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Speechless may have been the title of singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn's last album (the Canadian musician's first collection of instrumentals), but the man behind the music has never been short on words.
Cockburn's musical journey began on an old guitar, a gift from an aunt, and eventually took him all the way to the Berklee College of Music, in Boston. After a few restless years of study Cockburn returned to Canada where he played in various bands. A self-titled solo album arrived via True North Records in 1970 (a partnership that is still going strong today) and earned Cockburn the 'gentle folkie' tag, a label he would later shed with his more rock oriented recordings.
By the 1980s Cockburn's music had evolved into an eclectic mix of styles. Songs like "If I Had A Rocket Launcher," "Waiting For A Miracle" and "If A Tree," all political in nature, were radio friendly pop-rock tracks with penetrating lyrics. The bespectacled singer vocalized the hopelessness found in countries where war and murder of innocent civilians was a way of life and voiced his concerns over the eradication of the world's rainforests.
After 1989's Big Circumstances, and after years of writing, recording and touring, Cockburn hit a dry spell. The master wordsmith couldn't shake the feeling that he was trying to excavate parts of his soul (for new material) that were all but depleted. Rather than repeat himself, Cockburn took a much needed break. Once the words and music began flowing again, Nothing But A Burning Light came quickly. "A Dream Like Mine" found the Ottawa native looking at the world with a renewed sense of hope.
The 1990s produced four more studio albums, followed by 2002's retrospective: Anything, Anytime, Anywhere: Singles 1979-2002. With Speechless, fans of Cockburn's fine fret work were blessed with an entire collection of instrumentals that showcased the virtuoso's incomparable guitar style.
Todd Sterling spoke to Cockburn late last year while the singer-songwriter was on tour supporting Speechless.
[Sterling] You've included instrumentals on past albums, but this is the first time you've released an entire album without vocals. What was the catalyst for Speechless?
[Cockburn]
Well, there have been a lot of requests over the years for an album like that. People have been making their own CDs, too, in recent years; making their own compilations, but it just seemed like it was a good idea. Bernie Finkelstein (Bruce's manager) and I have been talking about it for a long time as well, and I'm not quite sure what made the difference this year as opposed to last year or the year before. It could have been done at other points, but I guess one of the factors was that I had the new pieces available, so it didn't have to be an exercise in nostalgia.
[Sterling] Was it a tough process deciding which songs to include on the album?
Not so tough, really. Over the years I've recorded enough pieces-it could have been a double CD-but some of those pieces were released as bonus tracks on the reissues that we've been releasing, so that kind of disqualified them because we didn't want to try and get people to buy the same thing twice in the same year (laughs). I felt I wanted it to be a kind of relaxing album; the kind of album people could put on at home in the evening and just sort of chill to. That meant leaving off the more aggressive pieces, "Down To The Delta," "Actions Speak Louder," stuff like that, they're sort of rockier or Jazzier, but harder-edged. So it became relatively simple to kind of just put together from what was left, what felt good and what worked with the new pieces.
[Sterling] How do you approach writing an instrumental song as opposed to writing a song with lyrics?
[Cockburn]
It's a totally different thing. The songs with lyrics start with the lyrics and the music is designed to enhance those lyrics in some way. With an instrumental piece, obviously, that's not a consideration, it's just pure composition, so it'll come out of...usually the ideas come from things I discover when I'm fooling around on the guitar. When I'm practicing, or in some cases, actively exploring. Sometimes they take awhile to finish because (I'm) kind of searching for a long time for the right things to go together and other times they go (together) fairly quickly.
[Sterling] So you don't sit down and say, "today I'm going to write a song with lyrics, or today I'm going to write an instrumental?"
[Cockburn] I don't sit down and say, "today, I'm going to write anything." I mean, I just never do that. It doesn't work for me to do that. I have to wait for an idea. The only time I've actually done that and had it work was when (I was) doing a film score. On occasion over the years I've done scores for a couple of feature films and a number of short documentaries, and that is a more deliberate process, but there you're kind of analyzing what the film requires. That's kind of like songwriting, once the lyrics are written for me, because you have things that need to be considered besides the music and the music is what is in support of those things. Where as with an instrumental piece that's just not in the picture, it's just not something you think of.
[Sterling] So it's more creativity on demand, then?
[Cockburn] Yeah, it is on demand, but it's something I don't do very often. I mean, I go around in a state of demand myself, like, "come on, give me a friggin' idea" (laughs). And then I might have to wait six months for the idea, but then the idea will come eventually and then a song arises from that.
[Sterling] So you don't push it?
[Cockburn]
I don't get anything out of pushing it. I've tried that in the past, where I'd sit down and write so much every day, but at the end of the year-doing that-I had about the same number of usable songs as I would have if I'd just waited for the good ideas.
[Sterling] Less stress?
[Cockburn]
The waiting can be stressful...if it gets to be too long. There's a kind of biological feel to the urge to write, and just like with any other biological urge, if you go too long without having it satisfied, it feels uncomfortable.
[Sterling] Who has had the biggest influence on you as a guitar player?
[Cockburn]
The guy that made me want to start playing guitar in the first place was Scotty Moore...I was a big Elvis fan and I was a big Scotty Moore fan. Once I started playing, I got introduced to Jazz and I got sort of captivated by Wes Montgomery and Gabor Zsabo, who was a very interesting guitar player that made a couple of albums under his own name and a few with a drummer named Chico Hamilton. Mississippi John Hurt, Mance Lipscomb...the finger-picking style that I employ was pretty much derived from trying, unsuccessfully, to imitate them (laughs).
[Sterling] Are there any guitar players today that really knock you out?
[Cockburn]
There's millions of them. Every time you turn a corner, there's another great guitar player sitting there, you know? There's so many good players. I listen to Bill Frisell's records, for instance. I'm not so fond of the very simple stuff that he does-the Nashville kind of stuff doesn't interest me as much. The more exploratory side of what he does, I find really exciting. There's so many people I hear, whose names I don't recall at the moment, or maybe I don't even know sometimes. A lot of records have guitar on them, and I'll hear them in passing somewhere and there will be somebody doing something really interesting. There's a kind of a whole world of interesting stuff where Jazz and electronica meet. There's some boring stuff that goes on in that, at that junction, but there's some really interesting stuff, too.
[Sterling] As a musician, what drives you to keep learning?
Uh (dramatic pause), it's the alternative to death (big laugh).
[Sterling] You're not going to die if you don't keep learning.
[Cockburn]
Well, you will creatively. From a creative point of view, it really is important. It's a cliche to say it, but you can't stand still. You're either progressing or regressing. That's the only option. You gotta keep learning.
[Sterling] As an activist, how do you inject a political statement into a song without alienating your audience?
[Cockburn]
I'm not concerned with that at all, not the alienation-I'm concerned with communication. I want to make whatever it is I have to say in a song as intelligible to people as possible and unambiguous, although sometimes ambiguity is what you want. But if we're talking about issue related stuff, it should be clear and I want people to understand it, but what decision they make about that once they understand it is their problem, not mine.
[Sterling] But you're not beating the world over the head with your views?
[Cockburn]
I try to just tell the truth the way I see it.
[Sterling] I was listening to "Islands In A Black Sky" (from Speechless). Is that all one take, just one guitar, or did you over-dub (parts)?
[Cockburn]
No, there's no over-dubs on that.
[Sterling] Man, you play like you have four hands!
[Cockburn]
Well (laughs), sometimes it feels like I have four hands, and I'm not sure what to do with three of them, but it's just finger picking.
(Editors note: Cockburn recently released his 29th album Life Short Call Now, on True North/Rounder Records)
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