SONGS:
-- Grim Travellers --
released 1980

Found on:

Humans (1980) (2003)
Rumours of Glory (1985) [compilation album]
Lyrics:

Ministers meet -- work on the movement of goods
Also work on the movement of capital
Also work on the movement of human beings
As if we were so many cattle

Grim travellers in dawn skies
See the beauty -- makes you cry inside
Makes you angry and you don't know why
Grim travellers in dawn skies

Twelve mercenaries got weapons primed
Gonna take that African nation in record time
You wonder why they bother, why not leave it alone
They say, "Every man wants to retire to a place he can call his own"

Those grim travellers in dawn skies
See the beauty -- makes them cry inside
Makes them angry and they don't know why
Grim travellers in dawn skies

Redness, richer than a rose
Blooms against the backdrop of somebody's white clothes
Bitter little girls and boys from the Red Army Underground
They'd blow away Karl Marx if he had the nerve to come around

They're just grim travellers in dawn skies
See the beauty -- makes them cry inside
Makes them angry and they don't know why
They're grim travellers in dawn skies

Down on the plain of 10,000 smokestacks
Trucks butt each other to establish dominance
The newspaper next to me leans over and says matter-of-factly
"Sacred mountains towers above meadows" - uh huh - and above us

Grim travellers in dawn skies
I see the beauty -- makes me cry inside
It makes me angry and I don't know why
We're grim travellers in dawn skies



Editor's Note:
6 September 2003 - A live version of this song is included on the 2003 remastered version of Humans.


Known comments by Bruce Cockburn about this song, by date:

  • 6 May 1980

    "Here's a new song. It was from a lot of travelling that we did during the fall. It contains various, newspaper quotes as well. Some of which are direct, some of which are thinly disguised. It's called Grim Travelers In Dawn Skies."
    -- from a 6 May 1980 concert at the Rainbow Music Hall in Denver, CO. Submitted by Doug Stacey.


  • Circa 1981

    Based on whatever observations I've done of history there's nothing I've seen that indicates people have the ability to straighten themselves out as a [song?] he says ruefully. Grim Travellers starts out from terrorism, but it's about the fact that none of us are free from the darker qualities that are part of human nature in general. It s a fairly hopeless song. One of the reasons why we followed it with Rumours of Glory is that it gives the other side of the coin-that however negative we can be, we can also depend on each other and are capable of great love.
    -- from "Bruce Cockburn's Quiet Optimism", High Fidelity, 1981, by Stephen Holden.


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    This page is part of The Cockburn Project, a unique website that exists to document the work of Canadian singer-songwriter and musician Bruce Cockburn. The Project archives self-commentary by Cockburn on his songs and music, and supplements this core part of the website with news, tour dates, and other current information.