Pacing the Cage With Bruce Cockburn

Yes, when we saw Bruce Cockburn perform at Medford’s Chevalier Theater last night he played “Pacing the Cage,” one of the handful of songs that all of us longtime fans hoped he would play. Hearing it live, it cast a spell and was in and of itself worth the price of admission — which I should add was ridiculously inexpensive for an artist of his stature. While people are laying out thousands to see Springsteen, Taylor Swift, or Harry Styles, we got to hear music in its highest form for, I don’t know, 50 or 60 bucks or something. But that’s how it often goes with high art. It’s like mountain climbing: there’s fewer people at the top. Not that there is anything especially difficult or obscure about Cockburn. One listen to “Pacing the Cage” will tell you that.

I often think of Cockburn as one of the greatest “triple threat” rock-based players of the last 50 years. He’s equally strong in songwriting, singing, and guitar playing. Nearly unparalleled at the first, fully compelling with the second, and a complete virtuoso with the last. Who are others? Neil Young, of course. Richard Thompson. To some extent Paul Simon and Joni Mitchell. There are others, of course, but I always want to make sure Cockburn gets counted here. Naturally, they know all this in Canada where he qualifies as that thing they call “a national treasure.”

Cockburn was pretty popular in the 80s with songs like “Lovers in a Dangerous Time” and “If I Had a Rocket Launcher,” the latter representative of his political side, which at the time was sympathetic to the cause of rebels in Central America. But, not to worry, when it comes to his subject matter he’s no one trick pony, and he can do love songs, mystical-spiritual songs, and journalistic songs of human experience with equal aplomb. And his political songs are deep, not superficial. Heavier on irony than sloganeering. Any way, I kind of lost touch with him for a while after that, but noticed that he kept putting records out at a steady clip. Surely, I thought, he must be going on autopilot; no one can keep their quality up over the decades. Wrong. I started listening again and after all these years I can say I’ve never heard a record from him that was less than excellent. Was there some secret to it, I wondered? Maybe his fundamentals are such that inspiration can always find a way in. A capacious and compassionate worldview. Exceedingly good and diverse musical taste and an aversion to cliche. I don’t know. Maybe just something he does personally to keep his channels open.

I won’t provide a blow by blow of the concert. All the virtues I have described above were strongly in evidence. And he’s 81! Though suffering with bone issues that have him hunched, he sat and performed like he was, what, 55 or so, lol. I’m not going to pretend he sounded like he was 29, but the voice was strong and all the notes were within reach, and, actually, as the night wore on, over the course of a nearly two hour set, he kept sounding younger and younger. Music is magic! For this concert, I was expecting a solo show, since it’s expensive to take a band out on the road, especially when you are past the peak of your popularity. But much to our delight he was accompanied by the husband-wife team of virtuoso multi-instrumentalist and bassist Jeff Pekar and singer-percussionist Inger Nova Jorgensen. Pekar plays that legato, sonorous, long-toned bass style that blended perfectly with Cockburn’s many different guitars, which he deployed with command all night. And Pekar and Jorgensen provided harmony vocals throughout, always welcome.

So, “Pacing the Cage.” I guess you could call it an existential investigation presented with purely poetical lyricism. It speaks of what it means to be embodied beings aware that there is a zone of spiritual liberation just out of reach. Is there fatalism? Sure. But there is also defiance. The lyrics are Dylanesque in the way every verse resolves into the same tagline, in this case the title of the song. It brings expectancy and then satisfaction seeing how the end is set up with the preceding word that rhymes with cage. And it is engaging to experience the various scenarios that each verse opens with. I was tempted to quote lines and couplets at you. Allow me to share just one, and then I will post the lyrics in their entirety. “Powers chatter in high places / Stir up eddies in the dust of rage / Set me to pacing the cage.” Sounds about right. Right on time.

Pacing the Cage

Sunset is an angel weeping
Holding out a bloody sword
No matter how I squint I cannot
Make out what it’s pointing toward

Sometimes you feel like you’ve lived too long
Days drip slowly on the page
You catch yourself pacing the cage

I’ve proven who I am so many times
The magnetic strip’s worn thin
And each time I was someone else
And everyone was taken in

Powers chatter in high places
Stir up eddies in the dust of rage
Set me to pacing the cage

I never knew what you all wanted
So I gave you everything
All that I could pillage
All the spells that I could sing

It’s as if the thing were written
In the constitution of the age
Sooner or later you wind up pacing the cage

Sometimes the best map will not guide you
You can’t see what’s round the bend
Sometimes the road leads through dark places
Sometimes the darkness is your friend

Today these eyes scan bleached-out lands
For the coming of the outbound stage
Pacing the cage
Pacing the cage