COMMENTS/FURTHER
INFORMATION
Submitted by Michael O'Brien.
I was driving through Boston yesterday and flicked on the radio at 1:30, thumbing through the dial, to hear, "Coming up at 2:00 today, Bruce Cockburn will be playing live in the studio." Wow, almost hit the breakdown lane on that one. Sure enough, I caught his live performance on WXRV, better know in the area as "The River". I was afraid I might be in the tunnel of "The Big Dig" when Bruce came on; however, that did not happen. Can you imagine?
This was Bruce's 4th appearance on this station and he talked and played for about a half hour. Unfortunately, I had no recording equipment with me. Someone out there must have taped the show!
Anyway, he played
Trickle Down first,
and the sound was OK, but the
guitar
was a bit loud and it was hard to hear the words, but what I caught
sounded
great. Pretty darn scathing, I must say. Bruce talked about working with Jackson
Browne, and though Jackson is on the CD, they never actually saw each
other for the recording. Jackson layed down his parts out in California.
He
talked about how Jackson was a great guy, and that they had worked
together
in the past, and he had a lot of admiration for him because "Jackson layed
it
on the line."
He talked about Emmylou Harris's contribution and about the array of other musicians, including Hugh Marsh on fiddle, with whom he had not worked with for a while and was glad to have the chance to work again.
Bruce said that he had been working on this album for about 3 years. He spoke about the current state of affairs in general terms, putting his usually global perspective on things.
He spoke about
the song You've Never Seen
Everything.
I guess the genesis for the song is pretty bizarre. He spoke about being in
Toronto and recording, and one night was leaving late and passed an auto
accident with lots of police and ambulances. The next morning he looked
in
the newspaper to see what the accident was all about. Apparently, the
guy
driving had killed his wife and child with a pitchfork, and then took the pitchfork
and placed it in front of himself while driving, and then
intentionally ran into a pole, impaling himself. This seemed to affect
Bruce
and prompted him to think, "as bad as things can get, and as much as I
have
seen, I haven't seen everything."
He also sang Pacing the Cage, and ended with Open, which of course was fabulous. He seemed to be pushing Open, saying that it was getting airplay on some radio stations.
Bruce said that things will be kick off July 1st and run past the new year, or "until we're done."