Critic's Pick: Bruce Cockburn

Bruce Cockburn’s new full-length The Blood of Others takes the veteran singer, songwriter and guitarist back to his days as a post-blues folk musician with a formidable guitar style. Cockburn grew up in suburban Ottawa, Canada, and released his first album in 1970. His virtuoso acoustic guitar on 1971’s High Winds, White Sky and 1972’s Sunwheel Dance might put you in mind of the work of English counterparts like Nic Jones and Richard Thompson. Cockburn broke through in the United States with 1979’s excellent Dancing in the Dragon’s Jaws, which yielded a hit, “Wondering Where the Lions Are.” Like, say, Joan Armatrading during the same era, Cockburn began playing New Wave-influenced rock in the ’80s. The political edge of his 1984 song “If I Had a Rocket Launcher” carried it into Billboard’s Mainstream Rock chart, and Cockburn turned out to be a folkie who could rock. I also recommend his 1991 T Bone Burnett-produced album Nothing but a Burning Light, which gives Cockburn props as an Americana pioneer. Produced by longtime associate Colin Linden in Nashville, The Blood of Others shows off Cockburn’s feel for the blues. He covers Lonnie Johnson, Arthur Crudup and W.C. Handy with style — and a lot of great guitar playing. Livingston Taylor opens.

7:30 p.m. at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum’s CMA Theater

224 Rep. John Lewis Way S.