Cockburn, Bruce - Circles In the Stream

Tracks

Side 1

		Track Name	Length
	1	The Pipes, The Pipes	01:24
	2	Starwheel	03:56
	3	Never So Free	04:00
	4	Deer Dancing Round a Broken Mirror	04:43
	5	Homme Brûlant	06:17

Side 2

		Track Name	Length
	1	Free to Be	02:55
	2	Mama Just Wants to Barrelhouse All Night Long	04:23
	3	Cader Idris	07:05
	4	Arrows of Light	04:16

Side 3

		Track Name	Length
	1	One Day I Walk	04:29
	2	Love Song	03:52
	3	Red Brother Red Sister	04:07
	4	Lord of the Starfields	05:29

Side 4

		Track Name	Length
	1	All the Diamonds in the World	02:46
	2	Dialogue With the Devil (or "Why Don't We Celebrate")	09:30
	3	Joy Will Find a Way	04:53
	4	God, Bless the Children	05:14

Photos

Videos

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Information/Write-up

One of the marks of a great live album is the ability of an artist to inject his material with new vitality— to the point where even well-known songs take on fresh meaning. Bruce Cockburn did exactly that with Circles in the Stream, which captured the Canadian folksinger at the culmination of his first tour with a full band. That group provided the kind of intelligent and intuitive accompaniment that creates an inspired—and inspiring—concert experience. “It’s amazing to hear how tight we are together,” percussionist Bill Usher once recalled upon hearing the recording. “We’re all hitting the same accents at the same time and in harness with each other.”

Recorded in the spring of 1977 at Toronto’s venerable Massey Hall, Circles in the Stream captures Cockburn at the peak of his creative powers. Originally released shortly after his transitional album In the Falling Dark, the live recording blends adventurous jazz textures with his more familiar folk influences. The album opens with the stirring sound of a traditional Scottish tune on bagpipes before Cockburn and his sidemen—Usher, bassist Robert Boucher, and electric pianist and marimba player Pat Godfrey—segue into a shimmering rendition of “Starwheel.” Following a marimba-laced version of the stark “Never So Free,” Cockburn launches into three newly written songs: the stunning guitar instrumental “Deer Dancing Round a Broken Mirror,” the dreamy, jazz-tinged French song “Homme Brûlant (Burning Man),” and the rhythmic, politically charged “Free to Be.”

Two other new songs rank among the album’s highlights. Like “Deer Dancing,” the wondrously intricate instrumental “Cader Idris,” named after a Welsh mountain whose name means “Chair of Idris,” showcases Cockburn’s superb fingerpicking and fretwork. “Red Brother Red Sister” acknowledges the historic plight of Indigenous peoples and their subjugation by settlers. Cockburn sings about attending a pow wow and feeling “the people’s love/joy flow around.” Then, in the song’s most moving line, he adds the emotional rejoinder: “It left me crying just thinking about it / How they used my saviour’s name to keep you down.”

The rest of the concert features some of Cockburn’s most popular songs, drawn from all of his albums up to that point, with the exception of his self-titled debut. “Lord of the Starfields” benefits from a free-form jazz introduction and a dazzling guitar solo, while “Joy Will Find a Way” boasts an infectious groove and Godfrey’s mellifluous marimba. “All the Diamonds,” voted the all-time fan favourite on the Humans discussion group, remains a well-polished gem in this solo performance. And “One Day I Walk,” recently covered by k.d. lang on Hymns of the 49th Parallel, her bestselling tribute to the Canadian songbook, sounds positively elegiac with its keyboard, bass, and percussion accompaniment. But the song most transformed in this live setting is “Dialogue with the Devil,” a dark number whose meaning has often puzzled Cockburn fans. Here, it takes on an even more haunting tone than the studio original. When Cockburn (as the Devil) sings “Why don’t we celebrate,” with increasing desperation, the effect is utterly chilling.

Circles in the Stream came amid a period of great change in Cockburn’s life. Although he had embraced Christianity in 1974 and his wife, Kitty, had given birth to their daughter two years later, instability soon followed: Cockburn’s marriage began to dissolve and he would eventually move from rural Ontario to downtown Toronto. Yet despite those imminent tensions and pressures, Cockburn sounds positively elated on Circles in the Stream. Maybe this was due to his deepening spirituality, or perhaps the camaraderie that came from working with a band of talented, sympathetic musicians. Either way, the joy that Cockburn projects in this concert is almost palpable. It helps to make the album—now digitally remastered and available internationally on CD for the first time—both a brilliant live recording and one of the finest entries in the entire Cockburn catalogue.
-Nicholas Jennings
(Nicholas Jennings, a respected music critic and critically acclaimed author, is an acknowledged expert on Canadian music)

Musicians
Robert Boucher: bass
Pat Godfrey: electric piano, marimbas, vocals
P.M. Doug Mackay: bagpipes
Bill Usher: percussion, voice
Bruce Cockburn: acoustic guitar, electric guitar, dulcimer, vocals

Production
Words and music by Bruce Cockburn except 'Starwheel' written by Bruce and Kitty Cockburn
Produced by Eugene Martynec for True North Productions
Recorded in concert at Massey Hall, Toronto, April 8 + 9, 1977
Recorded by: Fedco (remote recording)
House sound and stage monitoring by Westbury
Mixed at Eastern Sound, Toronto, Ontario
Engineered by Ken Friesen
Restoration and re-mastering by Peter J. Moore at the E Room
Published by: Golden Mountain Music Corp (SOCAN)

Artwork
Album cover/photo: Bart Schoales
Inside photograph: Skip Dean
Art direction: Bart Schoales

Notes
Tour manager: Rob Bennett

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