Thirteen-time Juno Award recipient and Canadian Music Hall of Fame Inductee Bruce Cockburn recently appeared at The Centre in Vancouver for Performing Arts in a sold-out show that featured selections from across his 50+ year career. As someone who’s followed Cockburn’s work for 45 of those years, this Vancouver concert confirmed everything I love about his music and was a beautiful reaffirmation of how art connects us all through space and time.
Cockburn has released 40 live and studio albums since 1970, the latest of which, 2023’s O Sun O Moon (True North Records) featuring contributions from Shawn Colvin, Allison Russell, Buddy Miller, Susan Aglukark, and Colin Linden, among others, is the basis for this latest tour, including March 14 at The Centre in Vancouver for Performing Arts. My admiration and fan devotion for Bruce began in 1981 when I first saw him perform in Fort Collins, Colorado, at one of the finest (if not the best) live performances I’ve ever witnessed (a 20-minute power outage mid-concert prompted Bruce and his band to improvise, unplugged, throughout the interruption, finishing the song without missing a beat once the electricity returned).
Since then, I’ve consumed every album he’s released and attended dozens of his concerts, each a unique experience. Bruce’s ability to reflect in song his life view and personal circumstances is unmatched, whether as a Christian folkie, political activist, or international troubadour. Truth be told, each one of those descriptions still applies and today sum up the artist, and soul of the man.
Stream O Sun O Moon by Bruce Cockburn on Spotify:
His first solo appearance in 1967 at Ontario’s Mariposa Folk Festival put Cockburn on the musical map in Canada. His self-titled debut album, released in 1970, produced his first single, “Going to the Country,” and an appearance on RPM Magazine’s Top 50 Canadian Chart. Though raised as agnostic, the natural world and Christian imagery permeated much of his early 1970s songwriting, a theme that informed his human rights and environmental activism throughout the 1980s and ‘90s with songs like “Lovers in a Dangerous Time,” “Creation Dream,” and “If I had a Rocket Launcher.”
Watch Bruce Cockburn perform live in 1985 on the German music television show, Rockpalast, via YouTube:
The 1979 release of his ninth studio album, Dancing in the Dragon’s Jaw (True North Records), yielded his first genuine hit, “Wondering Where the Lions Are,” and introduced Cockburn to a massive international following, even earning him an appearance on Saturday Night Live in 1980. During the next two decades his songs reflected his human rights work with Oxfam and increasing political activism. Albums like Humans, Inner City Front, and The Trouble with Normal first hinted at his internationalism and human rights concerns. The 1984 release, Stealing Fire, was a watershed moment for Cockburn as the album’s songs reflected a unique musical sophistication with lyrics both specific and timeless.
In contrast to decrying human rights abuses, he has been a champion for music worldwide incorporating influences from Tibet, Nicaragua, and Mali into his own songwriting. In the late ‘90s, Bruce travelled to Mali, West Africa where he jammed with Grammy Award-winning blues musician Ali Farka Toure and kora master Toumani Diabate. Documented in the film River of Sand, it won the Regard Canadien award for best documentary at the Vues d’Afrique Film Festival in Montreal.
Watch Bruce Cockburn perform “World of Wonders” with Toumani Diabate, master of the Kora, (from the film River of Sand) on YouTube:
21st century Bruce Cockburn has mellowed with age, though he is no less outspoken about his beliefs and dedication to his craft, despite health hardships he’s experienced over the last few years. He’s been diagnosed with Meniere’s Disease, a chronic inner ear disorder, which affects equilibrium producing vertigo and a particularly cruel form of spinal osteoarthritis. As a result, he now moves with two walking sticks and with arthritis also affecting his hands, has had to reconfigure a number of songs so he can continue performing them.
The concert at The Centre gave us the Bruce many of us have known and loved over the decades. Looking fit and enthused (despite suffering the effects of a cold virus he’d picked up a few days earlier), the adoring audience hung on every note, lyric, and word he spoke, prompting some spirited banter throughout the evening as Bruce’s concerts are inclined to do. Indeed, the opening song was restarted as a result of a momentarily forgotten lyric that compelled one audience member to loudly proclaim, “We love you, Bruce!” That moment of grace allowed the beloved Canadian singer-songwriter to reset and deliver a nearly flawless performance.
Opening with “The Blues Got the World by the Balls,” (from 1972’s Night Vision) he playfully noted afterward, “now that we have the deep stuff out of the way,” and continued with the Blind Willie Johnson classic, “Soul of a Man.” A couple of deep cuts, “The Whole Night Sky” and “When You Give it Away” segued into two new songs from O Sun O Moon, “King of the Bolero,” and “Push Comes to Shove.”
Responding to an audience request for “Get Up Jonah” he amiably but succinctly replied, “no.” In a recent interview, he addressed the issue, “Songs that I’m doing are the ones that people would want to hear. I had to come up with a new way of playing ‘All the Diamonds in the World,’ for instance, and ‘Pacing the Cage’ and a couple of other things that people are always asking for. For a long time, I’d have to say, ‘No, sorry, can’t do it because my hand won’t make those chord shapes.’ And that’s one area where using alt tunings can be very helpful.”
And then we got the evening’s first classic piece, “All the Diamonds.” From his 1973 album, Sun, Sand and Time, the song is one of his more “Christian” tunes, its lyrics reflecting the comingling of the natural world with divine:
“Silver scales flash bright and fade
In reeds along the shore
Like a pearl in sea of liquid jade
His ship comes shining
Like a crystal swan in a sky of suns
His ship comes shining.”
Although the melody follows a fairly traditional folk chording progression, “Diamonds” is one of the tunes he has, essentially, had to recompose in order to perform it. To my ears, the new arrangement is just as lovely and moving as the original.
Vowing to return after a short break, he closed the first set with “On a Roll,” a new song that celebrates life despite personal and physical setbacks. Talking recently about the song, Bruce said, “I think that “On a Roll” is a celebration of the fact I feel like – at least while I was writing that song – that light will triumph. Also, that when I cross that boundary to whatever comes next, I’m gonna find myself in a good place. That’s what the hope really is.” And as if to emphasize the point, at the song’s conclusion, he stood, gathered his walking sticks, and strode purposefully off the stage.
Watch Bruce Cockburn perform “On a Roll” live on E-Town:
Setlist:
The Blues Got the World by the Balls
Soul of a Man (Blind Willie Johnson)
The Whole Night Sky
When You Give It Away
King of the Bolero
Push Comes to Shove
All the Diamonds in the World
On a Roll
Starwheel
Café Society
3 Al Purdys
Understanding Nothing
To Keep the World We Know
Pacing the Cage
Wondering Where the Lions Are
Tie Me at the Crossroads
Encore:
Burn
When the Spirit Walks in the Room
The second set began as the first ended, with Bruce vigorously returning to the stage, carefully laying his walking sticks within easy reach and settling, nestlike, onto a stool surrounded by his guitars and the chimes he’d employ on the Tibetan inspired “Understanding Nothing” later in the set. Opening with the imagery rich “Starwheel” (from Joy Will Find a Way, 1975) he introduced “Café Society” from his 2017 album, Bone on Bone, with his first political statement of the evening. Remarking that he doesn’t believe in the devil, evil nonetheless exists in the world and lamented that it’s on the ascendency. Given the current tension that exists between Canada and the U.S., his comment was not lost on anyone in the room. Driving home the point, the introduction to the next song, “3 Al Purdys” (about Canadian poet, Al Purdy), was “100% Canadian content.”
The set continued with the mysticism of “Understanding Nothing” which led into the pure environmentalism of “To Keep the World We Know” written with Canadian singer-songwriter Susan Aglukark and performed on the dulcimer. The highlight of the evening came next, an absolutely gorgeous rendering of “Pacing the Cage.” I’m fairly certain I wasn’t the only one with water rising to my eyes as the song’s last notes floated up into the air.
Watch Bruce Cockburn perform “Pacing the Cage” at Jackson Triggs Winery in Ontario on July 6, 2024 (courtesy Phil Taylor):
Gathering musical steam, Bruce performed energetic versions of “Wondering Where the Lions Are” and “Tie Me at the Crossroads,” both singalongs, to conclude the show. After a short break, he returned for two encores. The first, “Burn” made in song his second political statement of the night: “Look away across the bay, Yankee gunboat come this way, Uncle Sam gonna save the day, come tomorrow we all gonna pay.” The second encore, “When the Spirit Walks in the Room,” turned the mood around 180 degrees, sending us home with full hearts, and clear heads, reminding us to make the most of our time on earth: “On the march or on the run, it matters not, what you have done, nor what you’ll do, nor what you’ll say, we play the role we’re made to play. We’re but threads upon the loom, when the spirit walks in the room.”
Bruce continues his spring 2025 tour, with dates scheduled on the USA east coast in May. For more music, video, and tour information, please visit Bruce Cockburn’s website.
Here are some more photos of Bruce Cockburn at The Centre in Vancouver for Performing Arts on March 14, 2025. All photos courtesy of and copyright Mark Caicedo (except as noted).
