Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Bruce Cockburn: Toronto Mike'd Podcast Episode 1996

Episode Date: October 15, 2026

On this 1996th episode of Toronto Mike'd, Mike chats with Bruce Cockburn about his folkie era in Ottawa, playing The Mariposa Folk Festival, breaking in Canada, Goin' Down the Road, breaking in the USA, playing Saturday Night Live, Tears Are Not Enough, becoming a video star, the Barenaked Ladies cover of Lovers In A Dangerous Time, the Franklin theme, and his new album The Blood of Others.A version of this podcast without programmatic ads is available to all Toronto Mike'd Patrons at patreon.com/torontomike.Toronto Mike'd, an award-winning podcast, is proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, Ridley Funeral Home, Nick Ainis, and RecycleMyElectronics.ca.If you would like to support the show, we do have partner opportunities available. Please email Toronto Mike at [e-mail]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Up among the firs where it smells so sweet or down. I got my mind on eternity. Welcome to episode 1,996 of Toronto-Miked, an award-winning podcast, proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery. Order online at great lakesbeer.com for free local home delivery in the GTA. Palma pasta. Enjoy the taste of fresh.

Homemade Italian pasta and entrees from Palma Pasta in Mississauga and Oakville. Visit palmaPasta.com for more. Fusion Corpso, Nick Aienes. He's the host of Building Toronto Skyline. And Mike and Nick, two podcasts that you ought to listen to. Recyclemyelectronics.coma.ca. Safe, secure recycling for residents, businesses, and the environment. Ready to recycle?

Bring it! And Ridley Funeral Home. Pillars of the community since 1921. Joining me today, making his Toronto mic to debut, it's Bruce Colburn. Hello. Hello, Bruce. How are you?

Good, good. Do I sound okay to you? You do. Loud and clear. Okay. Do you mind if we just spend a moment, before we have our little chat here about just I want to make you sound like a titch better. Is that possible?

So you're just, are you talking into the, the laptop or the? I'm talking into my iPad. Well, that's better. Okay. So that sounded better than you did at first. So maybe just project towards the iPad. So I'm a little closer then. Beautiful.

Let's see. Yeah, hopefully that's good enough now. Well, I'll make it work. I mean, you're Bruce Colburn. I'll make my, I'll make it work. but well it's a pleasure to meet you thanks for making some time for me oh appreciate your interest thanks whereabouts do we find you today

San Francisco how long you lived in California since 2009 did you like it there I do I like it in I mean California in general is pretty it's a very pretty state at least the northern part I'm not as knowledgeable or as fond of

of the south of California, but Northern California is pretty great, and San Francisco is a beautiful city. We got here too late for the famous San Francisco that used to be, but it's still a good town, so it's good to be here. Well, my friend, you're about to birth your 39th album, and I'm thinking this one must have been quite the emotional journey. Can we talk a little bit about the blood of others off the top? Yeah. I mean, the title comes from a Simone de Beauvoir novel, a book she wrote in 1942 in occupied Paris. And the book is about the French resistance. So it's, it's hard to imagine what kind of process brought that book into being in that context.

but anyway, I read it back in the 70s, and there's no direct connection between the album and the book other than the fact that the title seems like a great title for a book or an album of other people's songs. And the songs are mostly, there's a little bit of blood in the songs on the album as well. But that's kind of incidental. Mostly it's just other people's,

efforts that I'm celebrating here. Is it safe to say these are the songs that shaped you as an artist? Some extent it is true, yes. A song like Lewis Collins, the Mississippi John Hurt song, I cut my teeth as a finger picker trying to learn that song, among other things. And yeah, there's stuff like that Joe Stafford hit, you belong to me. That was a hit when I was five years old.

And I remember loving the song when it came on the radio. And why does a five-year-old love a song? I mean, I don't remember really. But I suspect it had to do with the travel references in it. I mean, I'm quoting my own lighter notes here a little bit, but they're not out there for people to read yet, so it's okay, I guess. but the yeah I think that

it fired my imagination it talks about the marketplace in old Algiers and you know the jungle and all these references that would have been exciting for me as a little kid how many songs on the

blood of others do you know of hand is it 14 maybe something like that I'm not exactly exactly sure. Go ahead. That's okay. I'm not going to count them now.

Was it like a difficult process to whittle it down to these 13 or 14 songs? Like these are essentially the songs that made Bruce Colburn. There were a few that we could have done that we left off for various reasons. Length having something to do with it because, you know, we could have made an album that was hours long, I suppose.

But these were the songs that were among the ones that I really wanted to include, and the better performances. I mean, a couple of them got left up because they just didn't come out that well. But, you know, I'm happy with what we ended up with. And I think it, I mean, I didn't set out to make a statement about my roots. or anything. It's just songs that I've wanted to record for a long time that I really like and that I feel like I can put something of myself into that's different from what they were how they were originally offered.

One of the songs you're covering for this new record is Four Strong Wins, and I'd love to hear because I've had the pleasure of chatting with Sylvia on this podcast, but Ian and Sylvia would have played Ottawa Coffee Houses in the six. when you were kind of, you know, working on your craft. Can you tell me about what an influence Ian and Sylvia would have played in your younger years? Yeah, I mean, less of a technical influence and more just an exemplar of, you know, positive performing, I thought, from a better way to put it. They would come through when I was still in high school,

you know, maybe like the later years of high school, when the coffee was called Leibu into my acquaintance. It had been around for a few years before I bought it, but I ended up, you know, being in a high school class with Peter Hodgson, who was bed in the Ottawa area, especially in Sneezy Waters. And he and I hit it off. We were both guitar players on.

an interest in jazz and he was coming at it from the folk and then we kind of met around blues and and he introduced me to the folk scene which included Sandy Crawley and various others that ended up never well people who ended up being in you know we all ended up being in a band called the children eventually but but Ian and Sylvia along with various other artists would come through a couple of times a year and and I would make a point of going to see them because they were great. And there were, you know, not everybody that came through was great, but there were a lot of great people who did perform at Lebu.

And it was a great gift to me that I got to hear them. I'm going to shout out some upcoming Canadian tour dates. Okay, so I should tell you, I'm not able to drop this episode today. this episode will drop later, so I'm going to skip episode, sorry, I'm going to skip tour dates that are in the past tense when this episode does drop. But October 15th, you're in Kitchener at the center in the square. Then October 16, you're in Ottawa, the nation's capital here at the National Arts Center. And you'll be in my hometown, October 17th at Massey Hall before you make your way to, my daughter's hometown now, Montreal for a gig. I have been lucky enough to see you, Bruce, at Massey Hall,

and it was quite the wonderful experience. A big recommend from me. But what is, I'm just naturally curious before we get into this, what is the most memorable Toronto venue that you have ever played? Wow. Well, I'd have to think Massey Hall probably, just because I've played there a lot of times, and it's been a great venue in its time.

different ways. I mean, the new Massey Hall, the renovated version is from a performance and audience point of view, a huge improvement over what it was for the kind of music we do. I mean, it was designed to have an unamplified anything on stage. And when you start amplifying stuff, the sound would get echoy back in the day. But they fixed that, and it's really a great sounding room now. The trade-off was that the old dressing rooms used to be really great. They were funky and kind of interestingly laid out, and the new ones, you've got to go down an elevator and kind of have to go through security to get to the dressing room, and it's a bit more sterile. Over time, that'll change, of course, as they get more broken in. And I'll be doing my best,

of course, to help them in. Well, I urge everybody if you can score a ticket to see Bruce at Massey Hall in October 17. So if you don't mind, I've been trying to get some time with you to ask you some stuff for a bank about a decade now. So this is a big deal to me. But can we go way back? And the question that I'll give credit to Pearl Jam Pat, I'm guessing he's a Pearl Jam fan. Pearl Jam Pat wants me to ask you. And I'm curious as well, what was your approach early on?

when it came to learning guitar. Can you just give us a little taste of Bruce Colburn learning guitar as a youngster? You know, this could be a long answer, but I got hold of my first guitar. I found it in my grandmother's closet in the attic, you know, like under the ease. And I was just rooting around in there. There was a bedroom attached to it and we were temporarily staying at her house while our house was being built and you know I started rooting around in this closet and I discovered a guitar case and my heart started fluttering and and I pulled it out and it was a really it was a cheap old beat-up guitar set up for Hawaiian style playing where you you know it's got an extra high and not on it and you're supposed to

hold in your lap and play and that wasn't what I wanted to do and so I took the high nut off it it was a terrible guitar and it had not been well taken care of But I painted gold stars on the top, and I would pose in front of the mirror. Rock and Roll, he poses, you know, with it. And my parents got nervous because this was the era of, you know, rock and roll was still new. And, you know, there were teenage gangs associated with all sorts of bad behavior. So they came to me. My mom came and said, look, we will support you playing the guitar,

but you have to promise to take lessons and learn to do it properly, and you have to promise that you won't grow sirens and get a leather jacket. So it was easy to make both those promises. And so I started off taking lessons from a guy named Hank Sims in Ottawa. He had a store eventually he didn't have it when I first started, but he opened a music store called Blue Note Music that was around for a long time. But he taught me the basics of guitar. I already knew how to read music because I'd had lessons on a couple of other instruments prior to this.

But so learning to read on the guitar wasn't too big a stretch. And, you know, it started off very simple. Then, you know, then I was learning like simple country songs that I didn't relate to in the least. At the time, I would now maybe better. But but and then it moved from that. into kind of jazz standards. And I was learning what Randy Bachman calls jazz courts. And it grew from there. I got introduced to jazz, you know, the music through those lessons. And then through others. And then I fell in with some focus toward the end of high school

and got interested in that and interested in finger-picking. And, you know, one thing just led to another. So I actually went to music school for a couple of years after high school studying jazz composition and with guitar as my instrument. And so I got guitar lessons there too. And the style that I ended up with is kind of. kind of an amalgam of poorly absorbed Mississippi John Hurt and West Montgomery, let's say, you know. But somehow they merged into the style that works for me.

Is it the summer of 67 when you moved to Toronto? Yeah, that's the first time I moved. Yes, I was in and out of Toronto a few times after that through the 70s. but and then for an extended period starting in 1980. But yes, 67, I got a call from a guy in Toronto that was forming a band and wanted to know if I, he had heard about me from another guitar player that I knew in Ottawa.

And, you know, I was a guitar player, I was writing songs, I was singing, sort of, and, you know, he was interested in those, those qualifications. So I went down and we got together and played and it worked enough. So I moved to Toronto and the band at that time was called, well, we came up, I came up with the name actually, the Flying Circus, thinking of the, you know, because it was the 60s for one thing and also because, you know, I'd grown up with kind of my dad's memories of watching wing walkers at the exhibition and stuff like that.

So, yeah, that band lasted from August of 67 until the spring of 68. And we had maybe three or four gigs during that period. We did a lot of rehearsing. And we had, because of connections, but Harvey Glad helped us a lot. And it was kind of Mr. Music Business, Ottawa, actually from, for much of my life. But he would get us these games through his

connections. So, you know, we hardly ever played, but we played. We opened for Cream and we opened for Jimmy Hendricks and somebody else, Wilson Pickett. The first time I played Massey Hall was opening for Wilson Pickett. It was a disaster. But he wasn't. He was great.

But we were a disaster. But it got better after that. But in the end, I spent the previous several years playing in a bunch of different bands. And I was getting tired of the band atmosphere, both musically and kind of stress-wise, like just never having enough money to get anything done, and never always having to scuffle for stuff.

And I figured if I was scuffling by myself, it would be easier. And I also liked a certain number of the songs I'd written better when I played them myself, so I decided to go so long. Quick question about the Flying Circus. You did record some material, right? But is there any way we'll ever hear the Flying Circus material that you did record? To quote an English biker who responded to my saying,

I'll be seeing you. I hope not. Yeah, no, we did record. We made demos. And I don't, they are around. I think you could probably find them on YouTube somewhere. Whether they're under the name of the Flying Circus, we changed the name partway along,

and we changed it to all of us because there was a band from Australia that had a record on the radio, and they were called the Flying Circus. had to change the name. And it was O-L-I-V-U-S, all of us. So that might be how you'd find those demos. I'm not sure now.

They were done at Hallmark Studios in downtown, Toronto. And I don't think they were very good, but they might be the best thing that I had been part of up to that point. Do you have fond memories of, you know, being at playing the Mariposa Folk Festival in the late 60s? I remember being scared to death. I do have fun memories of it, but of the festival in general. It was a great festival.

And I loved being able to hear all the different people that would come and meet people from everywhere. And I've heard a lot of music that I would have never been exposed to, had it not been for Mariposa and a couple of other festivals later on. But Murray McLaughlin introduced me to the Toronto Focus. to the Toronto folk scene. We got acquainted when he came to Ottawa to play at at Louis Vu, the club that I hung out at. And he basically introduced me to Estelle Klein who ran the festival and various others.

And the first time I played there, I think it was the first time. Neil Young was supposed to headline the Sunday night. And he was kind of a last minute no show. But I got out my songs, and people responded really well. And kind of, then I was, I suppose, on the map somehow in Toronto. On the map. Is it 1970, I would guess, is the first time you ever heard a song of yours on the radio?

Yes. And I heard the whole album, the whole first album. We recorded it mostly at the end of 69. There were a couple of redoes in early 70. And the album came out kind of in the spring, I guess. I can't remember exactly what kind of year. But it was warm enough that I didn't have to wear a heavy coat when I was walking around Yorkville.

And I remember at the time, Chome FM was the radio station that everybody had on because it was the first free-form FM radio. And it was very popular in the circles that I moved in. So I'm walking in and out of stores in Yorkville, and I hear my voice coming over there sound system. And I became terrified again because I felt like I would never have privacy again. I felt no one knew it was me, right? I mean, I'm standing there in the store.

They didn't know what I looked like. But I just had this feeling like, I'll never have privacy again. You know, it was very disturbing. But they played the whole album back to back. And, or front to back. And so, you know, I'd go out of one store and into another one and the next song, and then and so on it was it was great that they did that but it was disturbing also da-da-da-da-da what do i see cows hanging out under spreading trees

zoomed there gone behind the sign white letters pointing to the long white line and i'm I don't smell grass growing in the field Tells me how it feels A silver roof flashing by Her truck says goodbye with a sigh And a sunshine smile I'm singing in my bone Matter now where I'll give something

Shine smile It's funny just yesterday, Bruce I was at the world premiere of the new documentary about Neil Peart drummer for Rush And it's funny Murray McLaughlin's wife was there I said hi to her, Denise Donlan actually, small world story.

But in the docket, there's a great part about Neil Peart wrestling with the fact that he was so fiercely private. And he was really important to him to keep his privacy and everything. But at the same time, his chosen profession was to release music and perform. And he needed the fans in order to do that. So it was such an interesting paradox. the, you know, you chose to be a public figure and make money from being a public figure, and then you sort of resent the fact you don't have the privacy you once did. Yeah, it's, I think most of us have to deal with something like that.

I mean, there are those people who just want the attention and who love that. And I know a couple of people like that, and they don't have the same wrestling match that the rest of us do. But, but, you know, I mean, to be a writer, Neil was a writer, to be a writer, you do need to be in your own space, and you need to be free of distractions to some extent. And I think that, I mean, I think this was true of Neil because he was a thoughtful kind of writer, and not everybody, not everybody approaches songwriting the way that I do or that he did.

But I think that, you know, if you are that kind of songwriter, especially you need your space. And, yeah, I mean, it's a balancing act, really, because as you said, there's no point in writing the songs if nobody's going to hear them. I mean, when I started writing, I thought that other people would record my songs. I didn't want to be in front of the stage.

But, and I imagined, Judy Collins would record my songs, for example, right? No, they didn't. Well, Judy eventually did record one many years later. But there was the people that were sort of known at the time. Because being a songwriter was less a critical part of the whole music scene in that era. I mean, there were writers, but there were lots of people that didn't write their own songs that just interpreted others. And so there was a potential avenue for me to kind of put my songs out to people through.

true, but nobody did it, so it ended up having to be me. Now, I'm curious about how you end up, you know, working with Donald Shabib on going down the road, okay? It's funny, I was with somebody, again, at the same event, somebody recognized me because I talked to their aunt, their aunt, Jane Eastwood, from going down the road. How did that happen, you and Donald Shabib, collaborating on going down the road? He approached us. I mean, approached by us, I mean, through Bernie Finkelstein, my manager.

And this was brand new. I mean, Bernie and I started working together in 1969. We're still working together. But I heard about it from Bernie first. This guy wants to, you know, might want you to do music for a film. And so I had a meeting with Don. and his the approach he had,

which other directors have also used, but there are different ways you can go at this, but his approach was he had created a kind of mock soundtrack, a musical score of all these records that he thought fit to various scenes, some classical, some country, some of this happened. And he wanted to just write songs just like those. which was in one way kind of annoying because, you know,

write what I want, what I imagine goes with those scenes. But at the same time as it was annoying, it was also, it provided a framework and a sort of set of parameters to work inside, which made it a little bit easier in some ways. So, you know, I had to come up with a country song in one instance, for one scene. I had to come up with stuff more like what I actually do, for the rest of it. But, and it worked out okay. I mean, the theme song, I had never been to Cape Breton at the time. And we got into a hassle after the fact because Don and all everybody else involved in the film wanted me to put out a soundtrack album.

For one thing, there wasn't enough music to make an album. Could have probably made an EP. But, But I didn't want to do that because I didn't want my second album to be about somebody else. I wanted it to be a continuation of the first album. And, you know, had I had more albums behind me at the time, I wouldn't have had a problem with it. But because it was like the second time out, I just didn't feel good about that. So I said no, and then they got mad at me. You know, basically it didn't talk to me anymore. But it was interesting.

Don was great to work with actually up to that point. He was clear enough about what he wanted, but he was also flexible. So if I came up with something that was just a bit off, what he'd imagined. He gave it the time of day and ended up, you know, those songs ended up in the film. The song called The Victim of the Rainbow would be a case in point of that. the but going down the road the title theme

it it still has some life I mean other people have recorded it and you know like I said I'd never been to Cape Breton at the time but I imagined things and I knew

what I'd read about it and whatever and just kind of put myself in the place of these characters in the film who I guess were close enough to reality that people in Nova Scotia could relate to it in the eyes

of Cape Breton my father did stay and his father's father before fishing banks and diggings that don't give no road boy better returning so gay with the silver codblest but they couldn't compete with the company fleet Now it's welfare, relief, or go west. You mentioned the name Bernie Finkelstein, who I've had the pleasure of, you know, having down here in the South Atobicoke basement studio for a good long chat about True North, etc. But maybe just a moment talking about this relationship with Bernie, which is like pushing 60 years at this point. Yeah.

It's the longest relationship I've had. And it's still working. So, you know, why change it? I mean, we're all getting old. And, you know, Bernie's had some health issues this past year. But he's still on the job. And, you know, we've, if we can still see the results, like there's, the albums keep coming. I mean, this is a bit of an exception in this album because it's other people's songs.

But it's still, you know, the fact that we're able to keep on doing it has a lot to do with Bernie and the fact that I'm able to keep touring in the kind of organized way that we do at least. I mean, if it were left to me, it would be much more haphazard and probably would have a shorter future. But anyway, it's been good. If it ain't broken, don't fix it. Yeah. Okay. Let's just fast forward a little bit here. I only have an hour.

I feel like I could talk to you for several hours. But I'm curious about your breakthrough in the United States. I'm sure this was important, just even for no other reason than your accountant is like, have you seen the size of that country? But it's wondering where the lions are that breaks you in the U.S. So what is it like when suddenly, because you're already a big deal in Canada,

we love you already, but all of a sudden in, I guess, it's 1979, I guess, 1980, when you're literally on Saturday Night Live, What is it like when you're actually blowing up in the USA? It was interesting. It was great from the point of view that all of a sudden we had like all these other places to play. That's what struck me about it right away. And the company that put out that album, Millennium Records,

it was a guy named Jimmy Einer and his brother. we had shopped the, I'm just trying to think about this now. Is this right? I've got to make sure I'm not too mixed up here. We did what, when. But in any case, yeah, it was millennium. And Jimmy owned the company, ran it. And his brother, Donnie, who later became the president of Columbia, did the radio PR,

like she shopped the record to radio stations. And he got up to some all kinds of crazy stuff. They showed up at a station somewhere in the Midwest with a lion on a leash. They were the bejeevers out of everybody. And he went to great lengths to make sure that record got on the radio, and he was effective. But the big thing, the big effect on me really was just the fact that a tour went from being maybe 10 shows to 100 shows, almost overnight. You know, I mean, not a hundred shows in a row, but, you know, over the course of a year, say. And all of a sudden I'm playing in places I, you know, I never imagined going to, never mind playing in.

And some places that I was really happy to go to. It started on the West Coast. It started, like the first places I could go was it were in California, actually. There was a radio station in Santa Rosa that was ahead of the curve. they were playing my stuff before wondering where the lions are. And so I had a little audience in that area, which is just north of San Francisco. And between there and the Canadian border, Washington State, there was a bit of an audience because people knew me from going to shows in Vancouver and whatnot.

But it spread fast. And, you know, it was fun. In those days, it wasn't a question. have a band and you could travel on a tour bus and it just worked and didn't always bring in tons of money but it brought in enough and it's you know that's been my life ever since really sun's up looks okay the world survives into another day and I'm thinking about eternity I got my mind on eternity Do you notice a bump in record sales when you're on Saturday Night Live?

I noticed that. I do remember being on Saturday Night Live vividly, though, because I was scared to death. It was more, it was like Mariposa times of 5,000. You know, you're there. It's live TV. Everybody in the studio was tense. And I mean, all the crew, the staff, everybody had this tense vibe, which communicated itself to me more than adequately, and I already had my own. And we pulled it off. It worked. And there was a good response.

I still hear from people who saw it and liked it. But I'm not sure if it's significant or not. We never got asked back. But anyway, what I do remember, the other musical act on the show that night was the amazing rhythm aces. They had, I think I've got the right name. It was a back street romance was their hit. And they were obsession guys from Memphis that had formed a band.

And it was a good record. And they were on with us. and the guitar player, or one of them anyway, tried to talk to me, tried to make conversation, and I was so terrified, I was practically blind with fear, and I couldn't talk to him at all. And later on, John Goldsmith and Kerry Crawford, who produced albums for me in the 80s, we're recording somebody in Memphis,

and this guy was on the session. And they, you know, they were just talking back and forth, you know, who have you worked with, who have you worked with? And they said they've produced my albums for me. And this guy whose name I don't recall now, I met him since then. But he said, Bruce Colburn, what a prick. So John and Kerry gleefully related that story back to me. But anyway, I did meet him later, and he didn't remember either having said that

or having been on, he remembered being on Saturday, left. He didn't remember trying to talk to me. He said he was probably drunk. There you go. Now, it's just for the definitive record here, Bruce. Wondering where the Lions are reached number 21 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the USA.

So big hit for you. In this song, like when I hear it today on the radio, it's playing probably somewhere in this country right now. It sounds like effortless joy. Like it's just like a, it feels like a, a lightness that you hear, you don't hear a lot in Bruce Colburn songs that follow.

Like, you wrestle with heavier subjects after this. I just wonder where that particular lightness came from. From speculation about death, like all the rest of them. It's really, it was a beautiful morning, which I think is chiefly responsible

for the vibe of the song. Like the, the story is, I mean, I've heard people, some of your listeners will have heard this story. But the, I had had dinner the night before with a relative of mine who worked in the security world, I mean international security, not bank security. So, you know, he had dire things to say because at the time Russia and China were at odds

on their mutual border. And Russia had, we knew Russia had nukes, but Russia and the U.S. had the hotline. So they weren't, and they had a tacit, or maybe not so tacit, agreement not to surprise each other because they understood, you know, what the nuclear capacity would mean. And we knew that China had nukes, but we didn't know what their attitude was. They weren't part of that conversation. And they were scary at the time, et cetera. And so, you know, my relative said, for all we know, we can wake up tomorrow and it's the end of the world. And that was kind of over dessert, having had a nice filet mignon dinner and whatever.

But I woke up the next morning, and it wasn't. It was this beautiful, sunshiny day in Ottawa. I'm driving down the Queensway, which is like the highway that runs through the city. And I'm thinking, sun's up? Uh-huh. Looks okay. and that's where the song started. And the dream of lions was,

I had recently had a dream, the one that's referred to in the song, but prior to that, sometime in the past, I'd had a really terrifying dream about lions breaking into my bed and crack, and like ripping their way through the door and coming after me.

And so these lions, in the more recent dream, were regal and beautiful, and they were at a distance, so they weren't scary. And so that's, but you know they're out there, and you know they actually are scary. So it's light because they're not killing me. But you know, but you can't ignore them.

So I'm wondering where the lines are, which corner they're waiting around. Amazing. Do you remember writing the lyric for lovers in a dangerous time? Kick at the darkness till it bleeds daylight? I was pretty happy with that line. Some of my friends were a little nervous about it. It's like, it's so violent. You know, like, give me a break.

I mean, you know, I didn't. It got more violent later, didn't it? But in any case, I wrote that song because at the time, my older daughter was a little, she was in public school. I don't, trying to think what grade she would have been in, but, you know, maybe first or second grade, something like that. And, you know, but I was, but I was, But at one point, I had seen her and a little boy that was her friend holding hands in the

school yard. And I mean, they weren't lovers, obviously, at that age, but there was affection there that they were able to acknowledge. And I just thought this is like 81 or thereabouts, maybe 82. And I remember thinking these kids are growing up with terrible prospects. Not only like we grew up with my generation, grew up with the threat of nuclear war. And we were worried about that. But to that got added environmental concerns, which people were starting to pay attention

to in the late 60s and early 70s. And then AIDS came along. So you can't even be in love with somebody safely. You know, all of a sudden, right? Nobody knew. It was new. Nobody knew where it came from or what it was all about and was associated with being gay, but not exclusively.

And, you know, obviously we've learned much more about it since. But I just thought these kids were growing up. up with this kind of a horrible set of prospects and I wanted to say something about that I wanted to offer something in response and that's what came out this program Bruce we discuss the bare naked ladies cover of lovers in a dangerous time I think more than any other podcasts on the planet and I'm gonna read a question from Joe Louis and then I'll have a follow up but Joe Louis writes I'd like to know if his thoughts on the Bare Naked Lady version changed over time, and I'm curious how that version's success impacted his own career.

I'll answer that backwards. I'm not aware of an impact on my own situation, although I'm not sure that it didn't have one. I just didn't really notice. And I certainly did change my opinion of it. I at this point, and for a long time now, have been very happy that they recorded it, and the way they chose to do it is fine with me. But in the beginning, when I first heard it, I was kind of shocked,

because it reminded me of the, for one, of a better way to put it, the commercial folk music that was popular when I was getting started as a songwriter and discovering the world of folk stuff. And I'm thinking of, you know, like the Kingston trio and the limelighters. And to some extent, Peter Paul and Mary, even, you know, where this is radio stuff, we didn't want to, us folkies, quote unquote, didn't want to make music like that. We rejected that because it was inauthentic, we felt. So when the Bare Naked Ladies came out with a song that sounded like the Limeleaders doing my song,

I was shocked. And it took me some getting used to. In the end, I mean, right from the beginning, I recognized that they had a right to do it any way they wanted. So I had to kind of not get too judgmental about it. But I didn't have to say much for people to interpret my opinion as being very judgmental. And it led to some kind of awkwardness for a while. But I've ended up, I've performed that song a lot with them numerous times.

And both versions, my version and theirs. And it works both ways. So good on them. I remember reading about the late great Gordon Lightfoot, not being a fan of the real Statics cover of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. So sometimes these 90s alt-rock bands from Canada cover your song and maybe it takes a while to warm up. I'm not sure Gordy ever warmed up to that one, though.

Well, I don't know. I can't speak for him, but I think that the, I think the artistic license factor looms very large in these conversations. I do think everybody, in fact, it's more than just a right. I think there's, you kind of, an artist kind of has a duty to bring something of their own to whatever they record. Whether if it's theirs, obviously that's going to happen, but if it's someone else's song, they've got to do that too. and they should do it. And so, you know, the writer, I mean, it's hard for me to hear my own songs sung by someone else just because they're so personal to me.

But, you know, I mean, I can quibble over this or that or the other thing. And unless it's like a major, you know, flavoring violation of some sort, I'm not going to feel bad about it because it is everybody's a proper place to apply their own creativity to it. Elephants and Stars, that's a band, but this is Manfred,

a lead singer who wrote in, and he tells me, and I just learned this from Manfred, and I pulled a 30-second clip, but the new propaganda record is called At Peace, and the single has a reference to lovers in a dangerous time. And I'm going to guess you haven't heard the new propaganda record.

Am I right, Bruce? I've heard that single. Oh, you have? Okay, so I'm going to play it for you and the listenership. I pulled 30 seconds. So if you don't mind, I'm just going to play this

and then get your response. Here's 30 seconds. Some days I'm scared I'm gone. Earth haven't comes without some kind of fight. Gotta kick in the darkness to the bleatster. A little louder than your version, Bruce, but what are your thoughts on hearing that? I totally love it. I wish I was in that band.

I mean, I'd love to play in a band that did that kind of music, but, you know, it's never quite happened. But, yeah, it's great. You know, I mean, they are, they've joined a small company of people who've quoted that song. The other artists that I can think of is you too. and that have quoted the same line. And it's, you know, the line in a way has become part of the culture. I hear people say it. You know, I don't think they're necessary thinking of me at all when they do,

which is fine. It's, you know, I don't know. Apparently people put it on T-shirts and stuff too. Bruce, more than that, there are people with tattoos that say kick at the darkness till it bleeds daylight. Well, I had one guy tattoo my autograph on his arm. He had me sign his arm in a Sharpie, and then he had it made into a tattoo. I thought that was excessive for myself, but I cooperated.

But, I mean, it's interesting, and it's great. I don't know. What could be wrong with that? I'm glad you liked that propaganda song at peace, because I loved it, and I loved the reference to lovers in a dangerous time, and I was like, I want to what Bruce thinks. So I'm glad you like it. And you referenced you too, of course.

That's God Part 2 from Rattle and Hum. I need to get the definitive story from you regarding tears are not enough. Okay? You need to scratch this itch of mine. Like, can you really give me the granular details? Because you're the only person on that song who wasn't at the recording in Toronto. You did it in Germany, right? And can you share the role of like Bruce Allen and Jim Ballons?

And I'll just be quiet and listen. Yeah. I was on tour in Germany and there was a lot of phoning back and forth because Bernie wanted this to happen. And I did too. I mean, when they asked, it was nice to be asked to be part of it. And Jim Valens flew over to Germany with the master tapes. And we went in the studio and recorded my vocal, which is like one line. There wasn't much to it. But, you know, they went to the trouble of doing that.

The sad part of it was in the documentary film about the making of it, they didn't have a camera there. So it's not in the film. But it would have been a good story to include from many points of view, I think. But in any case, yeah, Jim wrote the song and he brought it over. He knew what it was supposed to sound like. The whole thing probably took an hour, not more. Were you in Hamburg? Where were you in Germany? Do you remember?

I'll forget if it was Hamburg or Bremen. but somewhere, one of those two. Okay. And I mean, Jim tells this story, and it sounds like he gets to Germany, and you're not sure you're going to do it, but you are always in on this, right? As I recall, I guess I would have maybe held something in reserve because I hadn't heard the song.

I suppose I've reserved kind of something like that, but I don't remember. But I do remember, you know, feeling pretty good about doing it. It's amazing they let you do it. only because there are some notable, you know, musicians, Canadian musicians from the mid-80s who are not on the album. But I wonder if they're thinking, hey, they let Bruce do it from Germany. They could have let me do it from wherever I was.

I wouldn't know. I'm not going to be right about that, but I don't know. You're like, I'm Bruce Colburn, okay? It's not my fault. I'm on tour in Germany. Okay. And what did you think of the Finnish product when you heard the, you know, David Foster puts together the final version of tears are not enough?

You're proud of your role there? Yes, and no. I mean, well, yes, I'm proud of having been part of something that was a worthwhile attempt to fundraise for people who needed to help. I mean, it's not the kind of song that I would normally see myself being part of. It's a kind of mainstream pop style song that's different from what I do. But, you know, it was nice to be included. I felt grateful that they were willing to go to that length to make sure I got included.

And I wish I could have been in the studio with the rest of the gang. It would have been fun. Yeah, absolutely. Now, recent times, I guess we're going back a couple of years now, I should set the table here by saying, I have a 24-year-old and a 22-year-old, which means I saw many an episode of Franklin, okay? and I loved

I loved the point it was like oh Arthur would come on and I'd be like oh you know that's Ziggy Marley and the melody makers doing that theme

and then Franklin would come on and I'd tell my kids oh yeah that's Bruce Colburn or whatever Hey it's Franklin coming over to play

and comes with all they've got stories got time to spend to my I think it's a fun piece of pop culture that when Beyonce released

Texas Holdham I guess in 2024. Immediately people are like, Beyonce and her songwriters are ripping off. Hey, it's Franklin, the theme song that you wrote and performed. But for the definitive record here, what do you think about those similarities?

Well, I listened to that recording with a great degree of hope because I thought I might be in for a lot of money. But I found no reason to be hopeful in that way. It's not a copy. This is similar groove is all And you can't copyright a groove nor would anybody want to I mean we steal from each other all the time Everybody does in that kind of way

And I don't I shouldn't even call it stealing because it's just using the tools that are floating around So I you know there's no reason for any kind of negative feeling around that It's a pretty good record actually Yeah Yeah if you had any role in inspiring these songwriters who might have caught, you know, Franklin on the Cartoon Network or whatever. That's a kudos to you. Well, yeah, thank you for paying attention.

Right. Stephen wrote in, he said, he asked me, he says, it's a bit of a tangent, he says, but he says, can I ask, he asked me to ask you, Bruce, about one of the great Canadians, Bill Mason, he says that you went on a canoe trip with him. Is there a story here? Yeah, a couple of different ones, but the one in the really amazing one, in the Central Arctic. This is mid-80s, I guess. I don't remember the year offhand, but the Hugh Marsh and I did music for Bill's film, Water Walker. In fact, the title of the film came from

the theme song that we wrote for that. And that there's a lot of music in that film. But in the process, I had met Bill a couple of times, before that and at one point he wanted me to do music for another film he did called Never called Cry of the Wild about wolves it's a beautiful documentary about wolves and but I didn't do that at the time he asked it was something that having done going down the road and some other like not so notable things I just didn't want to do film but but anyway when when he came around a water walker. It seemed like a cool thing to do. And it was. And we got a, we had a pretty good relationship with Bill. And a friend of mine at the time, Alan Wetmo, was also closer friends

with Bill than I was. And I, you know, he called up one day and said, we can go on this canoe trip. You know, you and I, and it'll be Bill and Wally Schaber, who, who, um, Wally Schaber, who, an outfitting operation based in Ottawa, Black Feather, I think it was called, and two guys from from Shukhameh, I think, who were the guys who founded a clothing brand called Skorafil, outdoor clothes. And so they, it was the six of us and Bill was kind of the main motivator and the guy who chose the river and the Wally was interested because he hadn't paddled that river. And being an outfitter, they were guiding canoe trips up there. He wanted to explore it.

So we started, we got flown in from Yellowknife, flown to the headwaters of the Hood River, which was a couple of tiny lakes that were still frozen over when we got there. But the ice was called candle ice, so it's these vertical ice crystals that are easily parted from each other so you can paddle through it. But they rattle quite musically against the sides of the canoe. So we started there and then we traveled down that river for about 300 plus miles to the Arctic coast. and then a plane picked us up where the river came out and flew us a short distance to Bathurst Inlet. That's got an Inuit name now, and I don't know what that is, but at the time it was Bathurst Inlet, and it's kind of almost from an east-west point of view, it's almost in the middle of the Reddy Coast.

And it was a fantastic trip. Sounds amazing. Three days running, we're, we, there was a herd of carib migrating in the opposite direction on the, and running down the banks, you know, along the side of the river. And I mean, tens of thousands of them, it just, you know, it just never stopped. They'd be, they'd be in little groups, you know, a dozen or, you know, three or four, I mean, enough to keep the wolves at bay, but, but, you know, it was, there were numerous memorable things, muscox and plenty of mosquitoes.

That was the downside. But it was windy a lot, so they weren't too bad. It sounds incredible, Bruce. That sounds amazing. Yeah. Bill was an amazing guy. I have a vivid memory of him. The landscape includes a feature called Eskers,

which are, they were riverbeds under the glaciers when it was all glaciated. Everything melted away, but the gravel. deposits that were formed the riverbed stayed so what you have is these raised areas that follow river courses along over over the landscape and I can just remember Bill standing on an escrow overlooking the river howling trying to get the wolves to answer him he didn't quite manage it they were maintaining radio silence but but it was it was a wonderful trip speaking of a wonderful trip here. On our way out here, I know I only have a couple more minutes here, but when I look at

your career, Bruce, like I hear about the coffee houses, the folk era, and then next thing you know, you're a much music star, right? In arena rock streaming era now, like, maybe the last question I'll give it to Hamilton, Mike, who writes in, while he was considered successful, especially in the folk and the folk rock era of his early in his career, can you please ask him, how did it feel to have that bright, shining, big fame and recognition with, you know, stealing fire and lovers in a dangerous time. And if I had a rocket launcher, I could have done, you know, 30 minutes with you on that song. Like, what was that like that, that change in the 80s when you're, you're suddenly a video star?

It was fun. And it was, it presented new possibilities. You know, the, I, when videos first became the thing. I was excited because the idea of combining visuals and music was appealing as a creative avenue. And unfortunately it didn't stay there. Basically the record, the videos turned into commercials for the albums before very long. But in the beginning, it was an exciting kind of set of possibilities. So it was fun to do. The video we did for Lover's in a Dangerous Time was the first one and I think it suffers slightly, from having been the first one. They got better after that, and we made some pretty good ones, actually. The ones would call it democracy,

the one for it Tree Falls, are, I think, really good videos. But the main thing it did was it opened up more possibilities. The same way having a radio hit opened up possibilities. That next step led to, you know, basically more places to play,

more, you know, better hotel rooms, better, could pay the band more, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, that's what it all translates into, practical stuff. Your 39th album, as I said, you're birthing your 39th album, The Blood of Others. It comes out October 16. And, of course, you're playing here in Toronto at Massey Hall, October 17. That's amazing. So continued success.

And thank you so much for doing this. how long will you run? That's 39 albums. Are you gunning for 50? Are you just going to keep creating your art as long as you can? When I realized this was number 39, I thought, geez, I'm going to have to try for at least one more to even it out. I don't know. I never have been very good at predicting what was going to happen next.

So who knows? Who knows? Thanks for doing this. I really, really enjoyed this. Be great talking with you. Thank you. And to the listenership. Mark the date.

November 28, 2026, noon to 3 p.m. Get your butts to Palma's Kitchen in Mississauga for TMLX-24. I'll be recording live. Everybody eats for free. I'll bring fresh craft beer

from Great Lakes Brewery. There'll be a special gift from retro festive. Be there. And that. brings us to the end of our 1,996th show. Go to TorontoMike.com for all your Toronto Mike needs. And much love to those who made this possible.

That is Great Lakes Brewery. Palma Pasta. Nick Iini's Recycle My Electronics.C.A. Listen to the recent episode with Cliff Hacking. It is enlightening. And of course, Redley Funeral Home. Brad Jones has a great podcast called Life's Undertaking. See you all next week when my guest is Chalklair.