______________________
news from
the cockburn project
at
www.cockburnproject.net
______________________

26 July 2002

News from True North:

We will start recording sometime in October however we are doing lots
of
prep now.

Bruce and Colin Linden will be co-producing and Hugh Marsh will have a
prominent role in the record. Bruce has around 17 songs and we may
or may
not record them all. He has been doing some of them during his
recent
shows. We do hope to have the new CD out sometime in the spring of
2003 or early summer.
======================================================================
Doesn't that set the heart to dancing, knowing there's something new
on the horizon from Bruce?

Bruce is out and about touring and apparently doing his usual, GREAT
job of it! Reader Roberta Mueller contributed this review from the
Milwaukee JournalSentinel and an interview from an earlier issue of
the same paper.

The show in Milwaukee last night was magnificent. Here's a review
that was in the Milwaukee Journal/Sentinal this morning:

No Colvin no problem as Cockburn wows the crowd
By DAVE TIANEN
of the Journal Sentinel staff
Last Updated: July 25, 2002

At 5 p.m. Wednesday, 2 1/2 hours before showtime, promoter Peter Jest
got a call that one-half of his double bill at the Pabst Theater
wasn't going to show.

Shawn Colvin was stuck in Dallas following two canceled flights.
Generously, co-headliner Bruce Cockburn consented to play two sets,
and Jest decided to give the audience the choice of a refund or
opting to see just Cockburn. Since Shawn Colvin had a Top 10 hit
in '97 with "Sunny Came Home," she is far better known in the States
than the Canadian folk rocker. You might reasonably have expected
most of the crowd to pull out.

Interestingly, only about 100 of 700 ticket buyers chose to get their
money back.

The majority chose wisely.

One of the eternal mysteries of music in the past 30 years is why
Bruce Cockburn has never become more than a cult figure in the United
States. As he demonstrated again Wednesday, he is a superb and
multifaceted artist. A gifted composer with a passionate heart and an
articulate mind, he turns a phrase as well as any singer/songwriter
out there.

Consider just a couple examples from Wednesday. There's that second
verse from "World of Wonders": "Somewhere a saxophone slides through
changes; Like a wet pipe dripping down my neck; Gives me a chill -
sounds like danger; But I can't stop moving 'til I cross this
sector."

Or that line from "Lovers in a Dangerous Time" - "Got to kick at the
darkness 'til it bleeds daylight."

Wednesday's gig was a solo show, and there's no place to hide in that
format. But great songs, deft guitar skills, expressive singing and a
relaxed and witty stage presence brought Cockburn through with ease.
It is surely not the least of Cockburn's talents that he can write
tender love songs like "Anything Anytime Anywhere" and be just as
convincing on songs of righteous anger like "If I Had a Rocket
Launcher." Wednesday's set featured a new song called "Trickle Down,"
certainly one of the few songs written on tax theory.

Cockburn is one '60s survivor whose political convictions have grown
sharper with age. That sometimes makes him doctrinaire, but it also
makes him interesting and gives him a shared bond of common faith
with his audience.

There is one reservation. Songs like "If I Had a Rocket Launcher"
and "Call It Democracy" fairly seethe with outrage, but they're also
laden with an irony that goes unacknowledged by the artist and
seemingly unnoticed by the audience. When Cockburn rages about
the "tyranny of so-called developed nations," he does so to an
applauding and affluent all-white audience that surely ranks among
the wealthiest 5% on the planet.

Surely an irony that ponderous is worthy of some confrontation of its
own.

======================================================================
This one appeared 7/22/02:

Cockburn's songs stir up things
By DAVE TIANEN of the Journal Sentinel staff
Last Updated: July 21, 2002
Some musicians just want to move your butt.

Bruce Cockburn wants to engage your mind.

The 57-year-old Canadian has written his share of love songs and
straight-up rockers, but the songs he's best known for grapple with
issues of corporate greed, international conflict, environmental
abuse and political oppression.

And he's also an outspoken Christian.

On Wednesday, Cockburn returns to Milwaukee for a co-headlining show
with Shawn Colvin at the Pabst Theater.

Earlier this year, Sony released a Cockburn greatest hits anthology
called "Anything Anytime Anywhere: Singles 1979-2002."

As always with Cockburn, the set is dotted with songs meant to
irritate the conscience, needle the arrogant and nudge us toward a
better world. Songs like "If I Had a Rocket Launcher," "Call It
Democracy" and "Tokyo."

But Cockburn insists he never had much in way of political
convictions until he started wandering about the planet as a
musician.

"No interest or convictions," he said. "Really. I lived in Boston in
the '60s for a couple of years. If I had been inclined to be involved
in politics, the opportunity was certainly there.

"This was during the whole Vietnam War. I heard people talking about
these things, but I thought, 'I'm an artist. I don't need to worry
about that (expletive).' It didn't take much exposure to the world to
learn that you can ignore politics all you want, but it doesn't
ignore you."

Cockburn goes so far as to argue that a certain amount of political
apathy is the natural Canadian condition.

"I think the relative affluence of Canada has a lot to do with it,"
he said. "People are comfortable. They don't feel the need to be
vigorously involved with one thing or another. . . . It's partly
historical. It was pointed out by a Canadian writer relatively
recently that one of the differences historically between Canada and
the U.S. is that Canada was built on consensus. Everything in the
early days, when we were negotiating independence from Britain and
what sort
of a nation we would become, everything was based on consensus.

"In the U.S., it's based on majority rules, and it's based on
revolution. It's quite a different thing."

There's an interesting thread of ambivalence in Cockburn's relation
to the U.S.

He acknowledges that the U.S. has been very good to him, that many of
his cultural heroes and influences are American, and that in many
ways Canada is a cultural echo of the U.S.

"Culturally, that's pretty much what it is," Cockburn
said. "Politically, it isn't, of course, because we don't get to vote
on what happens in the U.S. . . . There's something in the Canadian
makeup that makes us not want to go completely headlong into the U.S.
thing. The queen is still on the money, and every now and then,
somebody in the paper will talk about the danger of too much
Americanization.

"The obvious facts relative to the U.S. and Canada is that the U.S.
has a huge amount of power in the world and Canada does not.
Everything else you say about those two countries is colored by that
fact."

For a while after Sept. 11, Cockburn stopped performing some of his
more critical American material such as "If I Had a Rocket Launcher."

That moratorium has passed.

"I was doing it in shows out West recently," he said. "I felt things
had settled out a little bit. I just felt that after 9-11 emotions
that were floating around in the U.S. were so volatile, I didn't want
to play into that."

One of the intriguing things about Cockburn is that he has the aura
of a stubborn man who doesn't fit in.

He's a Christian, but he doesn't share the conservative political
values of the Christian political establishment in the U.S. He's also
a bit too conscience-stricken and spiritual to meld with the good old
rock 'n' roll hedonists.

That lack of conformity doesn't seem to be stressing him unduly,
however.

"You can worry about that. I don't," Cockburn said. "People can file
me under whatever label is convenient, but I'm just a guy with a
life."

Thanks, Roberta! That's it for this issue of The Cockburn News. I
hope you are all getting to enjoy some of the lazy, hazy days of
summer and that that haze is from humidity, not the forest fires
burning all over the place!

Peace,
Suzanne Myers
editor@...