COMMENTS/FURTHER INFORMATION

Submitted by Michael Nadler.

James Broska adds:

The Paramount in Santa Fe, New Mexico is a great place to see shows in general, and especially as it turned out, to see Bruce. There are no seats in the Paramount, meaning that everyone has to stand for the show. What this means is that everybody and anybody who wants to can dance and move to the music. No “down in front”complaints to ruin a person's experience.

This was my 4th Bruce Cockburn concert, and I feel it was the best. The crowd (about 250 people) were very responsive to Bruce’s music and he was responsive in return. I know he could feel the love because we could feel it coming back at us full force as he played. He really affected many of us at one point with his commentary of “seeing the dark for what it is without ignoring it, but then, seeing the light too.”

The next morning I woke up with a smile on my face and listened as Radio Free Santa Fe, which said thank you by playing a set of Bruce’s music first thing in the morning at 7am.

Tom Ribe contributed the following:

Bruce was intensely focused on his music and played a nearly perfect performance. His band, including Julie Wolf, was right with him, blending in, never overshadowing, and fully supportive. Bruce has a little smile that comes over his face when things are going really well, and he smiled often this night. He was called back for three encores and was clearly tired by the end of the last.

Santa Fe audiences are hungry and grateful. String Cheese Incident members commented on the strong audience response on their July 4 show, and Bruce commented about the amount of good energy he was receiving from the Santa Fe crowd in the same way: “I couldn't have done it without you.”

The crowd was very receptive to Julie Wolf, and she shared breaks with Bruce very well. She also does an excellent job with shadow vocals, and her sweet trills in the background help set the mood for Bruce's songs,
just as Melvin Seals did so well for Jerry Garcia for decades.

Bruce was asked by someone to “talk to us” at one point in the evening. He responded by saying he didn’t quite know what he was likely to say if he started talking, “but in any case, I have a lot of songs to get through and that’s what I have to say.”

And what Bruce was saying in Santa Fe was very clear. His song choices — a blend of the new material and pointed older pieces such as If I Had A Rocket Launcher, World of Wonders and Night Train — and a short statement he made about how dark things are right now, but that "we have to know darkness in order to defeat it", revealed the intense frustration and despair Bruce is sharing with so many of us about the sharply negative
situation in America and the world.

Trickle Down is a wonderfully complex musical piece which allows Julie Wolf to play jazz, and the often disturbing and even repulsive words in You've Never Seen Everything were moderated by the incredibly beautiful chorus which Steve Lucas really shines on. Toward the end, Bruce bent over his electric guitar and did some searing solos that were received like food by the audience. He really put out an amazing amount of energy for a small venue on a long tour.