By Kate Vanskike

Berkeley, California, December 2023. The sidewalk on Addison Street, just off Shattuck Ave., was lined with people well before the doors to Freight & Salvage would open. While we waited, I looked ahead and behind: At 50 years old, I might just be the youngest person in this crowd. There were folks with canes and a few in wheelchairs, and no one grumbled. This was the most festive group of mostly septugenarians I’d ever been around. 

When the doors opened, everyone scrambled (or hobbled) to pick their seats in the small concert hall, bypassing the bar (another sign this was not your usual concert). Leaving my husband, Jeff, to keep our seats, I perused the merch tables and decided to buy the newest album on vinyl. $30, cash only, the volunteers said. Hmm. I never carry cash.

A guy nearby stepped up. “You have Venmo?” He asked. “Tell you what, if you have Venmo, I’ll give you the cash.” Admittedly, I was taken aback, immediately considering the potential risks of such a transaction; then I decided it was a thoughtful gesture, one that people might not expect in urban California. With everyone on their phones and poor network connections, it took 10 minutes for the Venmo transfer to take place, with me standing in the middle of the road away from the building. 

Meanwhile inside, Jeff had downloaded the personal history of a fellow concert-goer in our row. She was a musician herself, and had seen this performer dozens of times. 

At last the musician’s guitar tuner – stage hand – announcer – sound guy – and manager, Bernie Finklestein, made his final adjustments and 78-year-old Bruce Cockburn came out on stage, slightly hunched and using a cane. 

Fans reacted like they were seeing an old friend again, hollering friendly affirmations as he settled in on his stool and picked up his dobro. His long beard was as white as his short hair; he adorned his classic small, round glasses and gold hoop earrings. Sporting green pants and big black boots, he looked the part of a tired former rocker who now wanted to settle in for some soothing tunes in an intimate setting with a couple hundred friends. 

Bruce’s fans listen intently. They likely know all the words but still listen as if he might change them, adding some unexpected twist on a story they’ve heard a million times. 

About three songs in, someone’s phone alarm went off. Panic set in with the elderly couple two seats down from me, the wife whispering her embarrassment as she searched for the loudly chiming device. In another setting, you might expect to hear groans of disgust – who could let this happen? But Bruce wasn’t incredulous. He just took the opportunity to chat with the audience, which was now turned in the direction of the not-to-be-found phone, while the woman’s flustered husband used the flashlight on his own phone to search on the floor. “I’m so sorry,” the man called out. And Bruce, in all his grace and wit, simply fanned his arm from one side of the audience to the other and chuckled, “Look at us!” as if to imply any person in this room could be responsible for high volume on a phone and then taking forever to shut it off. People laughed, the woman found her phone, the husband apologized again, and the show went on without a single negative utterance. 

For the next 90 minutes, Bruce played some old popular favorites: “Where the Lions Are,” “Lovers in a Dangerous Time,” “Pacing the Cage.” And he told a few stories – wryly, slowly, savoring the memory as much as the telling. On a couple of songs, he invited folks to sing along, and they did – the woman next to me bouncing different harmonies off the parts I sang. 

That group of strangers was a community, bound by the timeless messages of a political activist whose songs rang truths of pain and poverty and war and minefields – all in places he personally walked, in order to tell those stories back in Canada and the U.S., to diplomats and civilians alike. 

When Bruce’s time on the Freight & Salvage stage neared its end, we wondered: What will be his encore? Or will he even return after the round of applause bids him? He did, and he picked up a guitar and began a soft, slow arpeggio in A …

Here we are, faced with choice
Shutters and walls or open embrace
Like it or not, the human race
Is us all

Any fidgeting or stretching or whispering someone may have wanted to do was stopped. There was a collective breath – a space where no one wanted to disturb the spirit. 

History is what it is
Scars we inflict on each other don’t die
But slowly soak into the DNA
Of us all

The guitar arpeggio continued for a while without words, and then vocal returned: 

I pray we not fear to love
I pray we be free of judgment and shame
Open the vein, let kindness rain
O’er us all

In a reverent hall of worshippers, Bruce repeated “o’er us all” at a whisper until there was no more sound. 

An encore generally arouses cheers and claps, whistles and shouts. But here, instead, you could hear a pin drop for one sacred moment and I envisioned everyone in that space turning to embrace their neighbor until we all fell into a giant group hug. 

I was choking back tears.

The simplicity of Bruce’s performance. The power of his softly vocalized poems. The fact that it really wasn’t a performance but a communion of strangers bound by the mystery of humanity. 

Shortly after we left Berkeley, Jeff bought Bruce’s memoir, Rumours of Glory, and I devoured the 500-page beast over a couple of weeks, retreating to my reading chair whenever possible. Never before has a book urged me to listen while I read as this one did. Bruce catalogs his albums by decades and infuses stories of love and romance, of heartbreak and disappointment, and shines a mirror to the moments that birthed his songs. Every time he started to explain another poem or tune, I would find it on Spotify and listen as I read. 

“Rumours” took me with him to Central America where Bruce and other Canadian activists explored the realities of guerrilla warfare, and of martyrdom, in places like Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. He took me to Vietnam and the fields where farmers risked lost limbs from hidden land mines. He took me to the edges of the Sahara Desert and explained the barren tragedy of communities without water. 

I felt immense gratitude that his descriptions could take me back to places I’d seen myself:  Guatemala, El Salvador, and Chad specifically. He reminded me of the stories I learned in such similar settings and the impact it undoubtedly had but had rescinded into depths of memory. 

But not everyone has the chance to travel the world and make personal the tales of woe otherwise only encountered in headlines and viral social media posts. That’s okay. “Rumours of Glory” has plenty of other personal stories for connection: Searching for God, for meaning. Failed promises, marriages, values. Brokenness and healing. Reconnection. 

Us All. 

Scars we inflict on each other don’t die
But slowly soak into the DNA
Of us all.

The poetry and persistence of Bruce Cockburn put in front of us all what we sometimes don’t wish to see or ponder – that is the heart of an artist who wants to change the world for real. It’s on “us all” not to forget, not to stop listening, not to bicker about a phone going off in a concert, but instead to hear the message of the spirit with perfect strangers and accept it, individually, collectively. 

Let kindness rain
O’er us all. 

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“Rumors of Glory” (2014)
“Us All” from “O Sun O Moon” (2023)