Books

You Get Bigger as You Go: Bruce Cockburn's Influence and Evolution
by M.D. Dunn with photography by Daniel Keebler

WINNER: Bronze Medal, Best Book in Performing Arts, from The Independent Publisher Book Awards
www.ippyawards.com

FINALIST: 2024, Book of the Year in "Arts/Music/Performance Art, from The Independent Author's Network (I.A.N.) Book Awards www.independentauthornetwork.com

You Get Bigger as You Go: Bruce Cockburn's Influence and Evolution was written over seven years. It includes original interviews with: Bruce Cockburn, Bernie Finkelstein, Hugh Marsh, Eugene Martynec, Jonathan Goldsmith, Colin Linden, Don Ross, Stephen Fearing, Linda Manzer, and representatives from Oxfam and SeedChange. A song-by-song/album-by-album review section brings fresh perspectives to Cockburn's catalogue, tying it into the times and larger themes.

Available to order from your local independent bookseller and the usual suspects: Indigo/Chapters/Coles, Amazon US, Amazon Canada, Amazon UK, and Amazon global, or Fermata Press.

From the back cover:

Bruce Cockburn has enthralled audiences with his insightful lyrics and innovative guitar playing for over half a century. Hit songs like “Wondering Where the Lions Are,” “If I Had a Rocket Launcher,” and “Lovers in a Dangerous Time” are just part of the story. In You Get Bigger as You Go: Bruce Cockburn’s Influence and Evolution, musician and writer M.D. Dunn takes the reader on a humorous and obsessive quest to track Cockburn’s significant cultural footprint. Interviews with producers, musicians, activists, fans, as well as Bruce’s career-long manager, the legendary Bernie Finkelstein, and with the enigmatic Mr. Cockburn himself form the core of this critical assessment and appreciation. In these conversations, Cockburn and friends celebrate a life of music and social engagement.

You Get Bigger as You Go: Bruce Cockburn’s Influence and Evolution is the perfect beginner’s guide to the music and the artist, and a fun addition to any fan's library. Photographs from archivist Daniel Keebler span decades and show Cockburn in his natural habitat, on stage and in studio.

Fermata Press is proud to support two agricultural nonprofits through sales of You Get Bigger as You Go: Bruce Cockburn's Influence and Evolution. Harvest Algoma distributes food to charitable organizations and the wider community. They work with farmers and grocers to collect and disperse surplus food. Without them, tons of produce would not reach the people who need it. Find them online: Home - Harvest Algoma www.harvestalgoma.ca
And no book about Bruce Cockburn would be complete without a nod to SeedChange, an organization which Mr. Cockburn has supported and promoted for fifty years. SeedChange, formerly the Unitarian Service Committee, works around the globe to promote sustainable farming. Their website: Home | SeedChange : SeedChange www.weseedchange.org

The book launch for You Get Bigger as You Go: Bruce Cockburn's Influence and Evolution was a grand time. We gathered at the Sault Ste. Marie Museum in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada to listen to some of Bruce's music and talk about the many ways his music has enriched our lives. Then, Bruce joined us for a Q&A session. The audio is a little squawky in parts. Hope you enjoy.

FIRST WEEK REPORT:
You Get Bigger as You Go Tops Folk and Country Musician Biography list on Amazon.ca

An excerpt from You Get Bigger as You Go: Bruce Cockburn’s Influence and Evolution by M.D. Dunn
with photographs by Daniel Keebler, coming soon from Fermata Press.
The passage below is the first part of the discussion around Cockburn's 1986 album World of Wonders.

World of Wonders
Released January 23, 1986
True North Records, TN-66
Jonathan Goldsmith and Kerry Crawford, producers
Bart Schoales, art direction

            Cockburn’s firsthand observations of life outside the North American safety bubble continued with World of Wonders. In the years between releases, Cockburn made more trips to war-torn areas the world over. Most notably, the period led to Cockburn’s eventual involvement with efforts to eliminate landmines. It is well worth reading about this period in his memoir, Rumours of Glory, where he outlines his involvement in a movement that eventually led 162 countries to ban the use of landmines under the Ottawa Treaty. Older readers may remember Bruce addressing the Canadian House of Commons in 1995. It made the nightly news. The gasp is almost audible as Cockburn empties his packsack, spilling landmines like those used in Afghanistan and Mozambique across the desk before him. The mines had been deactivated, but apparently Parliamentary security weren’t expecting the display. They had neglected to search this harmless folksinger for armaments.
            His first trip to Mozambique in 1987 was undertaken with the intention of drawing attention to famine caused by that country’s ongoing civil war. Landmines would be the issue for his next visit, and those songs would be released ten years later on Charity of Night.
            Produced by Jon Goldsmith and Kenny Crawford, World of Wonders is an attempt to grasp the big, synthesized sounds of the decade. It builds on the high production of Stealing Fire, which Goldsmith and Crawford also produced. Many fans were disappointed that the acoustic guitar was less prominent, but the focus seems to have been to chart new ground musically and sonically.
            The opening track, “Call it Democracy,” is a breathtaking lyrical and rhythmic feat that contains more insight into geopolitics and Capitalism’s role in maintaining poverty than many high school economics courses. The cadence of the lyrics could be compared to Gilbert and Sullivan. But its incendiary observations explode the limits of what can be said in a four-minute pop song. It begins with the sound of a single drum strike followed by the arrival of the enemy: “Padded with power, here they come / International loan sharks backed by the guns / Of market hungry military profiteers / Whose word is a swamp and whose brow is smeared / With the blood of the poor.” Hearing this for the first time was an unforgettable experience, another call to action, the laying bare of the sick machinery that drives economic disparity. Much of it was well beyond me. And, I suspect, it was beyond many in the listening public. Most impressively, that lyric, like much of Cockburn’s catalog, does not talk down to the audience. He requires the audience to do the work. It is a sign of the high regard he has for the listener.
            The verse that is perhaps most challenging goes:
                                                Sinister cynical instrument
                                                Who makes the gun into a sacrament --
                                                The only response to the deification
                                                Of tyranny by so-called ‘developed’ nations’
                                                Idolatry of ideology

Many listeners might walk away in confusion from a verse like that. But if one engages with it, the system of organized, imposed impoverishment is revealed. For me, that album introduced a new level of language appreciation. First off, the song broke the dictionary I’d had from childhood. The little orange student’s dictionary from the early 1960s, handed down from my older brother, cracked under the strain. It looked at me sorrowfully. “Deifi-what-now? Idola-who? Can I interest you in ‘deacon’ or ‘idol’? Beyond that, you’re on your own, kid.” Those were the last words that little dictionary spoke.
            The US pressing of World of Wonders had the lyrics printed on the back with objectionable words like “flying fuck” and “IMF dirty MF” highlighted to warn parents that the explicit language could corrupt their children’s minds. This was just before Tipper Gore, wife of then Senator Al Gore, founded the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC), an administrative body that developed a labelling system to identify language deemed overtly sexual, or explicitly violent, or that might promote uncomfortable ideas like social and economic justice. Had World of Wonders been released a year later, it could have been slapped with a “Parental Advisory” label. As an experiment in censorship, the offensive terms were just highlighted in bright yellow. It is surprising that the entire lyric for the songs “Call It Democracy” and “People See Through You” were not fully highlighted. These songs are among the most politically subversive ever to be commercially released. The album contains some of Cockburn’s most astute and clear-eyed observations of global economic tyranny.
            Music is dangerous. Tipper Gore knew this. Maybe not about Bruce Cockburn, specifically, but Ms. Gore knew that music changes minds and reveals truth. It is dangerous to hegemony, dangerous to conformity, dangerous to bullies. The major failure of the PMRC in applying its rating system to music was that they looked to art as a cause of the dysfunction around them, not as a reflection of it. The members of the PMRC review boards also allowed their own prejudices and assumptions to guide them. Often in its critique of popular music, the PMRC was right out to lunch. Rage Against the Machine did not invent racist cops who moonlight as Klansmen, but the band was criticized for pointing out that fact in “Killing in the Name.” The song was banned from airplay in the US and was heavily censored when broadcast. Despite the resistance, “Killing in the Name” charted in Europe and has become an anthem of resistance for generations. Efforts to censor and limit the song made people more determined that it should be heard. You can’t ignore pain for years and then blame the doctor for a positive diagnosis of a deadly condition. But that is what the PMRC did.


Excerpt from You Get Bigger as You Go: Bruce Cockburn’s Influence and Evolution (Fermata Press). © 2023 Mark David Dunn/Feathermoon Musical Productions

An excerpt from an interview for You Get Bigger as You Go: Bruce Cockburn's Influence and Evolution. In this clip, the incredible musician and composer Hugh Marsh, who has worked with Bruce Cockburn since the mid70s, speaks about Bruce's importance as a lyricist and that mind-melting solo on "Loner." It's all in the book, You Get Bigger as You Go: Bruce Cockburn's Influence and Evolution.

FIRST WEEK REPORT: You Get Bigger as You Go Tops Folk and Country Musician Biography list on Amazon.ca ​

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FIRST WEEK REPORT:
You Get Bigger as You Go Tops Folk and Country Musician Biography list on Amazon.ca