Howdy friends and neigbhors, strangers and relations. This is my first ever, one and only attempt at a blog. And I find myself wondering, what should I blog about? Why should anyone care what I have to say, anyway? Why indeed.

I just posted some new photos. They are from Bruce Cockburn's live show in Memphis on June 14th, 2007. I've been a huge fan for about 15 years, but this was my first oppurtunity to see him live. So I decided, review the show. Hey, I got nothing else right now. And that is where the blog title comes from. It is one of my favorite lines from any song, and it happens to be a Cockburn original. It is a lyric from his song "Lovers in a Dangerous Time." And the more of life I experience, the more that line, "kick at the darkness til it bleeds daylight" feels appropiate. Apparently, I'm in good company. I don't remeber if he credits Cockburn, but Bono "borrowed" that very same line for the U2 song "God Part 2" on Rattle and Hum.

So on to the show:

Bruce played the gig solo, acoustic. I was a little concerned about this before the show, because so many of his best songs have such great interplay between guitar, bass and drums, and I was afraid stripping those songs down would make them sound hollow. Boy was I wrong. I always knew he was an amazing guitarist, but, Damn! With nothing else to get in the way, his right hand technique took up all the slack. In fact (if you havn't guessed by now, I'm a guitarist. Bare with me) I spent most of the evening watching his right hand picking patterns instead of his left hand. His voice was strong and the vibe was there. Everything sounded tight and groovy.

He used 3 different acoustics. Tech heads will have to forgive me, but I've no idea what they were. It was not a brand I was familiar with, and my damned eyes can't see good enough any more to have been able to make out the name on the headstock. I understand they are custom guitars from a canadian luthier. He had two 6 strings and one 12 string. The 6 strings were, I think, were each a different tuning. The 12 string, he used on the songs "This is Baghdad," Tell the Universe," and "Put it in your Heart."

I won't bother repeating the set list here. If you go to my photos, you'll see a picture I took of his set list. Suffice it to say that it was a great performance, augmeted by some very funny and personable banter from Bruce between the songs. If you get the chance, I can highly recomend catching his live show. And if you've never heard his music, you don't know what your missing. His catalog is huge (about 30 albums). My personal favorites would be "Nothing but a Burning Light", "Charity of the Night", and "Breakfast in New Orleans, Dinner in Timbktu." But they're all great.

So there you go. Keep kickin' at the darkness.