Bruce Cockburn: On a Roll

Mary Anne Ivison (Voiceover)  0:02  
The Women Of Ill Repute with your hosts Wendy Mesley and Maureen Holloway.

Wendy Mesley  0:06  
So Moe, I like you, I think we are super excited to talk to our guests this week.

Maureen Holloway  0:06  
I know I am. I know this is going to sound a little odd, but when I was younger, I used to think I didn't have to worry about the world so much if Bruce Bruce Cockburn was doing that for me. 

Wendy Mesley  0:22  
Yeah, he was gonna save the world. And he wrote all these catchy tunes. In case you need reminding which I'm sure nobody does. Wonder Where The Lions Are.   Lovers in the dangerous time, catchy tunes.

Maureen Holloway  0:35  
Well gather around and listen up kids. Bruce Cockburn is one of Canada's most revered singer songwriters. If not the world's he was born in Ottawa. He's had he is having a remarkably long and varied career. Not only as a musician, but as an activist, very outspoken one concerned about the environment Indigenous rights, humanitarian causes, long before the world I'm gonna say woke up to these issues if if they, did if we have.

Wendy Mesley  1:03  
Yeah, I don't know. Are we are we awake? If in fact, I was woken up anyway. If you're wondering where the lions are, they are some still at the and here are some numbers for you. Bruce has released I think it's 38 albums. We'll have to double check. His latest is 'Oh, Son, Oh, Moon'. 22 of those albums have gone Gold or Platinum. He's won 13 Juno Awards. He was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. He's been married twice, is the father of two daughters, one in her 40s the other I think she's still 11. Maybe she's turned 12. Either way, good luck. And he's heading out on tour this spring at the age of 78.

Maureen Holloway  1:42  
Wow. All right. So lots of talk about. I would like to mention that Bruce also wrote and performed the theme song to Franklin The Turtle, which is how he's best known in our household. Every day, so it's not all falling trees and rocket launchers, but it is that to Bruce Cockburn , thank you so much for joining us. It's such an honor and a pleasure to have you here.

Bruce Cockburn  1:42  
Well, thank you. It's lovely to be had. 

Maureen Holloway  1:46  
Nice to get out.

So are we having you a nice beard by the way? You've got a very long almost Santa Claus he kind of beard but-

Letterman, I would say more David Letterman.

Wendy Mesley  2:19  
How is it changing the world making the world a better place going? I mean, Maureen says she counted on you? I'm not sure it's getting better is it?

Bruce Cockburn  2:26  
Bad idea counting on me for that. But you know, the world changes. It's just by definition, we can we have to ride those changes and shape them if we can. But I, you know, I don't have a great deal of faith is the wrong word. I don't put a great deal of stock in the the notion that any individual can do much about anything. And yet, it's the individuals who do I mean, Martin Luther King, or or David Suzuki, for that matter, I can have an effect. But the problem is to translate the difficulty has to translate that effect into is something that spreads more broadly than just the people who are paying attention to those individuals. So that that becomes very, a kind of a crapshoot. And we can see where we are, I mean, there's probably a more widespread understanding of the predicament the world is in, at this moment in history than there's ever been. And yet the decision makers are still making their own decisions constantly. But by design, I mean, they're not they're not ignorant of the issues. They're, some of them are in denial about it, but not for lack of information. It's just just a choice like, okay, well, I don't, I'm not I'm gonna disregard this bunch of warnings, because it's because I'm making money the other way, you know, confronted with that, how much can we do to change the world? I don't know. I just, like I said, I see it as kind of writing the changes and doing whatever you can where you can.

Maureen Holloway  3:50  
One way of doing it, though, of what you do is to introduce these issues through popular culture. So you know, I've been having Wonder Where The Lions Are, since we knew you were coming on and people by listening to your music and singing along or knowing it, they actually thinking about what they're saying, is probably more effective than being hammered over the head by earnest do gooders who a lot of people find either boring or don't want to deal with it. I mean, pop culture is a wonderful way to to affect change.

Bruce Cockburn  4:27  
It's the sneaky way to get to the people who don't want to deal with it. But I mean, for me, I don't feel like I'm on any sort of crusade I never have I write what I feel matters to me and I want to share it with people. And when I wrote the science, because I'm kind of compelled to write songs, but and the content is determined by whatever confronts me and produces an emotional response. It's the nature of songs that they want to be heard. So I just always felt right, right from the get go that if you're going to have words to a piece of music, they might as well say something. And like that was kind of the starting point for me under the influence of Bob Dylan and John Lennon and other people that were writing great songs back in the 60s. And under the influence of a lot of poets, who I love language and language is is, you know, is about saying things by kind of, obviously, you know, how you create beauty, how you juxtapose beauty and horror, how you how you create an entity, a song, in my case, that becomes a vehicle for the sharing of feeling and experience among a group of people. And you know, if that group of people is sympathetic to a particular idea that's in the song, then they may be motivated to go out and address that issue, whatever it is, but they may feel like they've done their bit just by listening to the song to that happens.

Wendy Mesley  5:53  
Yeah, well, Wondering Where The Lions Are, it's very, I think it was about nuclear war at the time, but you listen to it now and it could be anything, it could be about an existential crisis. Or it could be about, you know, eternity, and now you're edging closer to eternity? 

Bruce Cockburn  6:12  
Well, it's true. Well, we Yes. If we don't die first, as we're, that horizon gets closer, we don't know that it's closer. I mean, you don't you never know how long you're going to live. For me every album could have been the last one, including the first one, you don't know. But at this age, obviously, the odds are stacked in favor of the approach of that horizon. So okay, well, you know, as you mentioned, 'Oh Sun Oh Moon' in your introduction, and that album talks a lot about that. But Wondering Where The Lions Are, I was mostly about waking up in the morning and, and and everything being okay.

It's a positive song.

Yeah. I mean, it talks about death, it talks about eternity and it talks about environmental stuff and, and it doesn't really talk about nuclear war, although there was a connection because of a dare I had with with my cousin who was deeply involved in security work. I mean, an international security work, you know, at this point, Russia and China were going at each other on their mutual border, and nobody knew at this, this is 1979. Nobody knew, or maybe 78, even I forget, but nobody knew if China had nukes or not at that point. And the assumption was they did, but nobody knew what their attitudes were toward the use of those things. Because, well, the US and Russia had had a hotline, and had had an understanding that neither one was going to gonna shock the other. China wasn't part of the deal. So nobody knew what they would do. So you know, and he said, over dinner, you know, having having nice filet mignon, you know, as far as we know, the world could end tomorrow. So I woke up in the morning, and I had not, and I'd had to stream as well, the dream is referred to with lions in the street, you know, so. And the lions were, as the first verse of the Psalm says, there'll be nine, or at least they're at a distance and not threatening. And in that dream, were in contrast to an earlier dream I've had where they were ripping down the door and coming through, you know, and it was terrifying dream. So so that's kind of what gave rise to the song. So I think I've been writing about death since I started, actually and that, that, I guess that's in there, too.

Maureen Holloway  8:24  
I want to talk about creativity in as an older person, and we all are probably on the downslope rather than the upslope, but there is a belief of that creativity diminishes as you get older, we mean, if you look at most artists, certainly popular artists, their output was considerable in their 20s and 30s. And then it kind of wanes, if doesn't disappear entirely, or they don't have a hits anymore. And I wonder, you don't seem, have you found that yourself? Or and if you haven't, why not?

Bruce Cockburn  8:55  
It's interesting, I don't really think in terms of hits, but if I think of artists, I mean, they think of Picasso, who did his best work in that period of his life that you're talking about. And pretty much everybody, every artist of every discipline that can be said about but the trade off is true energy gets less available. I think, with age, I don't think the ideas necessarily do but what I found with myself is I you know, I've said a lot of what I have to say, I mean, I've learned a lot over the past 50 or 60 years, but I'm still essentially the same person. And a lot of my feelings are the same as they were in the beginning and I've talked about that stuff over over the course of 50 or 60 years. So you know what's left to say? It becomes an issue, but because of the way I approach writing, it's never very intentional. It's intentional in the sense that I want to be receptive to ideas and I'm always on the lookout for a song excuse but I don't sit down and think okay, now I'm gonna write a song about Israel and Palestine, for example, or the forests or, you know, or how much I love my wife. I don't start out with that premise that with any premise as a writer is just an idea comes, and then I try to chase it down, given that, as a result of having done as much as I've done, ideas come in, sometimes I have to throw them away, because they're ideas that have already been dealt with enough, you know, and don't need any more addressing. Other times, it's might be the same old idea, but I think of a new way to go at it and then there's a song.

Well, it's not like the issues are, are changing that much. We still have nuclear war, we still have global warming, there's still lots of problems with Indigenous issues. And so I bet I found it really interesting that you talk about how much you love your wife and I have to admit to being a little bit disappointed that you became a US citizen and do you live in San Francisco? Because to me, you're like this great Canadian superstar. So How dare you really?

I'm here because because my wife is here, essentially. I mean, I have a life here. We've been here now since 2009. So I'm not sure I've actually put down roots. I'm not sure I put down roots anywhere on the planet. But But I feel comfortable here and I'm familiar and I like the place as much as I've liked any place I've been.

Wendy Mesley  11:13  
And you have an 11 year is she 11 or 12? So basically, you've been through this before.

Bruce Cockburn  11:19  
I have my older daughter, well, that family broke up, basically when she was three and a half. So I became the every second weekend after that and so I had much less of an influence and involvement in her upbringing than I do now with my younger daughter. And it's pretty great. I mean, I, I went through most of my adulthood, feeling like I had no paternal instinct, whatever and no desire to have progeny particularly. I had, I had one, I was fine that's done that, you know, and she's great. My older daughter came out very well actually, in spite of many things, I find that you know, having a young kid around, it's pretty amazing. I might be a little too old for it, but I think I'm, I think I'm getting away with it.

Maureen Holloway  12:04  
It's interesting, because I have a millennial and a Gen X, sorry, Gen Zed Z for you, San Franciscans, and their attitudes towards having children, particularly my younger son is 25 it's quite pessimistic. And you know, like the planets going to hell in a handbasket. My argument is what you can't do we live, we live because of hope and that's kind of why we're here. Not that I'm insisting that they have children, but I'm talking at more of a generational reluctance that we didn't encounter in our era. And I feel like say, well, Bruce Cockburn has a 12 year old. And Bruce has been, you know, aware of what's been going on for a long time. So so, so maybe there's room for optimism.

Bruce Cockburn  12:46  
We had that conversation in the 70s. You know, before my first daughter was born in late 60s, early 70s, a lot of people were going around saying we shouldn't have kids, because there's too many people and because of where the world was going. And at that time, we didn't understand as much detail about we, as we do now about what that really means. Well, it was widely understood that the future was iffy and having kids, you know, might might be a bad idea, but we did it anyway. And I think that it might be that the kids do it now to difference between then and now his sperm counts are down worldwide. So even if there if the intention is there, there may not be as many children as we used to produce, which, as far as I can understand, it seems like a good thing. Even though it upsets economics everywhere, because the with an aging population and not you're not replacing the old people, how does the work get done? Who makes the money, all that stuff? And how do you feed the the aging population that isn't working anymore? But that's that's a different issue. But an important one, really, fewer people is our ticket to survival I think, as a species.

Wendy Mesley  13:56  
It's funny how you're still so well it's not funny it's wonderful that you're still so full of hope. And it's one of your lines that has always stuck with me, which is and it sounds like you still believe in it. Thank goodness. 'Gotta kick up the darkness till it bleeds daylight'. So you still kicking?

Bruce Cockburn  14:15  
Yeah, I guess so. You know, I mean, alive and kicking. I mean, you can't give up what life would you have I you give up? I don't know. And for me, I it's not it doesn't require effort. I can't get rid of the hope. As dark as everything looks around I still feel it. I feel it from other people, too. You know, I mean, that's the old cliche, hope springs eternal in the human breast. It's a cliche for a reason why that should be I guess it's, you know, as a species were built that way. If your life is filled with so much trauma that you can't hope, then that that's tragic. I think and that happens to people in different ways because of the personal things that happened to them or because of big things like war meant natural disasters, but but even there, I mean the survivors of the concentration camps in the Second World War can talk about hope to in spite of the horrors that they wouldn't, you know, so it's they can have hope that the rest of us damn well better.

Mary Anne Ivison (Voiceover)  15:18  
The Women Of Ill Repute.

Maureen Holloway  15:21  
I want to ask you a question about musicianship And it sort of ties in with what we're talking about creativity. I've been taking piano lessons for 12 years, but I took it up as mid life And I'm not getting any better. I don't think I ever will, But that's fine. I love I love playing, But I'm curious as as a brilliant musician that you are, I mean, does it get any more challenging? Or does it get easier, I'm just talking about being a player. 

Speaker 1  15:45  
For me, it's gotten harder, because my hands are arthritic and more of a struggle to do the same things that I used to be able to do. There's a couple of things I used to be able to do that I can no longer do, But I've learned a lot too And you could draw a parallel there with what we were talking about, about creativity a minute ago, because generally, we learn better when we're young. I watched my younger daughter, she just soaks up stuff like a sponge, and she doesn't forget anything. I forget stuff all the time And I always have like that, as far as I can remember. Kids are sharp And there's they're taking in information in a way, it's a lot easier for them, for young people to learn that it is when you get older. I know I'm not sure why that is whether it's because we've packed our brain with so much garbage over the years that it's hard to put new stuff in it, or whether it's just like all the processes slow down. But I suspect the latter. 

Maureen Holloway  16:38  
Muscle memory has a lot to do with that I can practice and practice and practice and practice. And when I played when I was little, and you know, after practicing for 20 minutes, I had it. And now it's it's got to be there's a disconnect between the brain and the fingers. Well, that's my excuse, anyway, that horrible stage fright, but anyway.

Bruce Cockburn  16:58  
One thing that came up one of my brothers, both my brothers play guitar recreationally and one of them was having trouble with it. We're learning a difficult classical piece of it, that you've been working on for a long, long time and he got really frustrated with it, because it because it wasn't getting anywhere and he could play other stuff. He said, I'm certain to hate the guitar because I can't, I can't speak as well, you stop playing that piece of play the ones you've liked playing that you already can play and have fun with it again, bringing the fun back into it. Because if you don't do that, and it just becomes a chore so in terms of practicing terms of the discipline required, yes, you do have to put time in. But you also have to remember why you wanted to do it in the first place. Otherwise, there's no motivation.

Wendy Mesley  17:44  
I have a big confession to make. I don't know the lyrics to the Franklin song. 

Maureen Holloway  17:51  
Inspirational, specfically come out to play. It's pretty simple.

Bruce Cockburn  17:58  
I can't remember it all either. There's only four lines, but I can't remember.

Maureen Holloway  18:03  
Four lines. I know.

Bruce Cockburn  18:04  
That's not a song I practice regularly. I did play it live once in New York, and people were calling out for it. You know, this is a few years ago, but there was a lot of people in the audience with young kids and they therefore knew the song. So they're calling for 'Hey, do Franklin'.  I promised them that next time I came back, I would do it. So then the next time I came back, I actually did it, but that's the only time I've ever been performed in public by me got a laugh out of everybody. But it was it was a good thing. In the end. That song is not typical. I mean, the way that song came to be is not typical with how I write at all I mean, for one thing, it had to be submitted to the committee bit to for approval before it was accepted. And they came back with you know, well you have to change this you have to change that and you can't say I forget now but some of these these these like minuscule details that weren't considered not appropriate or to over the heads of the kids audience like as if you know, because nothing's over kids heads if they're interested. They're paying attention they get everything but the suits don't it got done and it was a lot of fun to record it and and then we cut a few years later they came out with version two of Franklin and we did another version of it and that was fun too.

What's it like to hire because Lovers In A Dangerous Time that I'm sorry but I keep hearing not you.

Barenaked Ladies yeah. 

Wendy Mesley  19:14  
So what is it like? I mean, now you're you maybe you're into kindness and you're writing about how you know you've your past all of those bad feelings but still what's it like when somebody else makes your song famous or them? 

Maureen Holloway  19:44  
A hit as it were.

Bruce Cockburn  19:45  
Well, I mean, back in the day this was talked about a lot but when I first heard it, I was dismayed because because it was so different from my version of it and I couldn't relate was like What have they done to my song? That feeling and but I got over it and you know, The Barenaked Ladies and I performed it together, both versions of mine and theirs at different times now and then over a period of years, we haven't done for a long time now, but I got past that. And I mean, it's something as a songwriter, you hear somebody else's take on something that's very personal, it's difficult it can be depends on who it is and how and what they do to it. Michael Occhipinti did an album of jazz interpretations, let's say of a bunch of my songs, which is fantastic and you almost can't recognize the songs. I mean, these deconstructed them and put them back together. And, I mean, you can hear where it came from and but he, he took it in a really interesting direction. So, you know, there was no difficulty assimilating that I guess I'm more sensitive to what people do with lyrics to all of that, that doesn't apply to Barenaked Ladies version of lovers, which they were very respectful about doing the lyrics right on that. But other people will leave out chunks or they'll add words of their own and stuff like that and I get that that's always uncomfortable. For me when, when that happens, at the same time I respected and required for myself to if I were to do a cover, if somebody saw it, I would reserve the right to myself, don't mess with us as much as I wanted to. And I have to give people and other people the same, right. It's just emotionally tricky. 

Maureen Holloway  21:20  
You've been with the same people for a long time. Colin Linden has been your longtime producer, your agent is Bernie Finkelstein, Finkelstein. It was a neighbor of Wendy's apparently, you've had a team that's quite remarkable in this business, that you've managed to maintain these relationships.

Bruce Cockburn  21:36  
Bernie Finkelstein and I have been together since the since 1969. And we've been working together and that's almost unheard of. Colin and I have been working together since the early 90s. But I mean, the first 10 albums were produced by Eugene Martin neck, and then he did one in the 80s. And Jonathan Goldsmith and Carrie Crawford did some in the 80s. I produced one of them myself in the 80s, but I didn't like myself as a producer very much. Yeah, call us on the last many albums, and it's worked well. I guess as long as there's the feeling that the collaboration is producing something good, then there's no reason to change it.

Maureen Holloway  22:18  
That simple. I've got when I have when these notes here. Apparently, you've had the same pair of glasses for 50 years?

Wendy Mesley  22:25  
That's the most stupid question.

Maureen Holloway  22:31  
Talking about hanging on to things.

Bruce Cockburn  22:34  
don't know the be 1964 Probably, or maybe late 63. I got an album by the Jim Kweskin Jug Band and the picture of the band on the front. The one of the bad men members, a guy named Fritz Richmond was wearing real brown black sunglasses and I thought that's so cool. Those, those round glasses are the coolest thing. First month in Boston going to music school and in 64. I went into a junk shop and there was a pair of round glasses there. They were, I mean, I needed prescription lenses, but they were the wrong prescription, but you bought the frames for a buck or 25 cents or something. And then when got lenses put in and I'd been wearing round glasses ever since those frames eventually died. But they'd been replaced a few times. But these I've had these for quite a while.

Maureen Holloway  23:25  
Yeah, it's your part of your signature, right? The round glasses. Yeah, it's you and John Lennon.

Wendy Mesley  23:31  
Like where do you put them? I'm always losing mine. How do you how do you keep your your glasses? Like do you have like one of those little old lady things around the neck? How do you do that?

Bruce Cockburn  23:41  
No I don't do that. I just, I for a long time well, I discovered with a pair of glasses that I had when I was going to Berkeley studying music that I'd be sitting there playing and if I was if it was sweaty at all the glasses would slip down slipped down and sit down and eventually be where you fall off. So, so I started wearing the ones with the hook around your ears, which don't fall off that said, I've I've lost a few pairs of those in surf in various parts of the world. In the Indian Ocean and Pacific Office, Central America in the Algarve in Portugal, sunglasses were swept off my face and at least those three places over the years once I had a cataract operation as an old guy. I don't I don't really need glasses and I mean I need them for reading, but my distance vision is fine. So now I don't need to wear them in the water. I can see the sharks coming with without.

Maureen Holloway  24:37  
I think you've always been able to see the sharks coming. Bruce Cockburn this has been an absolute it's been an absolute delight. Your world tour begins I believe in April you will be at Massey Hall may 25 and you've got additional dates in Guelph, London, Ottawa and Huntsville and Kingston. That's for our Canadian audience. The whole bunch American dates which you can find on Bruce's website, which is Bruce cockburn.com, I believe. 

Bruce Cockburn  25:06  
Yep. And also the Mariposa festival I think we're doing this year.

Maureen Holloway  25:10  
And the Mariposa festival. Fantastic.

Wendy Mesley  25:13  
We have loved talking to you. So thank you so much, Bruce. It's it's been lovely and I like the glasses.

Maureen Holloway  25:20  
Yeah, well, they suit you. Keep kicking it the darkness. Thank you so much.

Bruce Cockburn  25:26  
All right. Thank you very much. Great to talk with you.

Wendy Mesley  25:31  
So mo what was the Franklin lyrics? 

Maureen Holloway  25:35  
Oh, it's 'Hey, it's Franklin. Come on to play'. It was actually you know, between the theme song to Dora the Explorer and Blue's Clues like all the shows that your kids watch this would be in the early, not early aughts that yeah, you love them and you hate them. I have another Bruce, Bruce Springsteen, Bruce Cockburn story. It's not really about Bruce. But I remember it was probably in the early 80s and he was my boyfriend was dating a guy who asked me if I wanted to go see Bruce Cockburn and I said, Sure, why not? It was winter. And he said, okay, well, I'll, I'll pick you up around four and I thought, well, maybe we're going for dinner drinks first. And he said, Yeah, I should come and get you four, because it's a big snowstorm coming. Okay, well, whatever you know, this is back where we didn't ask questions.

Wendy Mesley  26:25  
=And you still don't ask any questions.

Maureen Holloway  26:30  
So, so he picked me up. I remember he was driving a Volvo. So which was a pretty safe car for a young man, but anyway, get in the car, and off we go and I didn't realize that Bruce Cockburn was playing in Guelph I thought he was playing at Massey Hall or downtown Toronto, and we drove to source snow storm and I think it took us we related it probably took us over four hours to get there. And it was worth it. 

Wendy Mesley  26:57  
It was great. 

Maureen Holloway  26:58  
Oh yeah, he was fantastic. I was I was pissed off but because we still had drive home and I wasn't staying in a motel or what have you. But yeah, that was my my, but it was worth it. It was such a fantastic concert. So yeah, he's a he's an interesting man.

Wendy Mesley  27:13  
I was really struck by everybody's sort of I think overused is the word kindness these days was very into you know, talk about how we need more kindness and yes, we do. But I found it interesting just because he's he's almost more of a songwriter than He is a singer and he's a poet. 

Maureen Holloway  27:30  
Yeah, I would agree. 

Wendy Mesley  27:31  
Yeah. And and so he's it's still rubs him raw a little bit I think not as much as it used to when he was younger, to have other people sing his songs and I'm thinking it's sort of like our podcast it's yeah, we could we could let other people sort of be in charge but we like being in charge.

Maureen Holloway  27:49  
Like being in charge. What I find about him is that he's managed to be both a pessimist and an optimist and been very, very aware of what's going on in the world always has been, it feels that he has to speak out sometimes to his detriment, but at the same time has made it mean that lyric of gotta kick the darkness till it bleeds daylight just sums him up. And and those are very inspirational. I quote that a lot. Probably ad nauseam, because it is it's like, things may be shitty, but there's light you just have to find it.

Wendy Mesley  28:22  
 And on that note. 

Maureen Holloway  28:24  
On that note. 

Wendy Mesley  28:25  
Thanks mo I hope everybody feels better because there's flu going around but we're all yeah and it was lovely to talk to him so. Hope rocks.

Bruce Cockburn  28:32  
It was it was all right. Okay hope rocks.

Mary Anne Ivison (Voiceover)  28:41  
Women Of Ill Repute was written and produced by Maureen Holloway and Wendy Mesley with the help from the team at the Sound Off Media Company and producer Jet Belgraver.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai