Bruce Cockburn: “Crowing Ignites”

October 2019

True North TND737
Format: CD

Musical Performance

Sound Quality

Overall Enjoyment

If, like me, you grew up in the western annex of Ottawa’s compact urban core, you felt you owned a little piece of Bruce Cockburn, who lived in the area for 18 years. You could recite the names of his early bands: The Flying Circus, Olivus, 3’s a Crowd, and The Children. You got to see him in the tight confines of Le Hibou, the city’s venerable coffeehouse, and you felt a frisson of association when his music caught on worldwide around 1979. If you got to actually rub shoulders with him — which for me was backstage at Edmonton’s Jubilee Auditorium in 1980, at the time when he dressed in guerrilla fatigues and a black beret — you felt like you were hanging with a guy from the neighborhood rather than someone who was about to have an international hit with “Wondering Where the Lions Are” and appear on Saturday Night Live.