Bruce Cockburn

About the Show

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 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’ 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.