Bruce Cockburn to Release THE BLOOD OF OTHERS on Sunset Boulevard Records
The singer-songwriter drew the album's title from a Simone de Beauvoir novel written during the Nazi occupation of France.
Bruce Cockburn is set to release THE BLOOD OF OTHERS, a new album of songs written by other artists, on Sunset Boulevard Records. The collection traces musical influences that shaped Cockburn before he began writing his own material, drawing on gospel and blues recordings he heard growing up in Ottawa as well as songs from the folk clubs and coffeehouses where he got his start.
Bruce Cockburn has spent more than five decades writing some of the most enduring songs in Canadian music, and on his new album, 'The Blood of Others,' released October 16th through Sunset Boulevard Records, he turns his attention to the songs that shaped him long before he wrote a single lyric of his own.
The album gathers material written by others, tracing a musical lineage that stretches from the gospel and blues records he heard as a child in Ottawa to the folk clubs and coffeehouses where he first found his voice. 'What began back in the eighties as a vague notion grew over time into a strong desire to put together a collection of material, written by others, that I found sticking to the edges of my musical landscape,' Cockburn explains. 'The accumulation of these songs started in the sixties, before I'd even begun to try to create my own.'
The album's title comes from an unexpected literary source, Simone de Beauvoir's novel of the same name, written during the Nazi occupation of France. 'Among other things it deals with personal responsibility in the face of scary oppression, and the kinds of choices people make,' he says. 'I have borrowed the title because it seems perfect for an album of songs I didn't write.'
'The Blood of Others' opens with 'Wish I Was in Heaven Sitting Down,' a Robert Wilkins gospel number Cockburn first encountered on an early '70s compilation. 'Wilkins' powerful bottle neck guitar and passionate singing made this conversation with God instantly memorable,' he says, noting he reworked the arrangement using the angular harmonies of his DADGAD tuning. From there, the album moves into 'As Time Goes By,' the Herman Hupfeld standard forever tied to Casablanca. 'Who doesn't love the scene in Casablanca in which Dooley Wilson plays this song, Ingrid Bergman at his side?' Cockburn says. 'I thought I should include the original preamble, which gives the familiar part of the song a context, but it seemed to want an update. Hopefully Herman approves.'
The album also traces Cockburn's early fascination with jazz and ragtime through 'Buddy Bolden's Blues,' a song he learned not from a record but from a book. 'My friends were singing country blues and old timey music,' he recalls. 'I was drawn to the somewhat more sophisticated style of ragtime and early jazz.' That thread continues on 'You Belong to Me,' a song Jo Stafford's voice carried into his childhood home. 'Jo Stafford's gorgeously true voice was all over the radio with this when I was five,' Cockburn says. 'The geographical references were exciting, awakening the travel bug in me years before On the Road lit a fire under it.'
Elvis Presley's influence looms large on 'The Blood of Others' as well, most directly on 'That's Alright.' 'Elvis Presley hit the radio in Ottawa right when I was hitting adolescence,' Cockburn says. 'He was captivatingly charismatic of course, but the guitar. Scotty Moore's leads, by turns raucous and tender, bred a burning desire to play the instrument.' Cockburn notes his own version leans closer to Arthur Crudup's original recording than to Presley's.
A hometown connection surfaces on 'Four Strong Winds,' the youngest song on the record. Cockburn credits Le Hibou, the Ottawa coffeehouse he calls his spiritual home, for introducing him to the song's writers, Ian and Sylvia, who played the venue regularly through the sixties. 'We were all very excited when their song showed up on the radio,' he says.
The album's emotional core runs through several songs tied to formative personal memories. 'God Bless the Child,' the Billie Holiday and Arthur Herzog standard, dates back to a record Cockburn bought with his Sunday collection money as a teen. 'A couple of years later I got to hear Billie Holiday's original version,' he says. 'Theologically a bit off base, but a deeply moving expression of disappointment with the human species.' 'Louis Collins,' the Mississippi John Hurt classic, arrived through an afternoon Cockburn still remembers in vivid detail. 'Barbie Luther invited me to her parents' house to listen to music,' he recalls. 'She opened a bottle of Mateus wine and put on Mississippi John Hurt's rediscovery album. I was blown away by the sweetness, the idiosyncratic phrasing and the way he put voice and fingerpicked guitar together.'
Cockburn also revisits 'Yellow Dog Blues,' a song he first heard on a Bessie Smith collection as a youth boy. 'Right away I fell in love with the lyrics,' he says, tracing the song's origins to WC Handy's time in Clarksdale, Mississippi. 'Fare Thee Well' carries its own full circle story, one that connects Cockburn's earliest musical memories to a career highlight decades later. 'It came back to mind when I got to perform it with the McGarrigle sisters at Pete Seeger's ninetieth birthday event in NYC,' he says.
Few songs on the record carry the personal resonance of 'I'll Be Seeing You.' Cockburn describes hearing a version on the radio in the nineties, in the aftermath of what he calls 'a brief but heart opening relationship,' and mishearing a lyric that reshaped how he understood the song. 'I thought that version ended with the line, I'll be looking at someone, but I'll be seeing you,' he says. 'That's not in the original lyrics. They only refer to the moon, but it hit me in a powerful way.' That memory led him to give the song a rhythmic treatment inspired by 'I Only Have Eyes for You.'
The album also carries a story about the road not taken. Cockburn recounts a night in Ottawa when he and friends dressed up to see blues guitarist Lonnie Johnson, whose 1964 Paris recordings had captivated him years earlier, and requested 'Laplegged Drunk Again' from the stage. 'He shook his head and smiled, and said, Oh, I can't play that song in a place like this,' Cockburn remembers. The record closes out its story arc with 'One for My Baby,' a Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen standard Cockburn traces to Frank Sinatra's 1958 recording, 'Les Feuilles Mortes,' the French original of 'Autumn Leaves' that Cockburn discovered through the poetry of Jacques Prévert, and 'Peace in the Valley,' a Thomas A. Dorsey gospel song Cockburn first heard through Elvis Presley.
'The Blood of Others' marks Cockburn's 39th album, a milestone that speaks to the remarkable consistency of a career that began in 1970. Along the way, he has earned 13 Juno Awards, been inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, received the Governor General's Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement, named an Officer of the Order of Canada, and awarded 9 Honourary Doctorates including the Berklee School of Music. His songs, including 'Lovers in a Dangerous Time,' 'Wondering Where the Lions Are,' and 'If I Had a Rocket Launcher,' remain touchstones of Canadian songwriting, covered by artists from the Barenaked Ladies to Jimmy Buffett to Jerry Garcia.
That legacy was still growing as recently as his previous studio release, 'O Sun O Moon,' recorded in Nashville with longtime producer Colin Linden. 'Time takes its toll, but in my soul I'm on a roll,' Cockburn sang on that album's opening track, a line that could just as easily describe the restless curiosity behind 'The Blood of Others.' Speaking about his songwriting at the time, Cockburn put it simply: 'I just don't want to ever keep doing the same thing.' With this new record, he proves that philosophy extends even to the songs he didn't write himself, each one chosen and reshaped with the same care and instinct that has defined his catalogue since 1970.
Cockburn will bring these songs to audiences across North America on an extensive run of tour dates.
Tour Dates
Aug 7 — Los Angeles, CA — Ford Theatre **
Aug 26 — Iowa City, IA — Englert Theatre **
Aug 27 — Des Moines, IA — Hoyt Sherman Place **
Sep 8 — Omaha, NE — Astro Theater **
Sep 9 — Lawrence, KS — Liberty Hall **
Oct 3 — Eugene, OR — McDonald Theatre **
Oct 15 — Kitchener, ON — Centre in the Square
Oct 16 — Ottawa, ON — National Arts Centre
Oct 17 — Toronto, ON — Massey Hall
Oct 18 — Montréal, QC — Gesù Salle
Oct 20 — Plymouth, NH — Flying Monkey&
Oct 21 — Portland, ME — State Theatre&
Oct 23 — Boston, MA — Chevalier Theatre&
Oct 24 — New York, NY — Town Hall&
Oct 25 — Philadelphia, PA — Keswick Theatre&
Oct 27 — Washington, DC — Warner Theatre&
Oct 29 — Durham, NC — Fletcher Hall&
Oct 30 — Charlotte, NC — Carolina Theatre&
Nov 1 — Nashville, TN — CMA Theatre&
Nov 2 — Knoxville, TN — Bijou Theatre&
Nov 4 — Atlanta, GA — Variety Playhouse&
Nov 6 — Ponte Vedra, FL — Ponte Vedra Concert Hall&
Nov 7 — Fort Lauderdale, FL — Amaturo Theatre&
Nov 8 — Key West, FL — Key West Theatre&
** With Judy Collins
& With Livingston Taylor
Cockburn has said the idea for the project began taking shape in the 1980s, growing out of songs that had stayed with him since the 1960s. The album's title borrows from Simone de Beauvoir's novel of the same name, written during the Nazi occupation of France, which Cockburn has cited as fitting for a collection of songs he did not write himself.
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