Bruce Cockburn – “Goin’ Down the Road” (1970)
Goin’ Down the Road was an influential Canadian film about two Nova Scotia young bucks who drive a cool 1960 Chevy Impala to Toronto in hopes of snazzing up their floundering lives. It’s pretty much a bummer, like most movies at that time were. But it was a worthwhile bummer. Particularly worthwhile was the soundtrack by a young Bruce Cockburn, the venerable Canadian singer-songwriter who was only one album into his career back then. No soundtrack LP ever appeared because Bruce, apparently, insisted on not releasing something commercially that didn’t reflect his direct experience. Too bad. Anyway, I loved the theme song so much when I first saw this (still do) that I propped up a tape recorder by the TV, merging the opening first few verses with the closing verse that plays at the end.
Bruce Cockburn – “Goin’ Down the Road”
January 11th, 2016 at 3:10 am
thank you so much for posting this. and what a swell idea to combine the opening and closing parts to form the full song. i too love the film and enjoyed the soundtrack, but never considered looking for it on LP – for some reason. it was just recently i thought about where i could find this song. turns out there’s a version on his 9CD box set recently released. but says it was recorded in 1995! what got me looking for this song was i recently found an album by John Allan Cameron called Get There By Dawn on which John does a lovely version of the song. i think you’d like it. thanks again.
January 11th, 2016 at 5:59 pm
Thanks for dropping by and thanks for letting me know about John Allan Cameron’s version which I hadn’t known about. Will search for it. I was happy Bruce recorded a version for the box set even though I was hoping for a remastered version of the original which has such a special melancholy quality…