Bruce Cockburn is heading back out on the road. With most of his fall tour selling well, the Canadian Music Hall of Famer has announced a run of new concerts for spring 2027.
Cockburn has spent more than five decades writing some of the most enduring songs in Canadian music, and on ‘The Blood of Others’ he turns his attention to the songs that shaped him long before he wrote a single lyric of his own. The album gathers material written by others, tracing a musical lineage that stretches from the gospel and blues records he heard as a child in Ottawa to the folk clubs and coffeehouses where he first found his voice. “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,” Cockburn explains. “The accumulation of these songs started in the sixties, before I’d even begun to try to create my own.”
The album’s title comes from an unexpected literary source: Simone de Beauvoir’s novel of the same name, written during the Nazi occupation of France. “Among other things it deals with personal responsibility in the face of scary oppression, and the kinds of choices people make,” he says. “I have borrowed the title because it seems perfect for an album of songs I didn’t write.”
‘The Blood of Others’ opens with “Wish I Was in Heaven Sitting Down,” a Robert Wilkins gospel number Cockburn first encountered on an early ’70s compilation. “Wilkins’ powerful bottle neck guitar and passionate singing made this conversation with God instantly memorable,” he says, noting he reworked the arrangement using the angular harmonies of his DADGAD tuning. From there, the album moves into “As Time Goes By,” the Herman Hupfeld standard forever tied to ‘Casablanca.’ “Who doesn’t love the scene in Casablanca in which Dooley Wilson plays this song, Ingrid Bergman at his side?” Cockburn says. “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.”\
The album also traces Cockburn’s early fascination with jazz and ragtime through “Buddy Bolden’s Blues,” a song he learned from the pages of a book. “My friends were singing country blues and old timey music,” he recalls. “I was drawn to the somewhat more sophisticated style of ragtime and early jazz.” That thread continues on “You Belong to Me,” a song Jo Stafford’s voice carried into his childhood home. “Jo Stafford’s gorgeously true voice was all over the radio with this when I was five,” Cockburn says. “The geographical references were exciting, awakening the travel bug in me years before On the Road lit a fire under it.”
Elvis Presley’s influence looms large on ‘The Blood of Others’ as well, most directly on “That’s Alright.” “Elvis Presley hit the radio in Ottawa right when I was hitting adolescence,” Cockburn says. “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.” Cockburn’s own version draws its inspiration from Arthur Crudup’s original recording.
A hometown connection surfaces on “Four Strong Winds,” the youngest song on the record. Cockburn credits Le Hibou, the Ottawa coffeehouse he calls his spiritual home, for introducing him to the song’s writers, Ian and Sylvia, who played the venue regularly through the sixties. “We were all very excited when their song showed up on the radio,” he says.
Several songs on the album are tied to vivid personal memories. “God Bless the Child,” the Billie Holiday and Arthur Herzog standard, dates back to a record Cockburn bought with his Sunday collection money as a teen. “A couple of years later I got to hear Billie Holiday’s original version,” he says. “Theologically a bit off base, but a deeply moving expression of disappointment with the human species.” “Louis Collins,” the Mississippi John Hurt classic, arrived through an afternoon Cockburn still remembers in vivid detail. “Barbie Luther invited me to her parents’ house to listen to music,” he recalls. “She opened a bottle of Mateus wine and put on Mississippi John Hurt’s rediscovery album. I was blown away by the sweetness, the idiosyncratic phrasing and the way he put voice and fingerpicked guitar together.”
Cockburn also revisits “Yellow Dog Blues,” a song he first heard as a youth on a Bessie Smith collection. “Right away I fell in love with the lyrics,” he says, tracing the song’s origins to W.C. Handy’s time in Clarksdale, Mississippi. “Fare Thee Well” has its own full circle story, one that connects Cockburn’s earliest musical memories to a career highlight decades later. “It came back to mind when I got to perform it with the McGarrigle sisters at Pete Seeger’s ninetieth birthday event in NYC,” he says.
“I’ll Be Seeing You” holds a special place on the record. Cockburn describes hearing a version on the radio in the nineties, in the aftermath of what he calls “a brief but heart opening relationship,” and mishearing a lyric that reshaped how he understood the song. “I thought that version ended with the line, I’ll be looking at someone, but I’ll be seeing you,” he says. “That’s not in the original lyrics. They only refer to the moon, but it hit me in a powerful way.” That memory led him to give the song a rhythmic treatment inspired by “I Only Have Eyes for You.”
The album also carries a delightful story from Cockburn’s Ottawa days. He remembers a night when he and his friends dressed up to see blues guitarist Lonnie Johnson, whose 1964 Paris recordings had captivated him years earlier, and requested “Laplegged Drunk Again” from the stage. “He shook his head and smiled, and said, Oh, I can’t play that song in a place like this,” Cockburn remembers. The album’s final stretch includes “One for My Baby,” the Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen standard Cockburn traces to Frank Sinatra’s 1958 recording; “Les Feuilles Mortes,” the French original of “Autumn Leaves,” which he discovered through the poetry of Jacques Prévert; and “Peace in the Valley,” a Thomas A. Dorsey gospel song he first heard through Elvis Presley.
‘The Blood of Others’ is Cockburn’s 39th album, a milestone in a remarkably consistent career that began in 1970. Along the way, he has earned 13 Juno Awards, been inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, received the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement, been named an Officer of the Order of Canada and been awarded nine honorary doctorates, including one from Berklee College of Music. His songs, including “Lovers in a Dangerous Time,” “Wondering Where the Lions Are” and “If I Had a Rocket Launcher,” remain touchstones of Canadian songwriting and have been covered by artists from Barenaked Ladies to Jimmy Buffett to Jerry Garcia.
That legacy kept growing on his previous studio release, ‘O Sun O Moon,’ recorded in Nashville with longtime producer Colin Linden. “Time takes its toll, but in my soul I’m on a roll,” Cockburn sang on that album’s opening track, a line that could just as easily describe the restless curiosity behind ‘The Blood of Others.’ Speaking about his songwriting at the time, Cockburn put it simply: “I just don’t want to ever keep doing the same thing.” With this new record, he carries that philosophy into the songs of others, choosing and reshaping each one with the same care and instinct that have defined his catalogue since 1970. Fans can hear these songs live this fall and next spring, when Cockburn takes to the stage in theatres across Western Canada and the U.S.
Fall 2026 Tour Dates
Oct. 15 Kitchener, ON @ Centre in the Square
Oct. 16 Ottawa, ON @ National Arts Centre
Oct. 17 Toronto, ON @ Massey Hall
Oct. 18 Montréal, QC @ Gesù Salle
Oct. 20 Plymouth, NH @ Flying Monkey &
Oct. 21 Portland, ME @ State Theatre &
Oct. 23 Boston, MA @ Chevalier Theatre &
Oct. 24 New York, NY @ Town Hall &
Oct. 25 Philadelphia, PA @ Keswick Theatre &
Oct. 27 Washington, DC @ Warner Theatre &
Oct. 29 Durham, NC @ Fletcher Hall &
Oct. 30 Charlotte, NC @ Carolina Theatre &
Nov. 1 Nashville, TN @ CMA Theatre &
Nov. 2 Knoxville, TN @ Bijou Theatre &
Nov. 4 Atlanta, GA @ Variety Playhouse &
Nov. 6 Ponte Vedra, FL @ Ponte Vedra Concert Hall &
Nov. 7 Fort Lauderdale, FL @ Amaturo Theatre &
Nov. 8 Key West, FL @ Key West Theatre &
& With Livingston Taylor
Spring 2027 Tour Dates
March 30 San Luis Obispo, CA @ Fremont Theater
March 31 Monterey, CA @ Golden State Theatre
April 2 Berkeley, CA @ The Freight
April 3 Berkeley, CA @ The Freight
April 4 Medford, OR @ Holly Theatre
April 5 Portland, OR @ Aladdin Theater
April 7 Seattle, WA @ Neptune Theatre
April 8 Seattle, WA @ Neptune Theatre
April 9 Victoria, BC @ McPherson Playhouse Theatre
April 10 Vancouver, BC @ The Centre Vancouver
April 12 Kelowna, BC @ Community Theatre
April 13 Cranbrook, BC @ Key City Theatre
April 14 Calgary, AB @ Jack Singer Concert Hall
April 15 Red Deer, AB @ Red Deer Memorial Centre
April 17 Winnipeg, MB @ Burton Cummings Theatre
April 18 Minneapolis, MN @ The Parkway Theater
April 19 Minneapolis, MN @ The Parkway Theater
April 21 Stoughton, WI @ Stoughton Opera House
April 22 Stoughton, WI @ Stoughton Opera House
April 23 Chicago, IL @ Old Town School of Folk Music
April 24 Chicago, IL @ Old Town School of Folk Music
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