Tompkins Square‘s enduring admiration for Canadian troubadour Bruce Cockburn is hardly news to anyone paying attention. From their ’90s promotional push behind his Columbia-era albums Nothing But A Burning Light and Dart to The Heart to the recent James Toth-produced compilation, Imaginational Anthem Vol. XIII: Songs of Bruce Cockburn, the label has consistently championed Cockburn’s potent lyricism and virtuosic fretwork.
Now, to commemorate Cockburn’s 80th birthday (he turned 80 this week on May 27th), Tompkins Square has enlisted contemporary guitar maestro and Chicago-based Texan Eli Winter to offer his interpretations of some of Cockburn’s beloved tracks on a new release: To Keep the World We Know: A Tribute to Bruce Cockburn. The resulting recordings feature Winter’s take on “Foxglove” (a tune that also graces the aforementioned Imaginational Anthem tribute—named for South Carolina guitarist Fox Watson) alongside a collection of entirely new recordings.
To Keep the World We Know: A Tribute to Bruce Cockburn is out now.
In Eli’s words :
To celebrate Bruce Cockburn’s eightieth birthday and nearly sixty years working in music, say thank you to him, and look to the future of his music, I’ve arranged a few of his songs that stand out to me. As a young working musician with a fingerstyle guitar background, I’m inspired by his hard work, his persistence, his understated guitar heroics, his willingness to explore challenging topics and push himself creatively without losing sight of the listener, and of course the music…. As a Jewish person and a bit of a romantic, I connect with his explorations of faith, political commitments, and the plainspoken emotion latent within his songs. What stands out most is the fact that he treats songwriting as a profession. As a tribute to the sheer breadth of his work, I’ve chosen songs that he released before I was born, so I could re-imagine them as a young’un.
I turned “Foxglove,” originally a sprightly solo acoustic song from Night Vision (1973), into electric guitar main character music. “Deer Dancing Around a Broken Mirror,” a deep cut from Circles in the Stream (1977), sounds like the title and features two guitars (naturally, the original only takes one). “All the Diamonds in the World,” from Salt, Sun and Time (1974), intrigued me for its hymnlike progression, connection to religion, and the chance to render it as moving an instrumental as it is with words. Hence the electric guitar filigrees and double-tracked acoustic guitars (tracked without a click). As an homage to T Bone Burnett’s production on “Train in the Rain,” from Dart to the Heart (1994), I divided the original guitar line across Weissenborn lap guitar and the twangiest, most Texan Telecaster tone I could wrangle. It closes with the intro to “Water into Wine” as a tribute to his fingerstyle guitar heroics. Happy birthday, Bruce, and thank you so much!
To Keep the World We Know: A Tribute to Bruce Cockburn is available to stream now and can be downloaded via Bandcamp.
Winter’s latest album, A Trick of the Light, was reviewed by Glenn Kimpton whose endorsement couldn’t have been stronger: “Eli has never put out a bad record, but his music seems to grow in confidence and prowess with each release. A Trick of the Light is a barnstormer, a real I don’t give a fuck, this is me and my band set of songs that are sharp, vital and pretty damn thrilling. Oh yes.”
You can read his interview with Eli here.