SONGS:
-- Joy Will Find A Way (A Song About Dying) --
6 September 1974.

Found on:

Joy Will Find A Way (1975)
Circles In The Stream (1977) [live album]

Mummy Dust (1981) [compilation album]
Rumours of Glory (1985) [compilation album]
Lyrics:

Make me a bed of fond memories
Make me to lie down with a smile
Everything that rises afterward falls
But all that dies has first to live.

As longing becomes love
As night turns to day
Everything changes
Joy will find a way


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

  • 1986

    "With a few minor changes, I ripped off an Ethiopian thumb harp piece to make the guitar part for this. I was thinking about death, and what a big part of life it is."
    -- from "All The Diamonds" songbook, edited by Arthur McGregor, OFC Publications 1986. Submitted by Rob Caldwell.


  • Spring 1993

    James Jensen: "Skylarking", an instrumental on "Joy Will Find A Way" is in open Eb tuning?

    BC: Well it's actually in standard tuning except that the A string is tuned to Bb and the E string is tuned to Eb so you have bass notes of the key of Eb under your thumb and the rest of it's played on standard tuned strings.
    -- from an Interview by James Jensen at Sunset Sound, Los Angeles, circa Spring 1993.


  • 17 December 1995

    "That song owes its guitar part to a record that I had way back when featuring the music of Ethiopia. And there was a guy that played something called the Harp of David which I think was really a kind of kalimba-like thing. It certainly sounded like that. I don't know what he was singing about, but he played a really great groove that was almost exactly, by some strange chance, what you hear in the background of 'Joy Will Find A Way', played on the guitar."

    --spoken outro to Joy Will Find A Way from the fifth annual 'Christmas With Cockburn' show on the Columbia Radio Hour, Sony Music Studio, New York City, 17 December 1995. Submitted by Jeffrey Dreves (2006).

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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.