Bruce Cockburn’s lyrics, voice ring as true today as in 1972

Other than modern microphones and guitars, a tidy Letterman beard and a walking stick, Bruce Cockburn’s concert setup likely hasn’t changed much since he began touring in the early 1970s.

A stool, a box to rest his left foot and a music stand graced a mostly empty Burton Cummings Theatre stage at his sold-out 50th-anniversary concert Friday night that cast a musical spell on the crowd.

His voice has stood up to the test of time, too, and whether he sang tunes he wrote in 1971 or 2022, the 77-year-old’s vocals remained far smoother than most artists his age who continue to tour.

What’s really changed since 1970 is that Cockburn has an overflowing sack of songs he’s written and recorded that have become standards in the folk-music lexicon.

Many of the topics he’s written about, such as the fragility of our environment, remain as topical in 2023 as when his self-titled debut album came out in 1970.

”You’re going to hear some old stuff, some new stuff… stuff from the Pleistocene period,” he joked after playing After the Rain, from 1979, and a relative newbie, Night Train, from 1996. “Perhaps this is late Roman Empire.”

While many acts young and old can get a musical lift from accompanying musicians or amplifiers that can drown out a guitarist’s flub, Cockburn allowed himself no such crutch Friday. He strummed a pretty cool six-string, and during Night Train grooved as relentlessly as a locomotive.

Cockburn kicked it up a notch later with an instrumental, The End of All Rivers, showing off some mighty finger-picking on a steel guitar that was mesmerizing.

He heartened back at many moments of his life during the show, whether it was his first trip to Central America with the charity Oxfam, or his worries about whether he’d lost his touch after he spent a couple of years writing his memoir, Rumours of Glory, in 2014.

“Are you still a songwriter?” he recalled saying as he looked at himself in the mirror at the time.

Fortunately for us, a documentary about Canadian poet Al Purdy wanted a song from Cockburn, and he was able to create 3 Al Purdys from the perspective of a penniless man who remembered Purdy’s verses, which was a highlight from Cockburn’s opening set.

The setlist ranged from 1971’s Let Us Go Laughing, from Cockburn’s second album, High Winds, White Sky, to a new tune early in his second set, When the Spirit Walks in the Room, which he began performing in concerts last year and will be part of an upcoming album of new works.

It will add to Cockburn’s trove of more than 350 songs he’s recorded since 1970, and When the Spirit Walks in the Room fits well among many Cockburn classics that speak to equality and how we’re part of a global community.

“You’re a thread upon the loom / When the spirit walks in the room,” he sang during its chorus.

The show had an intermission, letting Cockburn and his crowd stretch out after an hour-long opening set.

“Time to check on the babysitter… or the old folks’ sitter,” he joked for the crowd, most of whom have followed him his entire career, which includes seven appearances at the Winnipeg Folk Festival, the show’s presenter.

There was also room Friday for Cockburn’s hits such as Lovers in a Dangerous Time, and he can still hit the high notes that helped make the song a radio staple when it came out in 1984.

While some of Cockburn’s topical songs from the past still resonate today, songs such as Stolen Land, which he wrote about the Haida in 1987, ring even truer today. The lyrics are almost ripped from current events: “Kidnap all the children / Put ‘em in a foreign system / Bring ‘em up in no man’s land / Where no one really wants them.”

It earned whoops and applause as loud as Cockburn’s famous hits, including Wondering Where the Lions Are, one of the evening’s closers.

Alan.Small@freepress.com

Twitter: @AlanDSmall

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