Q: The atrocities that you depict in a couple of songs on the new album seem otherworldly, like watching the worst horror movie someone could imagine. Are those images you convey how the album got its title "You've Never Seen Everything"?

A: You've Never Seen Everything, of course, is one of the songs, or rather spoken-word pieces on the album. And the idea was - it's a kind of a catalogue of stuff that had been around in my head for varying lengths of time. Some of it very recent when the song was written, some of it going back some years. But it's all stuff that -- stuff from life. And it struck me at a certain point, you know -- I think I said this last night in the show - you can look out your window and you see nothing but darkness and you can look at the things that you encounter in life and in the media and so on, the things you see happening around you can make the world look very dark. And you can't pretend those things aren't there. It's real important not to try to pretend that those things are not there.

So what do you do about that? And the song kind of comes at it in a backwards way because it is a catalogue of horrors, in a way. But it talks about, we live with this stuff, and never feel the light falling all around. Well the implication is the light is falling all around and it is all the time. And so when you look out your window and you see nothing but darkness you've got to remember that that's not what's always there. That there's light out there too.

Ask me, you know, where do I get hope from, because I can write a song like that that is so dark and yet I'm not hopeless. How does that work? I don't think you can grab hope. I think you have to let it grab you. I think that it's just like light. It's like light or like love. It's a force in the universe. It's just a way of understanding your place in things that allows you to move forward. Because if you don't have that, I mean, you can look at all this stuff and you can become cynical or you can become depressed. And those are things that will stop you from moving forward and will have an essentially destructive effect on yourself and on the people close to you.

So - maybe here are no answers. Maybe the whole thing is that we just have to keep looking all the time and have to keep reaching out to each other. I don't know the answer, you don't know the answer, but maybe, if at least we're not fighting with each other, then if we're looking for the same thing together, we're not fighting with each other and we stand a chance of accomplishing something.

SONG: POSTCARDS FROM CAMBODIA

Q: Bruce, the images you present in that song and throughout this album and really all of your albums, they're drawn with such precision. Sometimes your songs seem like films. I'm going to quote you a few of your latest visions here. "Sun will soon slide down into the far end of the ancient reservoir, orange ball merging with its water-borne twin, below airbrushed edges of cloud. But first it spreads itself a golden scrim behind fractal sweep of swooping flycatchers." That's from Postcards from Cambodia. And then some other, just quicker ones, because listeners don't always catch everything, you know, during the course of the show. In You've Never Seen Everything: "Snow swirls in the parking lot like flower, like pesticide." From Celestial Horses: "Tomorrow may be a hissing blow torch." And a beautiful one from Messenger Wind: "To be one more voice in the human choir, rising like smoke from the mystical fire of the heart." Your work is full of these startlingly vivid images. Some are gloriously poetic and then others are so real they're like reportage. Were you influenced poetically by the Beat poets or do you even have influences when you do writing like this?

A: I was very much influenced by the Beat writers as a youth, not just in terms of writing but in terms of lifestyle in general, and the travel bug, which has never gone away. But certainly, as a writer, I was influenced by them. And by other poets. The first time I understood what poetry could offer, I think I was in sixth grade and we studied a poem -- or we didn't study it, but there was a poem in the book that we were studying from, by Archibald MacLeash called Ours Poetica, which was this kind of -- the point of the poem was that a poem doesn't have to be about anything. It's its own thing. And the way he got at that was by presenting these kind of very powerful, pungent images that just stood on their own.

But at that age, I'd never read anything that didn't rhyme before in poetry -- in the world of poetry. And this didn't have anything to do with rhyme. It had to do with these intense images. And this light went on in my head that -- I fell in love with it and I fell in love with that kind of use of language. And I've loved it ever since in poetry and prose. Everybody approaches songwriting in a different way. But for me, because I'm so lyric-driven and I do write in a way that I think of as kind of consciously cinematic. The way I put songs together. Not in every case, but very often, I'm taking scenes that are one thing by themselves, but assume a different significance when you put them back-to-back with other scenes and then tie them together with a chorus and so on. There's a certain amount of a film editor's mind in the way it goes into organizing those elements into a song.

Q: When we were talking together earlier about poetry, you've probably been asked this before, but have you done readings or considered publishing a book of verse without the music?

A: Not really. Over the years, I've written the occasional thing that was a poem and not a piece of -- not intended to be a song. But so rarely and so unsatisfactorily from my point of view that I'm not in any danger of publishing that stuff for anyone else to read. And really, the stuff I write, I mean it might serve some purpose at some point to have it released on the printed page. But it's not really intended for that. It's supposed to have that music creating a field for the images to sit in.

Q: Well, take, for instance, the first song on the album, Tried and Tested. There's a cadence that's a bit rappy, but it could just as easily be a beat reading. And later in the album, you speak of "the poet's pilfered rhymes." Do you think any hip-hop, which is really the culture of youth these days, regardless of skin color, has the power to affect social change or at least create an awareness of problems?

A: I think that hip-hop has inadvertently or otherwise created an awareness of a certain type of problem, but it's made that problem seem attractive. And therefore, yeah, there's clear evidence that it does have power to affect things. I mean, how many kids' attitudes have been shaped by the stuff they're listening to. I mean, ours were by the rock and roll that we listened to, so why wouldn't kids now be being influenced by rap? I hear some stuff -- I'm not well-versed in the world of rap, but I hear people doing things that I think are really great, that are interesting and powerful uses of language and that might also have really killer grooves with them that I you can get into as well. I mean, as obnoxious as some of the things Eminem says are, for instance, there's no question that that guy is brilliant at what he does. And a lot of what he says is right on the money, too.

So it's an interesting phenomenon and I think -- well, I hope I last long enough to see where it will -- what sort of perspective it will assume with time.

Q: I have to think that they're part of the continuum we were speaking of earlier.

A: I think so.

Q: I want to (talk about) a song from the album now called Wait No More. And there's a little bit of a Middle Eastern feel here. You have Larry Taylor on bass and Steven Hodges on drums, who also have worked with Tom Waits. And Hugh Marsh, the violin he plays, not only on this song, but throughout the album, is amazing. And he played with you during the '80s. I know we spoke about some of the players earlier, but let's talk a little bit about your working methods with the musicians. And the other musicians you'd like to point out. The harmonica player sounds like Toots Thielmans sometimes on this record.

A: Gregoire Maret is his name. And he is kind of a young, avant-garde Toots Thielmans. He plays a lot with Andy Milne, which is how I got to meet him and hear him and how he ended up on my album.

Hugh Marsh is a brilliant musician who has been -- I think the first time we worked together was the tour that went with "Dancing in the Dragon's Jaws," which came out in '79. And he does a lot of other kinds of things. He does a lot of film work and writing of his own things and making his own albums, which are hard to find because what he does is intensely not commercial at all. But along the way, he has somehow got steeped in Turkish music. He plays a lot in Turkey and he's kind of a bit of a star. People buy him dinner in restaurants in Turkey and stuff. "You are Hugh Marsh, I must buy you dinner!" And so over that time, he's become well-versed in aspects of Turkish music.

And with Wait No More, the song is kind of -- it's very Sufi-like. On one level, it's very sensual and can be interpreted as a sexual statement. But it's also a spiritual statement. And in putting those two things together, I reminded myself of the Sufis that I read and admire. Not that I admire myself particularly for putting myself in their company, but -- let's clarify that right away. But the song owes something to Rumi and Hafiz. And as a result, they get credited in the fine print on the album cover. But because it was that kind of song, I thought I wanted it to have a kind of Middle Eastern content in it.

And the dobro guitar that I play -- I mean, I'm essentially playing a country blues part, only the scale is sort of Middle Eastern. And when Hugh got a hold of it, he took it further in that direction. So he's playing more authentically in the style than I am. But it worked out in a pretty intriguing way.

And the way we approached that song was typical of how we did the whole album. The basic tracks, quote unquote, were done with Hugh Marsh and me and Gary Craig, who's one of the drummers on the album, playing a sort of scaled-down drum kit and functioning like a human beatbox. We recorded everything that way, except for Everywhere Dance. I think that's probably the only one where Andy and Greg and I played it together live. Starting from that point, we had -- we knew that everything was going to groove and we had all the kind of melodic and harmonic content that we wanted in place. And then we applied rhythm sections to it.

So we took what we had done -- we recorded all that stuff in Montreal and then we took it to Toronto and added a rhythm section with Gary playing a full drum kit and a couple of different bass players, John Diamond, in particular, with him. And then Rich Brown, who also works with Andy a lot, playing bass. And then Ben Riley and Steve Lucas, the guys that you've seen touring with me, are also on some of the songs. But they're added after the fact.

We sort of went at it backwards. Most people, when they're going to build an album in a produced sort of way like that will start with the rhythm section and a vocal, maybe, and kind of work up from there. And we went at it from the top down. But it seemed to work really well. And what we ended up with feels like everybody was in the room playing it together. Which I was very pleased about and is a testament to how good those musicians are that did their parts as overdubs.

Q: Bruce, your last album before "You've Never Seen Everything" was -- I've got to get it right -- "Anything, Anytime, Anywhere." It was a singles compilation from 1979 through 2002. Did you feel as if it was a career summation? Was this the end of one chapter and the beginning of another?

A: It felt like it might have been that. I don't like to make those kinds of judgments too hastily. But yeah, there certainly was that aspect of it. The invitation to look back over all this old stuff in the course of putting it together. And we re-mixed a couple of things and re-mastered various things. And so it did involve some fairly close scrutiny of the past. Which is not something I spend a lot of time with normally. I like to look ahead -- or look at where I'm at and worry about that, more that what I've already done. But it was instructive and it did feel, in a way, like kind of summing up, I suppose.

Q: When would you ever hear your own music, say, before a tour when you're playing stuff for the musicians or do you even play them from the discs or just playing the songs live?

A: When we're learning a song, I usually just play it for people live. And it's the same in the studio as it is when we're rehearsing for a tour. One of my favorite studio memories was of sitting -- when we were doing "Nothing but a Burning Light," T-Bone Burnett was producing. And he had put together this amazing band of Michael Been from The Call, Jim Keltner on drums and Booker-T on organ. And so I'm sitting in a room with these guys and playing them the songs on an acoustic guitar and nothing is amplified. And they all start playing along. And you can still hear. Their approach was so delicate and so musical that they were grooving like mad, but you could hear everything acoustically. And it's a wonderful feeling when that happens. And it's more fun -- I think that happens because you do play the songs live, and think about them that way.

For practical reasons, when we're getting ready for a tour, I mean, I will phone everybody ahead of time and tell them what songs we're likely to be doing so they can at least learn the chord changes and kind of have a sense of what the song's about. But they're not always treated the way they are on the albums when we do them live. So there has to be room for movement that way, too.

Q: And when you're putting together the set list, and I know they change from night to night, the setlists do, but it seemed like the perfect time to bring Call it Democracy back onto the stage. I mean, it just seemed to fit thematically with a lot of the other things you were singing about.

A: A lot of stuff that's going on in the world right now.

Q Fits right in. We were talking about the single-disc compilation that came out last year. But also, your current home in America is Rounder Records. And they recently reissued many of your earlier albums with bonus tracks. So you had to look backwards to prepare those as well. I bet that was also a clearing of the decks in a sense.

A: Yeah, somewhat more harrowing that looking at the -- a collection of singles, because you're sort of getting in deep. And these albums are like photo albums for me in a way. I mean all these songs came from a time and a place and are associated with all sorts of memories, some good, some bitter. And so it is kind of strange to go back and look at these things.

But to my pleasant surprise, everything held up musically quite well. And for the most part, recording-wise, too. We had to fix a few things. And hearing the recordings, especially the earliest ones, there are things I would do differently now if I were doing it, but in the main, it held up. So I'm happy about that. And I feel free in a way. And this is the whole point of, I suppose, the summing up. I mean, in one way, that kind of backward glancing can -- could weigh you down, I suppose. But what I feel right now is liberated to kind of go ahead to wherever I can think of. And I don't feel attached to what I've already done.

Q: In Canada, you've been with the same independent label, True North, since your first album in 1970. Have you been able to avoid a lot of the grief that major label artists have to go through? And I know you were on Columbia Records for a while and such.

A: In the States. Yeah. Bernie Finklestein, who owns True North and who is also my manager, was a godsend. He, through both the record company and his position as manager, is able to keep the music business at arms length from me, which I am so grateful for. Somebody like Ani can take on the business and, you know, run a record company and do all that stuff and has the energy to pay attention to all those things and still produce great art. I don't think I do. I think if I was involved in all the business stuff that the art would suffer. And I'm grateful for the fact that I don't have to do it on a day-to-day basis. That I've got somebody I can trust who's looking out for my interests that way.

Q: And you might not be able to travel as much as you do, because judging from the songs, you go pretty much everywhere for a firsthand account of the things you give in songs.

A: Firsthand is really important to me because I think that's how you get the truth. I mean, you can learn things, obviously, from reading or from hearing other people's accounts of what they've experienced. But it works better when you know firsthand what you're talking about, especially with the so-called political sort of stuff.

Q: Well, you'll be on the road plenty. You're touring America and Europe through the end of the year. Are there ever times when you're not making music or traveling to support a cause when you might, say, go fishing or maybe do some cooking or play hockey or something?

A: I ski a bit. And that's something that's come back to me. I skied a lot when I was little, up till about 17 and then I kind of found other things that were cooler than skiing and I lost interest. But in recent years, I've started doing that again. And -- downhill skiing I'm talking about. And I'm having a lot of fun with that in the winters. And it's a way to make winter palatable in the north.

We alluded way earlier, or I did, to the modest collection of comic books that I have. I have a few collections of things. I'm a packrat by nature, which is not really very compatible with being on the move as much as I am. It means that I don't tend to travel light when I don't have to. I have those kinds of various kinds of interests that keep me busy. But really, living, you know. I mean, that's the whole subject.

Q: Living is a full-time job.

A: It is. No getting away from it.

Q: "You've Never Seen Everything" ends with two positive songs. In the closer, Messenger Wind, you sing how that wind "stops me running away from all of the things I've been wanting to say, but don't." Seems to me that you're a guy that says what he wants.

A: Well, you have to know what you want in order to say what you want. And over the years, I mean, I guess everybody's got their own process of figuring themselves out and of finding ways to file the baggage that we come into life with and accumulate in our early years. Part of that process, at least for me in recent years, has been of figuring out exactly what it is I do want and allowing myself to notice that and say it, because somehow, early on, I lost a sense of that. I could see what other people wanted really easily and I could articulate that. But I was not so good at knowing what I wanted in my heart. And so that's what I'm learning about these days.

Q: The song we'll close with is another that gives this album its balance and helps the songs play off of each other like scenes in a movie. We alluded to that analogy earlier. The song is called Don't Forget about Delight. And it's a great mantra in these heavy days. You're both imparting it to the listener and to yourself. How did Don't Forget about Delight arise?

A: Ani will probably hate me for saying this, but it actually is -- I got the idea listening to one of her albums, one of her recent ones -- I forget which one -- and thinking about the weight of what we take on. I guess I can hear it easier in her than I can in me, because when I write songs like You've Never Seen Everything, I'm the guy there doing it and I'm not really thinking about how it relates to the rest of my life at that moment. I'm just thinking about writing the song or about performing it, as the case may be. But when I listen to somebody else that has serious content in their work, I'm thinking, this could get you down, if you were carrying this around and you've got nowhere to put it.

And so I'm saying it to myself and to her and to anybody else that ever finds themselves in that sort of position not to forget to appreciate the things that are around to be appreciated. And the capacity for delight is -- seemed to me to be kind of the central -- or a suitable central kind of point to hang that on.

Another way to look at it would be in terms of something that I came across when I first went to Central America in '83. And the Solidarity folks that I'd been associated with in Toronto were by and large a pretty serious bunch. And fair enough, they were working on some big issues, life and death issues. And they took their work very seriously. But there was a marked contrast between their attitude and the attitude of the Nicaraguans who are actually confronted with war and depravation and real hard-core stress. They knew how to party. And they would party at every opportunity. And, so it was a good reminder of the proper perspective on things.

SONG: DON'T FORGET ABOUT DELIGHT

(End of interview)