Cockburn back on track
Singer-songwriter releases new album, tours Maritimes
Bruce Cockburn hasn’t exactly led an unexamined life.
The Canadian singersongwriter published a memoir in 2014, has been the subject of biographical documentaries and likely submitted to countless newspaper and magazine interviews throughout his career.
The most conspicuous evidence about himself, though, is contained in his large catalogue of songs, starting with his self-titled debut in 1970 as a fresh-faced folkie. After a recent tuneless dry spell he found worrisome, Cockburn, 72, releases his 33rd album, Bone on Bone, on Sept. 15 and commences a tour next week in the Maritimes.
Cockburn considered during a phone interview whether he had enough perspective to judge the depth of his new work.
“I wonder if I do,” he said. “Let’s see. Let’s think about that for a minute.
“I wouldn’t dispute that it’s an introspective album at all. In that sense, in my mind, it would be typical of most of what I’ve done. I think that’s just as true of the stuff that people wouldn’t necessarily interpret that way. . . People think If I Had a Rocket Launcher, for instance, is some sort of political polemic but it’s a totally introspective song. That might not be how people heard it on the radio, but that’s what it is.
“I don’t know that this album is more introspective than that, it’s just maybe because there’s nothing that can be attached to a social issue or whatever.”
The cover art of Bone on Bone even shows Cockburn peering intently through a magnifying glass, suggesting that topics will be subject to investigation.
“Yeah, there’s not much hidden from view; not much that’s interesting, at least. It just goes with the territory. The alternative was to remain in obscurity,” he said.
“People get to hear my songs, and I get to make my living doing what I do.”
Cockburn fans should find
Bone on Bone fits just fine alongside his best work. There are several spiritual songs, a version of Twelve Gates to the City that should sate blues fans and the title track, a deft guitar instrumental.
“You’ve probably read all the crap they’re sending around so you know that it’s the first in a while because I was working on the memoir, then after the memoir was done — I spent three years writing prose — I wasn’t sure I was going to have any more song ideas. I was very relieved when they started coming.”
So, the man who came up with Lovers in a Dangerous Time, If a Tree Falls and Wondering Where the Lions Are was sort of left waiting for a miracle. One arrived, so to speak, in the form of the raspy 3 Al Purdys, something initially intended for a completely different project that ultimately sparked a fresh creative period.
“It came about because there were some folks in Ontario who were about to make a documentary on Al Purdy, who’s one of the all-time great Canadian poets,” Cockburn said.
“He would have been of my dad’s generation; a really great wordsmith and a kind of quintessential Canadian, as far as that goes.
“I figured this would be a chance to find out if I was going to be writing songs again — or not. If I could do something for the film, it would kind of get the whole creative process rolling. And it worked out; right away, I got this idea for a homeless guy who’s obsessed with Purdy’s poetry and raps it on the street.
“After that, the songs just started to flow.”
The band he’s taking on the road will feature drummer Gary Craig, bassist John Dymond and Cockburn’s nephew, accordionist John Aaron Cockburn. They will gather for about a week in Toronto to go over the show, which Cockburn suggested would already be in firm shape on the East Coast.
Cockburn plays Halifax on Sept. 16 at the Rebecca Cohn Auditorium, with Terra Lightfoot opening. There are also shows Sept. 15 in Fredericton and Sept. 17 in Summerside.