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August 4, 2026
The Blood Of Others, the new album from Bruce Cockburn, arrives on October 16th via Sunset Blvd Records!
(These are the liner notes for the album as written by Bruce)
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. The accumulation of these songs started in the sixties, before I’d even begun to try to create my own. Some of those stayed in my memory as warm-up exercises, or as relief from hearing myself sing my own words. Every now and then a new one would appear. I’d be fooling around on the guitar and realize I just played something that would fit with — You Belong to Me, for example — and then I would have to actually learn the song. Some of the choices are sentimental favorites, others interesting vehicles for exploring the fingerboard. All of them connect to times and places that remain shadings on the map of a life…
The Blood of Others is a novel, written during the Nazi occupation of France by Simone de Beauvoir. I read it in the seventies and found it very worthwhile. Among other things it deals with personal responsibility in the face of scary oppression, and the kinds of choices people make. I have borrowed the title because it seems perfect for an album of songs I didn’t write.
WISH I WAS IN HEAVEN SITTING DOWN
Robert Wilkins made up this song. I first heard it on an early seventies gospel compilation. Wilkins’ powerful bottle neck guitar and passionate singing made this conversation with God instantly memorable. The original guitar part is simple enough that I could maybe execute it, but it felt right to incorporate some of the angular harmonies that come naturally with the DADGAD tuning.
AS TIME GOES BY
Written by Herman Hupfeld in 1939. Who doesn’t love the scene in Casablanca in which Dooley Wilson plays this song, Ingrid Bergman at his side? 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…
BUDDY BOLDEN’S BLUES
I had heard some Jellyroll Morton, but I actually learned this song out of a book, or maybe Sing Out! magazine. My friends were singing country blues and old timey music. I was drawn to the somewhat more sophisticated style of ragtime and early jazz. For an interesting take on Buddy Bolden, said to be the first jazz trumpet player, check out Michael Ondaatje’s novel Coming Through Slaughter.
YOU BELONG TO ME
Jo Stafford’s gorgeously true voice was all over the radio with this when I was five. The geographical references were exciting, awakening the travel bug in me years before On the Road lit a fire under it.
THAT’S ALL RIGHT
Elvis Presley hit the radio in Ottawa right when I was hitting adolescence. 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. This was one of the many songs that caught me, though the version I worked out owes more to Arthur Crudup’s original recording.
FOUR STRONG WINDS
The youngest of all these songs. Le hibou, the coffeehouse that was my spiritual home, was on the touring route of most of the artists in the sixties folk scene. Ian and Sylvia were regulars, appearing there a couple of times a year. We were all very excited when their song showed up on the radio.
GOD BLESS, THE CHILD
The 1939 creation of Billie Holiday and Arthur Herzog. One Sunday, in 1960 or 61, I spent my collection money on what was likely a bootleg copy of Belafonte Sings the Blues at the corner store across from Westboro United Church. Tasty jazz arrangements of really good songs. A couple of years later I got to hear Billie Holiday’s original version. Theologically a bit off base, but a deeply moving expression of disappointment with the human species…
LOUIS COLLINS
One afternoon in August or September 1963, Barbie Luther invited me to her parents’ house to listen to music. She opened a bottle of Mateus wine and put on Mississippi John Hurt’s Folk Songs and Blues album. I was blown away by the sweetness, the idiosyncratic phrasing and the way he put voice and fingerpicked guitar together.
YELLOW DOG BLUES
I first heard this on a collection of Bessie Smith recordings around 1962. Right away fell in love with the lyrics. WC Handy copyrighted the song in 1914, having likely composed it some years earlier. When he wrote it he was living in Clarksdale MS. He made good use of the local slang, Yellow Dog for instance, being a nickname for the Yazoo Delta railway.
FARE THEE WELL
My earliest recollection of hearing this song is of Fred Neil’s beautiful version, though I was aware of it before that. It came back to mind when I got to perform it with the McGarrigle sisters at Pete Seeger’s ninetieth birthday event in NYC.
I’LL BE SEEING YOU
I’d heard this 1938 song growing up, sung by Bing Crosby among others. Much later, in the nineties, it came alive for me in a personal way, in the aftermath of a brief but heart-opening relationship. I was driving somewhere with the radio on and somebody’s rendering of it came on. I may have misheard it, but I thought that version ended with the line, “I’ll be looking at someone, but I’ll be seeing you”. That’s not in the original lyrics. They only refer to the moon, but it hit me in a powerful way. Thinking about the song, it struck me that it would work if I gave it a pace and rhythmic treatment in the style of I Only Have Eyes For You.
LAPLEGGED DRUNK AGAIN
Paris, 1964. I was playing for pocket money on the street with a couple of guys. It was the end of a summer of bumming around Northern Europe. I took some of my ill-gotten gains to a record store where I found a large selection of American blues and jazz on 45rpm EPs — cheap, and small enough to fit in a duffel — Petey Wheatstraw, the Mound City Blue Blowers, and Lonnie Johnson. The four pieces on the Johnson EP featured fantastic guitar, elegant vocals and a great band. Five or so years later l happened to come across a newspaper ad for Lonnie Johnson, playing in a supper club — in Ottawa! Some friends and I put on jackets and ties and went to hear him. On a break, we asked him for Laplegged Drunk Again. He shook his head and smiled, and said, “Oh, I can’t play that song in a place like this.”
ONE FOR MY BABY
This 1943 product of the songwriting team of Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen was originally sung by Fred Astaire in a film I’ve never seen. I first heard it on the Belafonte album mentioned above, but for me, the definitive version is the one Frank Sinatra recorded in 1958. There’s a cool video floating around, that looks as if it’s taken from a TV show, in which he performs the song sitting at a bar with only the bartender as an audience.
LES FEUILLES MORTES
Autumn Leaves is of course a familiar song, having been recorded hundreds of times by everyone from Doris Day to Cannonball Adderley. I didn’t realize it was really of French origin until I came across it in a collection of poetry by Jacques Prévert. Although the English lyrics are fine, Prévert’s words, in which a recitation sets up the sung verses, go a little deeper…
Oh how I wish that you would remember
The glad days when we were friends
Back then life was more beautiful
And the sun burned hotter than today
The dead leaves pile up in the shovel
See, I haven’t forgotten
The dead leaves pile up in the shovel
Memories, regrets as well
And the north wind carries them away
Into the cold night of forgetting
See, I haven’t forgotten
The song you sang me…
It’s a song that brings us together
You loved me, and I loved you
We lived, both of us together
You who loved me, I who loved you
But life separates those who love each other
Softly, making no sound
And the sea erases from the sand
The steps of lovers, disunited
PEACE IN THE VALLEY
Another gem of a song I first heard from Elvis. Thomas A. Dorsey (known in another life as Georgia Tom) wrote it in the late thirties for Mahalia Jackson.
Published July 30, 2026
Exclaim!
Hot Docs to Fund Films About Bruce Cockburn, Mat the Alien, King Reign
by Rachel Ho and Alex Hudson
The organization's Slaight Family Fund recipients have been announced
In its sixth year, the Hot Docs-Slaight Family Fund has announced five music-related projects as recipients of this year's round of production stage funding totalling $121,000. This includes docs about Bruce Cockburn, Mat the Alien and King Reign.
Cockburn will be examined with Robert Lang's road movie Into the Now, while the other artist profiles will venture into heavier terrain: David Click Cox and Kwame Mason's King Reign to the World Presents is about a group of artists completing the titular Toronto MC's final work following his sudden death in 2016, while River Jordan Easton's Rolling with Mat the Alien covers the BC-based DJ's life following an accident that left him paralyzed from the chest down.
The remaining two docs investigate the Inuk musical tradition of pisiit (Charlotte Qamaniq and Jamie Griffiths's Pisiksaqsiurlanga: I'm Searching for a Song) and Brampton's Punjabi hip-hop scene (Anupa Mistry's Brampton Underground).
The Fund is the first of its kind in the country, aiming to support and champion Canadian filmmakers telling compelling stories that celebrate music in all its forms. Since its inception in 2020, the Hot Docs-Slaight Family Fund has helped finance 23 projects with a combined investment of over $627,500.
Previous films supported by the Fund include Graeme Mathieson's Play It Loud: How Toronto Got Soul, profiling Jamaican Canadian singer Jay Douglas; Stephen Chung's It's All Gonna Break, detailing the meteoric rise of Broken Social Scene; Tim Kowalski's Nash the Slash Rises Again!, about the enigmatic musician Nash the Slash; and Omar Majeed and Peter Mishara's re-evaluation of disco, Disco's Revenge.
Below, check out the recipients along with their official synopses.
Brampton Underground
Directed by Anupa Mistry
While navigating the pressures of Canada's changing immigration policy, a group of international students form a grassroots Punjabi hip-hop scene in the parks and parking lots of Brampton, ON.
Into the Now with Bruce Cockburn
Directed by Robert Lang
At once a road movie, musical exploration and portrait of an artist deeply engaged with the present, the film accompanies Canadian music legend Bruce Cockburn as he sets out on a major concert tour through Canada and the eastern United States.
King Reign to the World Presents
Directed by David Click Cox and Kwame Mason
King Reign was a lyrical giant whose pen never received the recognition it deserved. When he died suddenly, he left behind unreleased music that was raw, honest, and unfinished. This film follows a group of famed hip-hop artists as they reunite to complete his final work, turning grief into music and memory into movement.
Pisiksaqsiurlanga: I'm Searching for a Song
Directed by Charlotte Qamaniq and Jamie Griffiths
Guided by an ancestral song from her family, Inuk artist Charlotte Qamaniq returns home to revitalize pisiit — an ancient Inuit musical form nearly erased by colonization — while composing new songs that carry the living tradition forward.
Rolling with Mat the Alien
Directed by River Jordan Easton
Legendary Canadian DJ Mat the Alien rebuilds his life and music after a spinal cord injury, as his community rallies around his return to music and the festival stage.
Photo of Bruce Cockburn: Daniel Keebler
July 20, 2026
Vail Daily
Bruce Cockburn set to perform at the Vilar
by Kimberly Nicoletti
In the past 50 years, Bruce Cockburn has written over 400 songs on more than 35 albums, 23 of which have earned gold or platinum certification.
His accolades include 13 JUNO Awards and the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award and inductions into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame; he’s also an Officer of the Order of Canada.
Early rock ‘n’ roll artists, like Elvis Presley and The Crickets, initially influenced him, but he quickly turned his attention to jazz, starting college with an aim to compose music for large jazz ensembles. But then he discovered songwriting, which dovetailed with his interest in poetry. So he dropped out of music school and worked with a handful of bands in the mid- to late-1960s.
“None of them were very good, and none of them had much of the future, but in that roughly five-year period, I became a songwriter, basically,” he said. “I had the musical interest, and I had studied enough music and been exposed to a lot of different kinds of music, so I had a very eclectic approach.”
He always believed lyrics should have meaning, so he focused on writing about topics that triggered an emotional response within, be it relationships, social injustice or environmental threats.
“(We’re) living in all that beauty and all that grandeur that is constantly under threat. One of the ways that I can respond to the threat is to write about it, if I feel sufficiently motivated. I can’t fake it. If I try to write a song deliberately on a topic, and I think, ‘Oh, I should write about blah, blah, it doesn’t work. I come up with a crappy song. But if I wait around for the emotional impact to be there, then the song has possibilities,” he said.
Spirituality, politics and diverse musical interests have shaped his career, though his paramount focus revolves around God; everything else comes after that, he said.
“Although in practice, of course, in day-to-day (life), it’s not always front and center, but that’s the intention. It starts there, and from that springs everything else. I mean, we owe each other love and respect,” he said.
He believes that spirituality and politics eventually overlap when dealing with real-world problems like hunger.
“At every point, there’s that interface where your attempts to engage in humanitarian work run up against politics either because you want to generate support in your own community or because you’re being resisted by somebody with vested interests,” he said. “You can’t not connect these things, but it is a balancing act. If you let the political side take over, then you end up making shallow decisions, I think. You need to keep track of the depth spirituality offers — that extra dimension.”
He honors great songwriters that emerged from Canada, like Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell and Neil Young, and, while he also credits American and other songwriters, he views music that stems from Canada as having a different quality.
“I used to describe it as kind of a sense of space in the music. There’s more landscape. Margaret Atwood wrote a short book about this — not with respect to songwriting, but with respect to prose and Canadian writing in particular — and she made a point that the Canadian landscape looms very large in the culture. It’s a huge country with not that many people in it,” he said. “There’s so much emptiness in it … you have to travel huge distances before you can get to the next gig.”
As a result, travel, as well as nature, shows up in many of his songs.
He’s probably best known for his 1979 song “Wondering Where the Lions Are,” which depicts finding peace, courage and a connection to nature despite global conflict.
Inspiration for the song came during a dinner with a relative who worked in international security at a time when no one was sure if China had nuclear weapons or not.
“At the time, Russia and China were shooting at each other across their mutual border sporadically,” he said. “So there was this huge concern around where this confrontation between the two countries would go. In the end, it kind of blew over. But at the time, the story was that as far as we knew, we could wake up, and it’d be the end of the world. I honestly didn’t feel like that, but it was an awesome thing to hear over filet mignon. And so I woke up the next morning, the sun was shining and everything was nice. I had had a dream a year or two earlier — a terrifying dream of lions breaking into my house, breaking down the doors and coming after me. So in this second dream about lions, they were at a safe distance, and they were just looking regal and beautiful walking around the streets of Ottawa. Those two things kind of flowed together: It’s a beautiful morning, the world’s not over and the lions are nice. The song mostly was (Canadian) nature imagery … almost all my songs seem to be about death and dying in some way. Either you’re expecting it, or you’re not expecting it. That song kind of expects it. The lions represent what is out there that threatens us.”
In his title track for “O Sun, O Moon,” released in 2023, he writes: “Time takes its toll, but in my soul, I’m on a roll.” Recorded in Nashville with his longtime producer Colin Linden, the record reflects more spiritual than topical issues with both simplicity and clarity, yet still highlights his driving resonator guitar.
“I think it’s a product of age to a certain extent, and seeing the approaching horizon,” he said, adding in a good-natured tone: “I think these are exactly the kind of songs that an old guy writes.”
His next project involves a collection of favorite cover songs.
June 28, 2026
CTV News
Bruce Cockburn hitting the road at 81, and still lending voice to any good cause
by Stephane Giroux
One of Canada’s most celebrated songwriters is hitting the road again, despite his advanced age.
Bruce Cockburn says it will highlight six decades of socially conscious music.
Cockburn has won 13 Juno Awards since the 1970s, as he all but defined Canadian protest songs.
Age, he says, isn’t slowing him down.
“My hands have become quite arthritic, and this makes certain things more challenging than they used to be,” he said. “There’s maybe a very few songs, four or five songs that I’ve had to revise the guitar parts.”
Cockburn made his debut on the coffee-house folk circuit and evolved over time with a crafty mix of blues, jazz, rock and folk music.
“You know, I didn’t know if I was going to be able to survive doing it, but my feeling was if I ended up playing in bus shelters for pennies, then so be it. Lucky for me, it’s been better than that.”
Like many artists, retirement isn’t an option because songwriting is not a craft that stops at 65.
“Why stop?” said Cockburn. “If I wasn’t getting paid to do it, I’d be doing it anyway.”
Cockburn never stopped recording. He has a new album coming out this fall, and to this day, he remains active on social issues.
“My voice is available when called upon pretty much for any good cause,” he said. “As a songwriter, I can spell out my own ideas and my own reactions to things.”
Cockburn has always defended liberal causes, but admits the current political climate can be hostile to his ideals.
“It’s very disturbing, actually, to be seeing things go in that direction,” he said. “I don’t know how far it’ll go or what the results will be, but it’s worrisome for sure.
“One of the deplorable developments that we’re witnessing is the inability to communicate with each other in a civilized manner.”
At 81, however, he’s proud his songs have been covered by some prestigious artists, from Jerry Garcia to Canada’s own Barenaked Ladies.
“People are paying attention to the songs. That’s the best part for me,” he said.
Cockburn’s tour begins next month in the U.S., but will hit Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal in October.
May 29, 2026
Press Release
Bruce Cockburn Announces Extensive 2026 North American Tour
29 May 2026 - Bruce Cockburn, one of Canada's most celebrated and enduring singer-songwriters, today announces a sweeping North American tour spanning 2026, bringing his extraordinary catalogue of songs to stages from coast to coast across Canada and the United States. The run of dates represents one of the most anticipated live events of the concert season, uniting longtime devotees, and new listeners around a body of work that has shaped the very soul of Canadian music for more than five decades.
Bruce Cockburn upcoming new album, as-yet-untitled and to be released in Fall, 2026 - continues the legendary songwriter's decades-long journey through folk, rock, jazz, and spiritual reflection with the wisdom and craftsmanship that have defined his career.
Ottawa-born and now based in San Francisco, Cockburn has spent more than 40 years documenting the full breadth of human experience across folk, rock, jazz, and worldbeat, travelling to Guatemala, Mali, Mozambique, Nepal, and beyond in the service of both his music and his activism. His guitar playing, both acoustic and electric, has placed him in the company of the world's top instrumentalists, and his songs of romance, protest, and spiritual discovery are among the finest to have emerged from any country over the last half century. Music journalist Nicholas Jennings has written that Cockburn has deftly captured the joy, pain, fear, and faith of human experience in song, whether retreating to the country or going up against chaos, tackling imperialist lies or embracing ecclesiastical truths, always expressing what Cockburn himself has called a tough yet hopeful stance: to kick at the darkness till it bleeds daylight.
His remarkable journey has seen him embrace an extraordinary range of sounds and subject matter while working on behalf of organisations including Oxfam, Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders, and Friends of the Earth, lending his voice to causes from native rights and land mines to the environment and Third World debt. For his many achievements, the artist has been honoured with 13 Juno Awards, induction into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, a Governor General's Performing Arts Award, and has been made an Officer of the Order of Canada. His 38th album, 'O Sun O Moon,' continues one of the most remarkable bodies of work in the history of popular music.
Performing with Cockburn for a significant run of dates (October 15 through November 8) on the tour are Jeff Pevar and Inger Nova, the Oregon-based duo whose original music blends soul, rock, R&B, jazz, folk, and blues into a sound that feels both deeply rooted and distinctly their own. Jeff Pevar is a guitarist, bassist, multi-instrumentalist, producer, and composer whose career spans decades of collaborations with legendary artists. A founding member of CPR alongside David Crosby, he has toured extensively with Crosby Nash, Crosby Stills and Nash, and Crosby's Sky Trails Band, and his expansive career includes work with Ray Charles, Joe Cocker, Phil Lesh, Marc Cohn, Rickie Lee Jones, Bette Midler, Jennifer Warnes, and Jefferson Starship, among many others. A New York Blues Hall of Fame inductee, Pevar brings multi-instrumental production depth and a lifetime of world-class musicianship to every stage he inhabits.
Inger Nova Jorgensen is a vocalist, songwriter, sculptor, and painter whose multidisciplinary career deeply informs her musical voice. Together, Pevar and Nova have spent more than two decades writing, recording, and performing original music throughout the United States and Europe, including multiple tours across Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark.
Cockburn has always insisted on continuing to grow, citing his models for graceful aging as John Lee Hooker and Mississippi John Hurt, musicians who never stopped working or deepening their craft. That spirit of perpetual creative renewal has carried him from the Riverboat in Toronto in 1969 through to the present day, and this tour is a vivid reminder of just how rare and precious the relationship between an artist and his listeners truly is.
The tour includes a particularly meaningful Canadian homecoming, with Cockburn visiting some of the country's most storied rooms, among them the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, Massey Hall in Toronto, Centre in the Square in Kitchener, and Gesù Salle in Montréal. A highlight of the broader run was his appearance at Legacy: A Celebration of David Suzuki at 90 in Vancouver on May 22, an event that sits squarely at the intersection of art, activism, and the natural world that has always animated Cockburn's finest work.
Several dates on the tour will feature performances alongside legendary singer-songwriter Judy Collins on her "Sweet Judy Blue Eyes" Farewell Tour for from July 22 to October 3. Livington Taylor will join Cockburn for dates beginning October 20 through November 8. Jeff Pevar and Inger Nova will be performing with Bruce October 15 through November 8.
February 26, 2026
David Suzuki Foundation
Concert performers and special guests announced for “Legacy: A Celebration of David Suzuki at 90” in Vancouver
Unforgettable evening with David Suzuki and Tara Cullis to feature celebrated artists in Canada and global environmental leaders
VANCOUVER | TRADITIONAL, UNCEDED TERRITORIES OF THE xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (MUSQUEAM), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (SQUAMISH) AND səlilwətaɬ (TSLEIL-WAUTUTH) FIRST NATIONS — The David Suzuki Foundation has announced an exciting lineup of artists and special guests for Legacy: A Celebration of David at 90, a benefit concert honouring David Suzuki’s milestone birthday.
Renowned storyteller, broadcaster and producer George Stroumboulopoulos will host the inspiring evening of music and reflection. The concert will feature performances by acclaimed artists Bruce Cockburn, Chantal Kreviazuk, Sarah McLachlan, Danny Michel, William Prince and Tanya Tagaq, alongside special appearances by Jane Fonda, Al Gore and Rick Hansen. Additional artists and special guests will be announced in coming weeks.
The concert will be held on Friday, May 22 at Vancouver’s Queen Elizabeth Theatre (600 Hamilton Street). Tickets start at $259, plus fees and taxes. Presale access is currently available for Foundation VIPs, donors and supporters with public ticket sales opening Friday, February 27 at 10 a.m. Pacific.
David Suzuki has inspired millions worldwide, strengthened the environmental movement and transformed how we understand our responsibility and relationship to the natural world.
“Music and storytelling have always been essential to social change,” David Suzuki Foundation executive director Pierre Iachetti said. “Bringing together iconic artists and internationally recognized leaders, this event is a celebration of the countless people who have joined David Suzuki on his journey and will serve as a rallying cry for bold environmental action.”
David Suzuki’s voice and vision continue to spark meaningful change. This 90th birthday celebration provides David Suzuki fans and Foundation supporters a chance to honour and thank him and answer his call to action.
For more event details and to buy tickets, visit here.
For more information, please contact Craig Long, Senior Communications Manager: clong@davidsuzuki.org, 604-732-4228 x1262
Note: David Suzuki, George Stroumboulopoulos, artists and special guests are not currently available for interviews.
The David Suzuki Foundation is a Canadian environmental non-profit organization, founded in 1990. We operate in English and French, with offices in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal. We aim to collaborate with many different people in Canada, including Indigenous leadership and communities, all governments, businesses and individuals to find solutions to create a sustainable Canada through scientific research, traditional ecological knowledge, innovative policy and legal solutions, communications and public engagement. Our mission is to protect nature’s diversity and the wellbeing of all life, now and for the future. We envision a world where we all act every day on the understanding that we are interdependent with nature and each other.
David Suzuki is a grandfather, scientist, former host of CBC’s The Nature of Things, emeritus professor at the University of British Columbia and co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation. Through radio, television and more than 55 books, he has communicated about humanity’s collective impact on the natural world, which now threatens the future of human life. Among his many accolades, Suzuki has been conferred with more than 30 honorary degrees from universities in Canada, the United States and Australia. He has been honoured with adoptions and names from eight Indigenous nations in Canada and Australia.
Tara Cullis is an award-winning author, activist and president of the David Suzuki Foundation. She has been a key player in environmental movements in the Amazon, Southeast Asia, Japan and British Columbia. She co-founded the David Suzuki Foundation with David Suzuki “to collaborate with people in Canada from all walks of life, to conserve our environment and to find solutions that will create a sustainable Canada through science-based research, education and policy work.”
George Stroumboulopoulos is a globally renowned storyteller, broadcaster and producer, synonymous with music, television, film and the creative arts in Canada. For more than three decades, he has shaped the national conversation through iconic prime-time news and late-night programs, including CBC’s The Hour and George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight, his interview series on CNN and as anchor of Hockey Night in Canada. He also fronted and produced The Strombo Show on Apple Music, further cementing his reputation as one of the most trusted and influential voices in contemporary culture.
Bruce Cockburn has enjoyed an illustrious career shaped by politics, spirituality and musical diversity. His remarkable journey has seen him embrace folk, jazz, rock and worldbeat styles while earning high praise as a prolific, inspired songwriter and accomplished guitarist. He remains deeply respected for his activism and humanist song lyrics that thread throughout his career. On all his albums, Cockburn has deftly captured the joy, pain, fear and faith of human experience in song. Cockburn has won 13 JUNO Awards, an induction into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, a Governor General’s Performing Arts Award and has been made an Officer of the Order of Canada, among many other accolades. He has 22 gold and platinum records including a six-times platinum record for his Christmas album. Cockburn continues to tour internationally.
Jane Fonda is a two-time Academy Award–winning actor, producer, author, activist and fitness guru. Her career has spanned over 50 years, accumulating a body of film work that includes more than 50 films and significant contributions to political causes such as women’s rights, Indigenous rights and environmental protection. She is a seven-time Golden Globe winner and was honoured with the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2021. She accepted The Harry Belafonte Voices for Social Justice Award at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival. In April of 2024, Fonda accepted the TIME Magazine Earth Award. She also received the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in February 2025.
Al Gore is the founder and chairman of The Climate Reality Project, a nonprofit devoted to solving the climate crisis, a founding partner and chairman of Generation Investment Management and a co-founder of Climate TRACE. He is also a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, a member of the World Economic Forum’s board of trustees and a past member of the board of directors at Apple.
Rick Hansen is a six-time Paralympic medalist and Canadian icon best known as the “Man In Motion” for undertaking an epic 26-month, 40,000-kilometre journey around the world in his wheelchair. He is the founder of the Rick Hansen Foundation, an organization committed to inspire, create and deliver innovative solutions that accelerate a global movement to remove barriers to inclusion for people with disabilities.
Chantal Kreviazuk made her critically acclaimed full-length debut, Under These Rocks and Stones, in 1997. Since then, the Winnipeg-born and internationally celebrated three-time JUNO Award and Grammy winning singer-songwriter and musician, classically trained pianist, actress, movie producer, philanthropist, humanitarian and proud wife and mother of three has recorded 10 albums, including a live album, a holiday album and a collaboration with her husband and Our Lady Peace frontman Raine Maida. A prolific songwriter, Kreviazuk has written global smashes for the likes of Drake, Gwen Stefani, Pitbull, Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears, Carrie Underwood, Avril Lavigne, Shakira, Kelly Clarkson and Kendrick Lamar. Equally committed to helping those in need, Kreviazuk was awarded the Order of Canada in 2014, along with Maida, for their efforts to raise awareness and support for human and animal rights, mental health, education and the environment. Kreviazuk has been an ambassador to War Child for more than two decades and one of the organization’s founding artists.
Sarah McLachlan is one of the most celebrated singer songwriters in entertainment with more than 40 million albums sold worldwide. She has received three Grammy Awards and twelve JUNO Awards over her career and has been inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and the Canadian Songwriter’s Hall of Fame. Sarah’s music embodies the art of song writing on its most personal level, and her indelible vocals resonate with people everywhere. Her songs have had a profound influence; “Angel,” “Building A Mystery,” “Fallen,” “I Will Remember You,” “Adia,” “Sweet Surrender,” “World On Fire,” “Possession” and countless others are an inspiration to music lovers around the globe.
Danny Michel is a Canadian songwriter and producer who has built a decades-long career on curiosity and creative risk-taking. Blending rock, pop, folk, world and even classical influences, his “musical A.D.D.” has earned him a devoted fan base, multiple JUNO and Polaris Prize nominations, CBC’s Heart of Gold award and CFMA honours, including Producer of the Year and the Oliver Schroer Pushing the Boundaries Award. Beyond music, he founded the DM Ocean Academy Fund to support a non-profit high school in Belize and has performed at milestone celebrations for Jane Goodall and David Suzuki, as well as toured with Stuart McLean’s Vinyl Cafe.
William Prince is a songwriter shaped by powerful legacies of family and craft, his perspective is both singular and resonant. His fifth LP, Further From the Country, is a striking work of reflection and ambition, marked by clarity, humanity, and emotional depth. The distance travelled on this new album is generational, aspirational and deeply personal. Expansive and declarative, the record finds Prince meeting the challenge of writing enduring songs for an age of uncertainty. A two-time JUNO Award winner, Prince continues to build an exceptional body of work, earning the John Prine Songwriter Fellowship and an Americana Honors & Awards nomination. From Newport Folk Festival to sold-out performances at Massey Hall, from NPR’s Tiny Desk to tours with The War and Treaty and Yola, he has appeared on some of music’s most storied stages. In June 2025, Nipissing University awarded him an honorary Doctor of Letters (honoris causa) recognizing his contributions to music, storytelling, and cultural bridge-building.
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March 2, 2026
North Forty News
Fort Collins, Colorado
Bruce Cockburn Reflects on Faith, Protest and a Career-Spanning Tour Before Sold-Out Fort Collins Shows
by Bill Forman
Career-spanning set highlights classics, global influences, and songs from O Sun O Moon
Over the course of his career, Bruce Cockburn has remained a prominent figure in the music industry, crafting songs that blend spiritual depth with social consciousness. The singer-songwriter has earned 13 Juno Awards (the Canadian equivalent of the Grammy), received six honorary doctorates, and released 35 albums, with more than one million copies sold in his native Canada alone.
Now, Cockburn is out on a solo tour, armed with just a couple of guitars — a stripped-down approach that aligns well with his reputation as a masterful guitarist and poignant lyricist.
“Back in the ‘80s, which is when a lot of people in America got introduced to my stuff, music was more band-oriented, so my guitar parts tended to shrink because I was making room for all these other instruments,” Cockburn recalled in a recent interview. “But more and more commonly over the years, I’ve been writing in such a way that the songs work either with or without a band. And the guitar parts that I include with the songs tend to function like a band — in my mind, at least.”
Over the past year or so, Cockburn has been playing a mix of career-spanning signature songs like “Wondering Where the Lions Are,” “If a Tree Falls,” and “Lovers in a Dangerous Time” alongside a selection of songs from his most recent release, “O Sun O Moon.” Cockburn’s first vocal album in six years — his 2019 album “Crowing Ignites” was entirely instrumental — it features guest appearances by Shawn Colvin, Buddy Miller, and the McCrary Sisters gospel group.
But one song fans won’t hear on this tour is Cockburn’s 1985 hit “If I Had a Rocket Launcher,” which he dropped from his set list when Russia began bombing Ukraine, and he hasn’t played it since. Written after his visit to Guatemalan refugee camps that were under attack by their own government’s military helicopters, it closes with the lyric “If I had a rocket launcher, some son-of-a-bitch would die,” a line that reportedly led to some radio stations fading the song out before the last chorus.
Given changing social attitudes toward violence and the potential for misinterpretation, Cockburn doesn’t know if he’ll ever play it again. “I got really sick of hearing people shout “Yeah!” at that line,” he said. “The idea of that song representing anything to celebrate just wore on me after a while. And eventually, I said no, I’m not doing this, because the world has gotten that way, and I don’t need to further that.”
Musically, Cockburn continues to draw upon the influences of diverse cultural traditions, an approach that dates back to a time when he was determined to create a sound that was truly original.
“I went through a phase where I didn’t want to be derivative of any of the songwriters that were around at the time,” he said. “I mean, I admired artists like Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen. They were great songwriters. But I didn’t want to sound anything like them.”
Instead, Cockburn spent five years going out of his way to avoid listening to them or to any other popular musicians. “I listened to music from everywhere I could find,” he elaborated. “European Renaissance music, Japanese flute music, Tibetan monks chanting, guys playing a log on the beach in Guadalcanal, it was a real voyage of discovery.”
That voyage would continue, in various shapes and forms, throughout Cockburn’s career. He collaborated with a wide range of musicians, including Jamaican reggae artist Leroy Sibbles and his rhythm section, who were featured on his early hit “Wondering Where the Lions Are” and performed frequently with him at live shows. Cockburn also went on a month-long trip to Mali, West Africa, where he jammed with African desert blues musicians Ali Farka Toure and Toumane Diabaté.
Recent albums have found Cockburn incorporating more elements of American blues and early jazz into his music, although his pop and folk singer-songwriter skills are still as sharp as ever. His progressive Christian faith, meanwhile, plays a larger role in his lyrics than in years past, while his propensity for social commentary remains undiminished.
A case in point is “Orders,” which combines both elements: “The enemy outside the gate / The drunk who tags the bathroom stall / The Proud Boy headed for his fall / The list is long, as I recall / Our orders said to love them all.”
“If somebody chooses to align themselves with darkness, it doesn’t come out of nowhere,” said Cockburn. “There’s a reason that they’re doing that. It doesn’t mean that we have to tolerate their actions, but I think we should try to communicate and to confront each other with respect. And that’s something that’s been downplayed in recent years in our culture. Respect and manners and things like that have kind of gone out the window with the internet and other things. But you have to have that. Otherwise, you’re just surrendering to the chaos.”
Photo: Daniel Keebler