Article Contributed by Eric Alper
Published on 2026-08-05
Bruce Cockburn will release The Blood of Others, his 39th album, on October 16 through Sunset Boulevard Records.
After more than five decades of writing some of the most enduring songs in Canadian music, Cockburn turns his attention to the material that shaped him long before he wrote a lyric of his own.
The album gathers songs written by others, tracing a musical lineage that stretches from the gospel and blues records Cockburn 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 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,” Cockburn 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 song Cockburn first encountered on an early-1970s compilation.
“Wilkins’ powerful bottleneck guitar and passionate singing made this conversation with God instantly memorable,” he says.
Cockburn reworked the arrangement using the angular harmonies of his DADGAD guitar tuning.
From there, the album moves into “As Time Goes By,” the Herman Hupfeld standard forever associated with 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 record also traces Cockburn’s early fascination with jazz and ragtime through “Buddy Bolden’s Blues,” a song he learned not from a recording, but from 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 with “You Belong to Me,” a song Jo Stafford’s voice carried into Cockburn’s childhood home.
“Jo Stafford’s gorgeously true voice was all over the radio with this when I was five,” he 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 also looms large on The Blood of Others, most directly through “That’s All Right.”
“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 notes that his arrangement leans closer to Arthur Crudup’s original recording than Presley’s version.
A hometown connection surfaces on “Four Strong Winds,” the most recently written song included on the album. Cockburn credits Le Hibou, the Ottawa coffeehouse he calls his spiritual home, with introducing him to Ian and Sylvia, who performed at the venue regularly throughout the 1960s.
“We were all very excited when their song showed up on the radio,” he says.
The album’s emotional center runs through several songs connected to formative personal memories.
“God Bless the Child,” the Billie Holiday and Arthur Herzog standard, dates back to a record Cockburn bought as a teenager using money intended for his Sunday collection.
“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 vividly.
“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 on a Bessie Smith collection as a young boy.
“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” carries its own full-circle story, connecting 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 90th birthday event in New York City,” he says.
Few songs on the album carry the personal resonance of “I’ll Be Seeing You.” Cockburn remembers hearing a version on the radio during the 1990s, following what he describes as “a brief but heart-opening relationship,” and mishearing a lyric in a way that reshaped the song for him.
“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 Cockburn to give the song a rhythmic treatment inspired by “I Only Have Eyes for You.”
The album also carries a story about the road not taken. Cockburn recalls a night in Ottawa when he and some friends dressed up to see blues guitarist Lonnie Johnson, whose 1964 Paris recordings had captivated him years earlier.
They 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 story arc concludes with “One for My Baby,” a 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,” the Thomas A. Dorsey gospel song he first heard through Elvis Presley.
The Blood of Others marks another milestone in a career that began in 1970. Cockburn 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 received 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 ranging from Barenaked Ladies and Jimmy Buffett to Jerry Garcia.
Cockburn’s legacy continued to grow with his previous studio album, 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 also describe the restless curiosity behind The Blood of Others.
“I just don’t want to ever keep doing the same thing,” Cockburn said of his songwriting at the time.
With The Blood of Others, he extends that philosophy to songs he did not write, reshaping each one with the care and instinct that have defined his work for more than five decades.
For more information, visit brucecockburn.com.
Bruce Cockburn Tour Dates
August 7 – Los Angeles, CA – Ford Theatre*
August 26 – Iowa City, IA – Englert Theatre*
August 27 – Des Moines, IA – Hoyt Sherman Place*
September 8 – Omaha, NE – Astro Theater*
September 9 – Lawrence, KS – Liberty Hall*
October 3 – Eugene, OR – McDonald Theatre*
October 15 – Kitchener, ON – Centre in the Square
October 16 – Ottawa, ON – National Arts Centre
October 17 – Toronto, ON – Massey Hall
October 18 – Montréal, QC – Gesù Salle
October 20 – Plymouth, NH – Flying Monkey†
October 21 – Portland, ME – State Theatre†
October 23 – Boston, MA – Chevalier Theatre†
October 24 – New York, NY – Town Hall†
October 25 – Philadelphia, PA – Keswick Theatre†
October 27 – Washington, D.C. – Warner Theatre†
October 29 – Durham, NC – Fletcher Hall†
October 30 – Charlotte, NC – Carolina Theatre†
November 1 – Nashville, TN – CMA Theatre†
November 2 – Knoxville, TN – Bijou Theatre†
November 4 – Atlanta, GA – Variety Playhouse†
November 6 – Ponte Vedra, FL – Ponte Vedra Concert Hall†
November 7 – Fort Lauderdale, FL – Amaturo Theatre†
November 8 – Key West, FL – Key West Theatre†
*With Judy Collins
†With Livingston Taylor
