© 1996 Grand Rapids Press
As he prepares to work on a new record, the 50-year old guitarist is embarking on a short solo tour that he says is a way of "getting my throat and fingers limbered up to get i nthe studio." After touring with bands through much of the 1980's and early 1990's, Cockburn wanted to strip the layered embelleshments and get down to the heart of the matter -- the songs themselves. "I kind of lost track with the value of the song,... Beacuse you get these great musicians playing with you and you want them to play, and the whole thing becomes a kind of performance exercise rather than being centered... In the solo situation it's centered around the song by default because there's nothing else going on," he said, laughing.
His latest album, 1994's "Dart to the Heart," produced a No. 1 hit on Triple A radio format with "Listen for the Laugh." The album and its immediate predecessor "Nothing but a Burning Light" were both produced by T-Bone Burnett and marked Cockburn's return to a quieter, folksier sound. "With 'Nothing but a Burning Light' there was a deliberate attempt to structure the songs in a more straight forward manner," he said, adding that it took him back to "my roots, like as a fan of Buddy Holly and the Ventures and folk people like Blind Willie Johnson."
Cockburn said his next album will be gutsier, more like what he was doing in the '80's.
Picking up guitar at age 11, Cockburn cites early rock 'n' roll pioneers for sucking him into music. His finger-picking style was shaped early on by the acoustic country blues of Mississippi John Hurt and Mance Lipscomb. An early teacher, who was into Chet Atkins and Les Paul, exposed the young musician to the standards in the guitar repertoire, which Cockbuen says introduced him to jazz in a round-about way. Later, while studying at Berklee College of Music in Boston, he became acquainted with numerous other styles that all influenced his work.
[In talking about "If I Had a Rocket Launcher," Leaver writes] The powerful lyrics were laid over an aggresive rock beat and catchy melody, which Cockburn admits might have distracted some people from what the song was actually ssaying. "I did get one angry letter -- at least one, maybe a couple of them -- frompeople who sort of liked the song until thy realized it wasn't about the Russians in Afghanistan," he said, with resigned laughter. "And you know, that suggests that they weren't quite listening to the lyrics for a while."