SOLD OUT: Bruce Cockburn // A 50th Anniversary Concert
Saturday, February 11, 2023
7 pm Doors // 8 pm Music
All Ages
$65 VIP Seating
$55 Preferred Reserved Seating
$45 Advance General Admission Seating // $55 At The Door
Ticket Purchases are Final and Non-Refundable
Facebook RSVP
Legendary Canadian singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn brings his long-awaited 50th anniversary tour (after a 2-year delay!) to Minneapolis.
With 35 albums, 13 JUNO wins, 2 Hall of Fame inductions, countless honorary Doctorates, named an Officer of The Order of Canada, a 2021 inductee into Canada's Walk of Fame — Cockburn will perform a retrospective of his illustrious career, spanning from 1970-2020 — songs that shot to the top of the charts upon release, to long-lauded fan-favorites requested on tour, time and time again.
An evening chronicling the music of a true icon.
"Part of the job of being human is just to try to spread light, at whatever level you can do it. "
For 50 years, this Canadian musical legend has been capturing in song the essence of human experience – while fiercely striving to make it better.
One of Canada’s finest artists, Bruce Cockburn has enjoyed an illustrious career shaped by politics, spirituality, and musical diversity. His remarkable journey has seen him embrace folk, jazz, rock, and worldbeat styles while travelling to such far-flung places as Guatemala, Mali, Mozambique, and Nepal, and writing memorable songs about his ever-expanding world of wonders. “My job,” he explains, “is to try and trap the spirit of things in the scratches of pen on paper and the pulling of notes out of metal.”
That scratching and pulling has earned Cockburn high praise as an exceptional songwriter and a revered guitarist. His songs of romance, protest, and spiritual discovery are among the best to have emerged from Canada over the last 50 years. His guitar playing, both acoustic and electric, has placed him in the company of the world’s top instrumentalists. And he remains deeply respected for his activism on issues from native rights and land mines to the environment and Third World debt, working for organizations such as Oxfam, Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders, and Friends of the Earth.
Throughout his career, Cockburn has deftly captured the joy, pain, fear, and faith of human experience in song. Whether singing about retreating to the country or going up against chaos, tackling imperialist lies or embracing ecclesiastical truths, he has always expressed a tough yet hopeful stance: to kick at the darkness till it bleeds daylight. “We can’t settle for things as they are,” he once warned. “If you don’t tackle the problems, they’re going to get worse.”
It’s no small task to encapsulate Bruce Cockburn’s inimitable imprint when it comes to Canadian music and culture. But his recent double-album release, Bruce Cockburn Greatest Hits (1970 - 2020), is a good place to start.
Curated by Bruce and released in December 2021 on True North Records, this definitive collection meticulously corrals the acclaimed singer/songwriter’s most favoured tracks.
“In 1969, when I was feeling the need to record an album of the songs I’d been writing, I had no concept of what that might lead to,” he shares. “Not unusual for a young person, I guess…. In some organic way, it felt like it was ‘time.’ The future wasn’t really an issue. It still isn’t. For each of us, there’s a future or there isn’t.”
“But looking back over the arc of fifty years of recording, performing, and travel — not to mention, relationships and personal challenges — I can only shake my head and mutter a word of thanks for all of it. Even if I’d been a planner by nature, I doubt I could have predicted how things have gone. And they’re still going!”
The release landed just ahead of Cockburn’s “2nd Attempt” North American tour for his 50th Anniversary Concert, previously stymied by COVID restrictions.