well as practical terms. It was a choice. I'd come out playing in a bunch of bands in the second half of the '60s and I was tired of noise and tired of bad jamming, and I figured maybe other people were, too, and there might be a place for a guy doing things alone with an acoustic guitar. And I'd been interested in folk music and traditional music for a while, so it wasn't too big a leap.

JB: Had you been writing songs already at that point? It seems like you arrived on your debut with a fairly intact vision. There's a sense of personality to even the early records.

During that band period I was writing songs; originally I was writing songs for all the bands I was in and thinking, to some extent, of those bands when I was writing songs. But after a few years went by I noticed I had this little repertoire of songs within that that really worked better when I played them alone. And they were all the best ones [laughs]. When I came out as myself and not as the guitar player in somebody's band it was with a sense of the songs I wanted to do and an idea of how I wanted to see myself. In some sense, it was an embracing of the sensibilities of the era but also a reaction to the collective thing, which never really sat right for me. I never did very well as a hippie [laughs].

JB: There's very little hippie-like about your records in that period.

JB: One of the things I'm struck by in your music, and it's there from the beginning, is, I wouldn't say an overt spirituality but an engagement with that type of subject matter. I've never found your work to be preachy but I've also never found it tenuous, which tends to be the case when people take on those types of concepts.

When we talk about taking on things in terms of songwriting, well, I guess if that's what you do it carries certain conditions and risks perhaps, but I never felt like that's what I've done. I always felt like I just wrote about what's sitting there. So, when it looks like I'm taking on something it's because I've been thinking about that thing and I'm having a reaction to that thing. If it's a political song, a spiritual song or a song about sex it's all the same. This is what I've experienced and how I feel about it, and it's kind of grabbing you by the lapels and saying, "You better listen to this!" I just need to convince somebody they should [laughs].

JB: I think terminology matters. I used the phrase 'taking on' but it's clear your work emerges from a more personal space. It's not like you have a cause you're trying to grind out. It's not like you're a cause person anyway, though you have been labeled as such by some over the years.

JB: Yeah, I guess if there's one unifying thing I've picked up on about your music as a long-time listener is it's about life, it's about being engaged with things and sometimes in a very earthy way, which wins you points with me.

Sometimes it's downright smutty! I think it's just about truth, and not wanting to sound pompous, it's about the human experience, what we are. And we are creatures of the flesh and we have the capacity to comprehend a larger reality than our sense can encompass but we feel is there. At some point in the future scientists may discover what spirituality really is, and if they do it's going to look something like capitalism [laughs]. I think there's going to be all kinds of mysterious strains in there, maybe reducible to numbers, maybe not. To me, that's at the core of everything.

JB: There's a tendency to divorce the physical aspects of humanity from the spiritual aspects.

It's unfortunate. The senses may lie – and do from time to time – but they always connect us to a bigger reality. And by senses I include whatever we consider to be extrasensory, too. I think that's just a word for senses we don't have a proper name for, but the capacity for feeling that bigger reality exists in all of us. In different ways, to different degrees, it gets expression in often radically different languages, and that expression suffers badly from the attempt to detach it from the flesh.

JB: When you take those two things away from each other they're both going to suffer.

There's no question of that, and you're probably going to go out and make someone else suffer, too!

JB: So true! When we carry some big wound or detachment in us there's a tendency to cause damage around us.

JB: We're getting pretty lofty [laughs]. In more practical terms, I'm interested in the process of playing solo. How has that developed over the years?

For one thing, there's the obvious difference that when a band's playing it covers up a lot of what the guitar is doing. Even if we've been careful about keeping space clear for what the guitar is doing there's other stuff for people to notice, or should be; those musicians aren't standing up there to be models, they're playing their instruments and you want people to hear that. But, what happens when you don't have those musicians there is you have a greater focus on what the guitar is doing and how the guitar and voice relate to each other, which is how I write the songs. So, something more essential happens with respect to the song. It's less of a performance, though I hope the performance aspect is adequate and interesting to people. But it's less about that and more about the song itself as a composition.

JB: With the guitar work more exposed you have to carry a bit more on yourself but at the same time the original intentions of the piece are more naked. Your guitar work comes out of the blues tradition initially but I've always liked the echoes of the British guys I've long been mad for like Bert Jansch, John Renbourn and John Martyn.

It's interesting because I never listened to them but other people have said that. I attribute it to the fact that those guys and me all listened to the same things. And we're not coming at it from an American perspective, whatever that means. There is something different. There's no denying the whole vibe of England is much different than America, and different from Canada as well. The fact that I was filtering those influences through my Canadian experience may have been enough like the English thing for there to be similarities. Nick Drake is another guy that comes up a lot with me, and I've never listened to a Nick Drake album all the way through. I've listened to a few songs here and there because people said I should check it out and I didn't like it! It was okay, respectable stuff, but it didn't touch me particularly. The exception [in this area] may be Bert Jansch and his first album before there was Pentangle. Really, the people I was listening to were the old blues guys and, of course, Bob Dylan, and the world of finger-picking that was out there didn't escape my notice.

JB: That's interesting. Maybe the way things move in the world is they hit a few different places simultaneously, the lightning hits in a few spots at precisely the same time.

It's one of the really good reasons to not get a swelled head about all the really cool stuff you're coming up with [laughs]. There's a really good chance somebody out there is doing the same thing.

JB: How did this stuff come into your life? How did a young white guy in Canada discover that he really liked black blues music?

There was a club in Ottawa that I used to go to all the time that I eventually ended up doing dishes and making espressos at, and ended up playing at in time. You weasel your way into the scene. Chances are you don't arrive fully formed. This is a way to enter a scene. You're just a guy who plays guitar and you know a few things, and the way to gain entry to a group that's relatively closed is often social. You don't just crash your way in and say, "You need me because I'm a great guitar player." You do it by being friends with people, and when you're 17 and excited by this stuff you do it by washing dishes and hanging out and just being there.

JB: There's a vividness to your lyrics, a sense of scene that's cinematic and full of strong imagery. I wonder if poetry has had a strong impact on what you do. It does seem you draw a bit more from that world than the usual verse-chorus-verse folk singer kind of songwriting.

It's had a huge influence, and predates the effect of hearing Elvis. I was interested in poetry before I knew I wanted to play music. I remember somewhere in the middle of grade school encountering in English class studying what I think of as dumb rhyming, and it wasn't very interesting to me except for something like "The Highwayman," which had a kind of gothic quality. A lot of stuff we studied was just boring. Then, along comes this poem called "Ars Poetica" by Archibald MacLeish that I memorized, and it was kind of an abstract or surreal poem. That shocked the shit out of me and this world opened up right there. Words! A poem doesn't have to be defined by the strictures of rhyme or the need to tell a story or whatever kind of stuff we'd been taught. Language assumed a whole new significance for me right there.

JB: It is a different way of communicating ideas. There's a comfort level with making leaps that sort of poetry has that's closer to songwriting than structured poetry.

I've always loved movies, too. I think movies are as big an influence on what I do as poetry or old blues guys. The first movie I ever saw was a Roy Rogers movie my dad took me to, so it wasn't a good beginning but I really liked it. In the latter years of high school I got introduced to Fellini, Bergman and the more cutting edge people of the day, and I loved them, Bergman in particular because it related to that northern sensibility and because a couple of his films are set in medieval times, and I was always fascinated with that, too. Here were these movies that were SO not Hollywood and so intelligent that represented a realm, especially then, that I fantasized about being in.

JB: I think the title of the new live set, Slice O Life, almost suggests a film, and in a way you paint a series of scenes within it, especially because it jumps back and forth across your career.

I guess I thought when I was putting together the repertoire for these shows I wanted to do a cross-section; I always do that but I guess I thought about it a bit more here. We didn't know what would end up on the album. You throw all this stuff out there, and I spent weeks and weeks weeding through 40 hours of recordings to find the right performances of the right songs. It was quite excruciating actually [laughs]. But it was something that worked quite well in the end.

JB: The editing is crucial. It can pour out of you pretty fast but then you wonder, "What the hell do I do with all of this?"

Exactly! You wonder, "Does this make any sense?" I feel very fortunate to not have to answer to suits, but some of the same weeding process has to happen; you have to be tough with yourself. There are exceptions to this; Dylan does very well with this, creating songs that sprawl all over the place but are still powerful. Usually you need to edit what you're doing and weed out all the crap, though sometimes not weeding out the crap creates the strength of the "film." So, I don't know. I guess I back away from making any kind of generalization.

Ottawa poet Bill Hawkins, who was kind of a mentor to me when I first started writing songs, told me that when you're writing a poem just write what's coming out of your head and then go back and cross off everything that doesn't absolutely have to be there. And you're left with something like the finished poem. Although you wouldn't necessarily know that listening to my songs but it's been an important principle to me over the years. It's true and it remains true for me.

http://www.jambase.com/Articles/18077/Bruce-Cockburn-Water-Into-Wine/0
Photos courtesy of Riddle Films Inc.

Posted: May 16, 2009
Acoustic Guitar Magazine (July 2009)
http://www.acousticguitar.com/article/default.aspx?articleid=24632

Bruce Cockburn Lesson
Your insider tour to Cockburn's brilliant one-man-band guitar style.

By Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers

Anyone casually familiar with Bruce Cockburn's music is likely to think of him as a front man: in his best-known songs, from the lilting reggae of "Wondering Where the Lions Are" to the edgy rock of "If I Had a Rocket Launcher" to the danceable pop groove of "Lovers in a Dangerous Time," Cockburn has led full-sounding bands that feature sophisticated interplay among guitars, keyboards, bass, drums, and more. But take away the backup musicians and put Cockburn on a stage alone with an acoustic guitar, and something remarkable happens: the songs sound fundamentally the same as their band versions. The thumping bass lines, the syncopated percussion, the instrumental riffs that harmonize with the vocal melody, the jazzy single-line solos—all can be heard clearly right from Cockburn's guitar, and in real time (no looper required). Combining a composer's sense of detail with a jazz musician's taste for improv, Cockburn delivers a complete instrumental sound rarely achieved—or even attempted—by singer-songwriters performing solo.

The Canadian songwriter has been honing this one-man-band guitar style ever since he dropped out of the Berklee College of Music in the '60s to follow his muse. Forty years and 30 albums later, Cockburn's newest release, Slice o Life, captures his solo acoustic show on two exceptional live discs. Tracks include not only his "hits" but lesser-known gems such as "Wait No More," a haunting bluesy workout on an open-tuned resonator guitar; the gorgeous ballad "Pacing the Cage"; and the meditative, effects-heavy "World of Wonders." Throughout these songs Cockburn's spiritual and political concerns shine through, along with his poet's love of vivid imagery.

On a winter afternoon in Manhattan, Cockburn cracked open the case of his well-traveled Manzer acoustic guitar and spent a few hours sharing the inspirations and techniques behind his solo style.

You've said that back at Berklee you pictured yourself arranging music for big bands. In a way, it seems that's exactly what you do: you've just compressed it all onto six strings.
COCKBURN I guess so—it sunk in, in spite of my resistance to being taught. But that was not just from Berklee. I had studied composition and classical theory, too, and thought about composition a lot. When I went to music school, I didn't think I was going to be a songwriter. I liked playing folk and blues and rock 'n' roll, but the real intent was to be a composer in the jazz idiom mainly. There were a lot of things that people were starting to do with jazz, like mix it up with classical stuff in the so-called third-stream music of that era. The jazz world was discovering the music of other cultures, of Indian and Arabic traditions, so a lot of people were interested in broadening their horizons. I was coming into it green, so it seemed like, let's go for the broadest horizons possible. But composing was my intention.

I really see the songs as compositions. They're not lead sheets. They are not just a melody and chord symbols, although some of them work that way and I'm happy when they do, because it means that somebody who likes the song can play it without being particularly skilled on the guitar. But the songs are written as compositions, so that the guitar part is integral to the song as a whole.

Why, in retrospect, do you think songwriting won out over composing instrumental music?
COCKBURN I love words. There was something missing from the equation in the study of composition per se, and it turns out to have been the words.

I'd always tried to write poetry and compose music, but I didn't think of putting the two together until Bob Dylan and John Lennon—and then it was like, OK, you don't have to write sappy songs. There were a lot of other writers in that era, but Dylan and Lennon, in particular, were emblematic of the best that you could do in the two different directions that they wrote in. It just opened up the whole idea. Gordon Lightfoot, too. Coming out of the world of folk music, I liked the bluesier stuff because of the edginess and rawness and sometimes smuttiness. I never had much patience with some of the flowery folk things. But somebody like Lightfoot comes along and writes songs, especially on his first two albums, that are perfect examples of the [folk] idiom. And it's like, "Wow, I know how to do that. I can fingerpick like that, I can put words together, and I should try it."

And then I had a mentor. When I dropped out of Berklee I went back to Ottawa and joined this band called the Children. The Children were the brainchild of a guy named Bill Hawkins, who was the éminence grise behind the band and didn't actually perform with us. I got involved in writing music for his lyrics, and then he would encourage me to write more of my own. So in the middle '60s I sort of started being a songwriter.

Let's dig into your guitar style and what I imagine is your starting point: the bass.
COCKBURN Yeah, it's really the thumb. It took a long time, relatively speaking, to get that to work. When I was starting to learn to fingerpick, I couldn't coordinate the thumb with anything sophisticated with the fingers. A guy who goes by the name Sneezy Waters currently was my main point of access to the world of blues and folk music when I was in high school. He pointed out that the thing to do is to get the thumb going independently first: watch the hockey game, make the thumb go, be on the phone, make the thumb go, until it becomes second nature. And then you can think about how to add the finger things on top.

The model for me in terms of adding the finger things was Mississippi John Hurt, who had a style based on an alternating bass and playing a melody on top. It's a beautiful, effective way of making the guitar work with a song, which will translate into almost any kind of music. If I wanted to do a Beatles song, how would I apply Mississippi John Hurt to a Beatles song? Long ago I learned how to do "Penny Lane" with a moving bass part and some of the horn lines. That was the approach really: to take the guitar and have it be the band.

It's one thing to make the bass automatic but another to make it groove. What's your secret?
COCKBURN The blues guys like Bill Broonzy or Lightnin' Hopkins would mute the bass usually—or they'd have strings that were so dead they might as well have been muting. That sound becomes a percussive thing; it's less about the harmonic function of the note and more about the rhythmic pulse.

I don't think I really understood the rhythmic groove until the beginning of the '90s when I did an album with T Bone Burnett, and T Bone was so insistent that everything be in the pocket. We were playing with [drummer] Jim Keltner and [bassist] Edgar Meyer, who are also incredible sticklers for being in the pocket.

By "pocket" you mean more than just tempo.
COCKBURN Yes, I do. In the broad sense it's all about tempo, of course, but within the tempo there's the feel. Whether you play faster or slower isn't the issue so much as within whatever tempo you have agreed upon, you all play together and where the beat wants to be felt. That's what is meant by a pocket.

Are bass lines on the guitar ever a starting point for you in writing songs?
COCKBURN No, not really. I can't swear that I've never done that, but it all tends to come as a package. The songs start with lyrics and work upward from there, so what kind of music gets applied depends on the feel of the lyrics and what they seem to want. If I have a set of lyrics that's waiting for music, I'll be consciously looking for music anytime I pick up the guitar.

Do lyrics sometimes wait around a long time for music?
COCKBURN Usually it's not too long before I find something. But one song took about 20 years: "Celestial Horses," from a couple of albums ago, is mostly made up of lyrics that I wrote in the '70s. I didn't get the appropriate music until the '90s. The music that I ended up with was very similar to what I had in my head when I started, but I could never get a grip on what that was.

Do the words come attached in your mind to some idea of a melody?
COCKBURN Not usually. A rhythm, yeah, but the melody kind of gets constructed as the song unfolds. I don't really think in melodies, and I have a hard time remembering melodies and even hearing them sometimes. But there's a rhythmic feel [to the lyrics].

There's an old song of mine called "Going to the Country." There are a lot of blues songs that make reference to going to the country—"Going to the country / Sorry but I can't take you." My song was a folkie pastoral thing quite different from that, but the original music I imagined was [plays typical blues shuffle], just like the old blues songs. Once I'd lived with my lyrics with that music for a while, it was clear that the music didn't carry the lyrics the way they needed to be carried. So it was a question of finding a different landscape to put them in.

Your guitar parts remind me of piano, because of the way you focus on individual voices and strings rather than strumming.
COCKBURN I don't think of it that way myself, but it makes sense. You can make the guitar work really well if all you do is strum chords. It's a good effect, but what I do instead is try to find things for the guitar that complement what's being sung or that help support it. Sometimes it's playing the melody along with myself; at other times it's more of a moving background part. It gives the song a color that it wouldn't otherwise have. If you're playing with a band, the tendency is to let the keyboard or the horns or the lead guitar do stuff like that. But because I write these songs to play them in any context, solo or with any combination of instruments, I tend to hog all the space, play all the parts, and then anybody who plays with me has to fit around that or join me in playing those parts.

You often use an unusual tuning you call "drop-F#," with the third string tuned down a half step and the rest standard. What does that allow you to do?
COCKBURN It gives you a [different] open string. One of the things that an acoustic guitar does beautifully is have notes ring against each other, and they ring best when you're not fingering the strings. I use this tuning quite a bit—there's a song called "Don't Feel Your Touch," for instance [Example 1]. You get a sense of flow that's different from what you could get in standard tuning.

I was comparing the solo version of "If I Had a Rocket Launcher" on the new record to the original recording, and your guitar part—despite being solo acoustic on one and electric with a band on the other—is essentially the same.
COCKBURN Yeah, the only reason it's different is because 25 years have gone by. Of course the solo changes from occasion to occasion.

"Rocket Launcher" is that Big Bill Broonzy [monotonic bass], except you put another note on the bottom for the second chord [Example 2], and it's the same whether it's electric guitar or acoustic. On the record at the time I was really interested in what you could do with the guitar and the Chapman stick as a combination, so Fergus Marsh is playing Chapman stick and adding upper harmonies that are very guitarlike but sound slightly different. I thought the combination worked really well.

On the chorus of that song, you use a lot of muting.
COCKBURN It's a combination of the heel of your [picking] hand hitting the bottom string and of letting go [with the fretting hand]. It's all fretted strings [Example 3]. There's no systematic way that I come up with rhythmic things like that. It's trial and error, bumbling around and finding something that feels cool.

In the solo section of "Rocket Launcher" you move between the two bass notes. When you're improvising over that, do you think about chord positions or scales?
COCKBURN Scales. It's partly what's within reach, given that you're going to have those bass notes. Because you want the fingers to be free, you can't tie them up making that [C] chord—you've got to use your thumb [to fret the sixth string].

And it's all modal stuff. One of the reasons I didn't do well at Berklee is I could never grasp the ii–V kind of harmonic approach—that means if you're in the key of E it would be an F#m to a B7 to an E. The old style of jazz that was around in the '60s was almost entirely made up of combinations of that sequence. And to me that was boring. It isn't boring when you hear great players doing it. Coltrane could sit there playing ii–Vs and blow your mind. But he could also play not doing those chords, and to me that was more exciting when I heard him stretching out without the limitations of that predictable movement.

But I got into the modal thing early on and it never went away. So most of what I write follows that pattern. In "Rocket Launcher" this is the scale [Example 4]. When you go to the C chord with your thumb, you're in position at the eighth fret to play in the key of C [Example 5].

There are double-stops again using open strings, because that's what these guitars do well [Example 6]. It's easy because it's all pull-offs with two fingers. The thumb has to be pretty automatic for that.

You recently made a solo arrangement of "World of Wonders." How did that come about?
COCKBURN I can't remember any of the guitar part that's on the original record. [That song] was born in an era when I was always playing with a band. I didn't do much solo stuff in the '80s. I played a lot of electric guitar, and over the decade as the bands got bigger and denser, the guitar parts got smaller, which is the reason I went the other way subsequently: I was arranging myself out of existence.

The solo version has a totally different feel from the record, which is kind of Afro-R&B. It became a more dreamlike song. The guitar forms this continuum underneath the imagery of the lyrics with the conscious inclusion of elements like the paraphrase of the horn parts. This is also in drop-F#, with alternating bass [Example 7].

Again, instead of just strumming an Em chord, you give the guitar something to do, a little pattern behind the melody. And when you're up the neck there are all kinds of nice little tinkly things [Example 8]. That's the drop-F# working. It's just hitting even one fret and then the open strings.

How about "Pacing the Cage": is that more of the Mississippi John Hurt school?
COCKBURN Very much. "Pacing the Cage" is in a C fingering, capoed at the fourth fret. Mississippi John would have done something different, but it's his style [Examples 9 and 10]. If you think of "Creole Belle," which is archetypal Mississippi John, it's the same thing really—just a different sense of what to do with the top strings.

What qualities do you need in a guitar to facilitate what you do?
COCKBURN I need enough bottom that I can hear the thumb. For it to feel like the thumb is actually doing the job of a rhythm section, there needs to be enough oomph from the bottom of the guitar. Not every guitar is like that.

Of course when I go to the Dobro, Dobros don't have a lot of bottom. But what they have is a very even tone from string to string, so everything reads well. It's a different kind of effect.

Are there any new directions you can sense in your songwriting these days?
COCKBURN Well, I've done a little bit of collaborating, which is a pretty rare thing for me since the '60s at least. There's a young woman, Annabelle Chvostek, who was formerly with a group called the Wailin' Jennys. She and I wrote a couple of songs together—one that she recorded and one that's a work in progress right now, which I expect to record the next time I do an album.

I've been doing gigs with [violinist, singer, and songwriter] Jenny Scheinman that have opened up some harmonic sense, in the process of learning her tunes. There's one tune she does where the chords are in G minor but the melody is in A major. It's totally weird. I actually have to sing that melody along with her violin when we do that piece. Singing in a totally different key from what you're playing in is very educational!

I look forward to getting lots of those little epiphanies and seeing where they go. In the meantime, the songs I'm writing are much more acoustic than I thought they'd be. I'd wanted to get into noise more—just raucous electric guitar and formless, violent music [laughs], and I haven't done that. So apparently that wasn't the way to go. I've got a few new songs, and they're going in a pretty folky direction.

You have to follow where the songs lead you.
COCKBURN Yeah, where is that next idea? It's what you live through, it's what you think about. And after 30 albums, what do I say that I haven't said before?

Anchor Steam

Most of the time when he's finger�picking, Cockburn anchors his pinky on the top of the guitar because he feels it provides extra leverage and power. But on songs such as "Last Night of the World," in which he picks clusters of notes rather than following an alternating-bass or steady-bass pattern, his anchor finger freely rises and falls. In fact, the sound of the pinky dropping onto the top becomes a percussive effect.

Bruce Cockburn's Guitars and Gear

• Guitars: Two six-strings and a 12-string by Toronto luthier Linda Manzer (manzer.com). Cockburn's main six-string, built about 20 years ago, has an extra-deep body, cedar top, Indian rosewood back and sides, blue finish (which tends to look more green), and Maya-inspired inlays designed by Manzer and Cockburn. Metal-body Dobro (chosen for the "self-consciously Arabic-sounding" song "Wait No More," for instance, because it sounds more like an oud than does a regular guitar). Tony Karol baritone acoustic (karol-guitars.com), used on "Peace March" from Life Short Call Now.
• Strings: Martin Marquis light-gauge strings.
• Capos: Kyser Quick Change.
• Amplification: Cockburn's main six- and 12-string acoustics have side-mounted Fishman Prefix Pro preamps with Acoustic Matrix pickups and Audio-Technica internal mics. The mic signal goes direct to the board; the pickup runs through a pedalboard, as follows: Boss TU-2 tuner, Empress tremolo, Boss DD-5 delay, Line 6 MM4 and DL4. From there the signal goes to a rack-mounted Lexicon Alex reverb (used for its infinite reverb on songs such as "World of Wonders") and a Demeter tube DI

Posted: May 4, 2009

An email from Bernie Finkelstein sent from the field in the wee hours of this morning, following the Pete Seeger 90th birthday celebration event at Madison Square Garden on May 3.

MusicOMH.com
April 26, 2009

Bruce Cockburn - Slice O Life: Live Solo
(Rounder) UK release date: 4 May 2009

Bruce Cockburn has been making music for the best part of 40 years now, which is time enough for any self-respecting songwriter and musician to have got all the experimental urges out of their system and realised exactly what it is they are best at and what their devoted fanbase wants to hear.

All of which is a rather long-winded way of saying that the two-disc live solo collection Slice O Life may just be an essential purchase for anyone with only a cursory interest in the Canadian singer-songwriter's music (a national treasure in his native country, Cockburn has at best only had limited success outside its shores).

Released on his North American label of the last few years, Rounder Records, Slice O Life is drawn from ten shows on his 2008 summer tour. It's a measure of the devotion in which his fans hold Cockburn that this album opens with nearly a minute of applause.

Cockburn is a consummate professional on stage and knows just which buttons to press. Hence, he opens with two of his most melodic and engaging songs; World Of Wonders and Lovers In A Dangerous Time. Both tracks are suited to the stripped down solo format, allowing Cockburn's masterful guitar playing to shine and giving his powerful baritone free range to express his wordy but insightful insights into the human condition.

Cockburn is another of those singers whose vocals have got better with age (the parallels with Warren Zevon are interesting), developing extra nuances with the passing of years. And it is a delight to hear his songs stripped of the dated production flourishes that often made his studio albums difficult to love.

The singer's self-deprecating stage banter with his fans is a joy to hear and should be required listening for all those young acts who shun their audiences. Three 'stories' even make the track listing in their own right, the best of which is Bearded Folksinger.

Slice O Life's generous running time allows the inclusion of some of Cockburn's instrumental interludes, but to be honest a track such as the shimmering The End Of All Rivers must have been a strong contender to make it onto a single disc.

Long-time fans of Cockburn will be delighted with the versions of his most famous songs on show here, notably the aforementioned World Of Wonders and Lovers In A Dangerous Time, but also the 'hits' Wondering Where The Lions Are and If I Had A Rocket Launcher. The latter is dated, true, but Cockburn invests the song with the same level of passion as he did in 1984.

Slice O Life ends with three soundcheck performances that are a reminder of what a great guitar player Cockburn is (often overlooked by lazy critics who prefer to tag the man as a Christian songwriter). Pleasingly, the album ends with a bluesy version of one of his earliest songs, Mama Just Wants To Barrelhouse All Night Long.

This is a fine career overview that will be an essential purchase for Cockburn fans and is also worth the investment for those wishing to investigate neglected singer-songwriters.

Posted: April 18, 2009

Bruce Cockburn topical as ever on new live CD

by Kevin Ransom
The Ann Arbor News
April 18, 2009

Bruce Cockburn has been making records for so long - almost 40 years now - that he's recorded three live albums over the course of his career - in 1977, '90 and '97.

All three were folk-rock performances, where he was backed by a band. But Cockburn probably does as many solo-acoustic shows as he does full-band shows over the course of a year or two - so he figured that his live-disc output wasn't a fully complete reflection of what he does onstage.

"Some fans have been requesting a solo-acoustic live disc for a while, and I had some down time between albums, so this seemed like a good time to do one," says Cockburn, who comes to The Ark on Monday for a sold-out show. Hence, "Slice O Life," the live solo album he just released on March 31 - an ambitious two-disc set drawing from almost all phases of his career.

"I thought that making it two discs would give it more of the feel of a complete live show," says Cockburn, a Canada native who lives in Kingston, Ont.

For years, Cockburn (for the uninitiated, that's pronounced CO-burn) has been lauded for his dazzling guitar chops. His earliest guitar influences were country-blues stalwarts like Big Bill Broonzy, Mississippi John Hurt and Mance Lipscomb, but he's also incorporated world-music styles into his syncopated guitar attack over the years. And he will also let 'er rip on the electric guitar when he's backed by a robust rhythm section.

He's referring to "If I Had a Rocket Launcher" from 1984, one of his most popular songs and a good example of the topical, politically conscious songwriting that has always been a big part of his appeal.

But we can't let someone as politically conscious - and as politically active - as Cockburn off the phone without asking him to share his thoughts on the transition of power in the U.S. from George W. Bush to Barack Obama.

"Well, I feel like most Americans do," he says. "I'm glad Bush is gone, and I think it's fantastic that Obama got elected. But that's tempered by my awareness of how difficult it will be for him to clean up all of the messes made by Bush and his people
"But I'm still very hopeful, because this was a welcome and important change - and one that was long overdue.

Posted: April 16, 2009

McMaster announces honorary degree recipients

McMaster Daily News
April 15, 2009

Prolific Canadian singer/songwriter Bruce Cockburn, a pioneer of evidence based medicine, a world renowned art detective, and a local activist who has dedicated her life to raising awareness about ALS, are among the distinguished list of those being awarded honorary degrees at McMaster University's spring convocation.

Approximately 4,500 students will graduate in May and June this year. Honorary degree recipients are recognized for their contributions in such areas as public service, education and scholarship, creative and performing arts, and for their work within the McMaster community.

Please note: Convocation will take place at Hamilton Place, unless otherwise noted below. Where two or more people are listed as honorary degree recipients, an asterisk indicates the recipient will address convocation.

Divinity College
Tuesday, May 19, 8 p.m. (Convocation Hall, McMaster University)

Posted: April 10, 2009

Cockburn displays guitar mastery, diverse songwriting in Aspen

by Stewart Oksenhorn
The Aspen Times (Colorado)
Photo: Lynn Goldsmith
April 9, 2009

ASPEN — Exiting the stage after his first set Tuesday night at Aspen’s Wheeler Opera House, Bruce Cockburn walked into one of the five guitars arrayed in a semi-circle behind him. The guitar fell to the ground with an amplified crash, putting the usually placid Canadian in a momentary foul mood.

The incident proved that Cockburn does not have complete and total mastery of his instruments. But put a guitar safely in his hands, and he does things that few other musicians can even think of. That the 63-year-old has fabulous technique is a given, but beyond that is an even more singular imagination regarding the instrument.

Performing solo at the Wheeler — and promoting “Slice O Life,” the live solo album he released last week — Cockburn didn’t have a chance to play much lead guitar, per se. Instead, he focused on using chords in inventive, dynamic ways — often while keeping a rhythm by hitting the bass string with his thumb, and occasionally adding electronically looped guitar figures.

But on “The City Is Hungry” Cockburn took on the role of a lead guitarist, part Richard Thompson, part Jimi Hendrix. The solo was a thing of fierce energy — for a while beautiful and jazzy and melodic, and then for a brief moment, breaking down into anarchy, as he played a flurry of notes that had no relationship to one another. And then in the next instant, beauty and order were back. “The City Is Hungry” — which Cockburn mentioned was inspired by Brooklyn, a place he has been spending much time lately — is a new song, and the instrumental break made certain that it earned plenty of attention.

Cockburn is not only an instrumentalist of the first order, but also a distinctive and diverse songwriter with an ability to deliver his ideas effectively. His voice isn’t on a par with his playing, but he makes up for any shortcomings with utter conviction and sincerity. The Wheeler show began on an upbeat note: The folky and optimistic “World of Wonders” opened the show, followed by the sublime “Last Night of the World,” which anticipates not a dark apocalypse, but Champagne with a special person. Later on came the more socio-political material: songs that decried the state of the environment, war and corruption, and a new tune that mocked the Bush administration’s brief, strange effort to rehabilitate the image of Richard Nixon.

And Cockburn had more to offer. His encore opened with “Wondering Where the Lions Are,” a song catchy, simple and popular enough to turn into a group singalong. He followed with “Mama Just Wants to Barrelhouse All Night Long,” which might have been a straight-up blues if only Cockburn weren’t so good at adding sophistication to the simplest structure.

And he left the stage collision-free, leaving the guitar-related errors for the night at one.

Posted: April 4, 2009

Press Release

“Kicking the Darkness”

St. John’s Anglican Church Hosts Bruce Cockburn Event 

For more than thirty-five years Bruce Cockburn has been recognized as one of Canada’s most insightful and musically creative singer/songwriters. Touring his 30^th album, Slice of Life, Cockburn brings his one man show to Peterborough’s Showcase Theatre on Tuesday, April 21. 

In celebration of Cockburn’s significant artistic contribution, St. John’s Anglican Church will host an event called “Kicking at the Darkness: Bruce Cockburn and the Renewal of a Christian Imagination” on Sunday, April 19 beginning at 6pm. Local singer/songwriter Sarah Loucks will be performing a number of Cockburn songs in support of a lecture by Dr. Brian Walsh. Walsh has been writing articles and reviews of Cockburn’s work for many years, specifically reflecting on Cockburn’s Christian faith and the power of his songs to awaken a Christian imagination.  

“Cockburn has never shied away from identifying himself as a Christian, though he has always been clear to distinguish himself from what he considers dangerous and unattractive expressions of Christian faith,” Walsh says. “My point isn’t to put Cockburn into some kind of religious box, but to explore creatively the rich spiritual images and themes in his work. Anyone drawn to Bruce’s music should enjoy this evening.” 

Cockburn is also well-known for his work on behalf of various social justice and environmental organizations. In that spirit, all the proceeds from this event ($10.00 suggested donation) will be donated in support of the “Our Space Community Centre”  and its work amongst the homeless of Peterborough. For more information contact Christian Smith at St. John’s Church .

Posted: April 5, 2009

ASPEN — Canadian musician Bruce Cockburn returns to the Wheeler Opera House in Aspen on April 7, and he says he’ll feel right at home, even though the last time he was here was in 2004, at least as far as he can recall.

Since he will be continuing the habit of solo, or nearly solo touring that began back in the 1990s, the show will feel familiar to his more dedicated fans. His set list will be made up largely of songs from his newly released CD “Slice O’ Life,” a two-disc collection of live performances drawn from 10 stops on a tour in May 2008.

“Aspen is a great place to play,” said the musician by telephone, as he drove between San Francisco and Tuscon, Ariz.

He said he has had “great skiing experiences” in his past Aspen gigs, and he has enjoyed the interplay with the audiences here. He seemed to wince when told that the snow is pretty good right now — and likely will still be good when he gets here next week — because he won’t have time to ski this go-round due to a cramped touring schedule.

Slice O Life - Live Solo

A review written for the Folk & Acoustic Music Exchange
by Mark S. Tucker

http://www.acousticmusic.com/fame/

Though Bruce Cockburn's name will not be a new one to most readers of this forum, there are a couple little-known side facts that might provoke an eyebrow or two to raise for a moment and perhaps a small chuckle of mirth to escape from lips. Early in his formative career, Cockburn joined a couple of groups, then went on to form The Flying Circus (eventually renamed Olivus) with a guy named Neil Lillie, who was to leave the ensemble, change his name to Neil Merryweather, and issue a series of LPs under the new surname, later under the full stage name, then in a trio (Merryweather, Richardson & Boers), not to mention a duo (Merryweather & Carey) featuring a singer, Lynn Carey, who formed Mama Lion with Merryweather on bass. She went on to pose for Penthouse magazine and Merryweather kept seeking the big time in a blues and psych-rock basis. Too bad he didn't stick with Cockburn, as Olivus opened for The Jimi Hendrix Experience and Cream in '68…just after Neil departed. Ironic. Oh, and Bruce appeared on Saturday Night Live as well.

Merryweather never went much of anywhere, and his last two tries followed Iron Butterfly's closing LP pair in a synchronous plummet to psychedelic mediocrity. If it's any consolation to him, though, his works are now minor cult items in the collector market and not easy to find. Cockburn, on the other hand, dropped the drug environment and mindbending music, became a Christian, some say a mystic Christian, and began an inexorable climb to ever-widening success. With this release, his oeuvre numbers in excess of 30 releases (anthologies included).

Early on, he issued Circles in the Stream, a double live LP, with an excellent backing band, producing a scintillating brace of tracks that helped curry aficionados to an ever deeper appreciation of the man's many talents. Two more live discs arose between then and now, and this is the fourth but his first solo recital live—just Cockburn, a guitar, and an effects unit. What's most surprising is how little has changed over the decades: his voice is confident and clear, lyrics as humanist as ever, and his fingerpicking just marvelous. In fact, all three may well be more polished than before—it's hard to tell with someone eternally at the top of his game. What Slice O Life is, then, is a harkening back to basics, to folkrock rudiments, while looking ever forward, especially in the writer's concern for his fellow man.

Bruce's handling of his axe is so delicate and complex that he lacks not a moment for magical sounds, feathering his distinctive voice in an atmospheric rainbow of sparkling glints and shimmering colors. Nor is his passion difficult to mistake, going from the contemplative to firm admonitions in his biggest hit If I Had a Rocket Launcher (a sentiment and determination the Left could do with a lot more of), convincing the audience of enthusiastic listeners here of the need to not disregard one's milieu or the possibility of crushing the evils surrounding us. A good deal of Cockburn's concerns zero in on being one's own and one's fellow's keeper…as a certain well-known anarchistic individual long ago instructed in Nazareth and thereabouts.

This double-CD, then, is a long immersion in what an individual and his art are capable of and a reminder to never forget that life is lived every moment, as skillfully as can be managed, radiantly if possible. The entire gig is completely engaging, accompanied by a number of spoken insights and humorous asides between cuts, mesmerizing when the composer is in his constantly unfolding troubadour persona. The entire affair goes far to resuscitate the essentiality of a single human being pouring himself out to others, standing as an exposition of what's possible if we have the heart and discipline to follow our calling. More importantly, though, it's proof that as the more centered of the Baby Boom generation ages, it's doing so neither quietly nor without reproof for historic wrongs…but also too often, as the composer is quick to point out, without the sigh of introspection.

Track List

Bruce's performance on eTown in Fort Collins, Colorado on February 18, 2009, will air the week of April 1-7, 2009. Find a station near you.

Photos from the performance compliments of Tim Reese and eTown.

Artist: Bruce Cockburn
Title: Slice O Life
Format: Double CD
Label: True North Records TND520 (Canada)
Release Date: 31 March 2009 

Reviewed by Richard Hoare
March 21, 2009

The two and a half live albums already in Cockburn’s catalogue feature a jazz trio in 1977, stick and drum wonderment in 1989, and a rock sound in 1997. The first two albums both include examples of Bruce playing solo. However, this new double CD album produced by Colin Linden is the first wholly live solo recording. The sleeve notes are by Bruce himself and the following extract assists in understanding what you hear:-  

   “These performances are drawn from ten concerts recorded in May '08. We've made an effort to put them together as one show, in the hope of giving you the feeling of being present in the flesh. For the same reason, we chose not to apply too much polish. What you hear is what it was.” 

Before the paying audience ever hears Bruce play a note of a show he has often played a complete set in the sound check earlier in the day which contributes enormously to why generally he is so good in concert. The sound check here includes Bruce warming up on his twelve string guitar which evolves into part of The Trains Don't Go There Anymore which is a better performance than his studio version on the 2008 CD Dancing Alone – Songs of William Hawkins. Cockburn continues with a slow exploratory Kit Carson which ends with a flaring noise from his guitar effect, prompting a quip about its resemblance to automatic weapon fire!  The bluesy Mama Just Wants To Barrelhouse All Night Long provides the canvas for Bruce to open up and improvise.  

All artists settle into a live performance which is a combination of a whole host of factors including the vibe from the auditorium which is now full of people. What I wasn’t prepared for was that the CD has been sequenced so that there are several tracks of Bruce settling into the gig. The re-arranged solo version of World Of Wonders has been one of my in-concert favourites since I heard him play it in Glasgow in 2002 at the end of the gig. The version here is not as ethereal as I have heard live before and See You Tomorrow suffers from strained vocals. I am also a little disconcerted by the raucous  audience which seems to take away some of the gravitas from this world class performer. 

 For me the set really kicks in five numbers into the CD with a fine rendition of How I Spent My Fall Vacation, which is prefaced with a completely left field reference – 25 seconds of what sounds like the melody of Silhouettes by The Diamonds, a Canadian group, which reached No.10 in Billboard in 1957. It was then a hit again for Herman’s Hermits in1965 on both sides of the Atlantic. 

Bruce then hits his stride with a blistering take of Tibetan Side of Town, which is followed by an appropriately slow world weary Pacing The Cage. In fact, for me this latter track and Celestial Horses, later in the set, are better performances than their studio counterparts. End Of All Rivers is the instrumental of the set and is a fine example of what you can do with a delay effect and imagination. Disc one ends with Soul Of A Man, one of very few cover versions that made it onto one of his regular releases. He dug deep into the original Blind Willie Johnson performance and makes it his own. 

Disc two starts off flying with Wait No More with that great strident middle-eastern urgency. The only new number is City Is Hungry which is, by his own admission, tentative and comprises observations of New York where Bruce has been spending a proportion of his time recently. From this slow blues Bruce launches into the other dazzling take of the record, Put In It Your Heart. 

It is strange when there were ten performances to choose from that, to my ears, the dynamite performances are found in the less well known songs.  

A selection of the performances as snapshots are well described by the term Slice O Life but the material and the “between song” stories, which often have a playful quality, are the Body O Work viz:-   

Wondering Where The Lions Are – The breakthrough single that went to the top 40 in 1980 in the US.
Lovers In a Dangerous Time – U2 borrowed a line from this 1983 single for their song God Part II.
If I Had A Rocket Launcher – The other song from 1983 that garnered so much controversial press in the US.
World Of Wonders – A timeless universal lyric from the 1985 album of the same name.
If A Tree Falls – The ecology single from 1988 that received widespread radio play.
Tibetan Side of Town – An example of Cockburn’s well observed travels.
Put It In Your Heart – Bruce’s response to 9/11.
Child Of The Wind – An autobiographical tale of being out on the road till the end of his days.
Tie Me At The Crossroads … “when I die” sings Bruce. The blues myth is that you went to the crossroads to sell your soul to the devil! 

If you are a long term fan then you might be over familiar with some of this material, but this is a very cleverly compiled double CD which is in effect a Story of Bruce Cockburn.

 Amen