the brief

a lament and celebration on the bonds between brothers, growing up and dying out

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Some karosongs need a longer introduction to their context and subject matter. This is one of those.

I am the fifth-born of what turned out to be seven boys. No girls. I was only four by the time my two younger brothers had been born, so I came to consciousness and grew up in a very male world. It was also a very traditional working class world where our parents and society taught us men were supposed to be strong, stoic and unemotional.

My brothers and I were all different but shared a common bond — that we were seven boys, a number and circumstance that had wide resonance in the Canada of that time. It was somehow special.

That sense of being seven survived the early death of brother #2, then survived the deaths of brothers #3 and #1 in the following decades. It was a part of our identity, never to be lost.

Along the way, I had become the family eulogist, speaking at the funerals for my father, brother #3, and mother. All three eulogies were rooted in the phrase "and then there were seven", exploring what that had meant to our sense of selves and family.

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In the summer of 2021, my brother John, #4 and the oldest surviving sibling at that point, was entering the end stage of a fatal autoimmune disease. He visited with me that August and when he left I felt strongly I would not see him again. His eulogy started to write itself in my mind, starting from the phrase "and then there were three".

At the same time, I felt increasingly pulled to a Jesse Cook track called Virtue that had been on my 'maybes' playlist since the previous fall, but not gone anywhere. Just after John left, that track pushed forward and I got a sense of a title, either "brothers" or "we were brothers".

I was uncertain at first if the focus of the song would be John and my relationship with him. But once I started recording it, the lyrics soon made it clear this was about all seven of us, and the sweep of our collective lives across the decades.

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i knew you as soon as i knew myself
you were the womb i was born into
the ring of faces looking down
telling me my name and who i was

and telling me now that i was here
the pattern was finally clear
we were brothers we were seven

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It was the 45th karosong to start channeling, and perhaps the most personal — the most 'bruce' — of any song to that point, coming as it did out of my birth family (where I am still called by my first name) and the complex often inchoate emotions we carry from the times before and after we emerged into consciousness and personal identity.

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and we knew that mattered
though weren't sure how
or even how to be brothers
for that matter

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The structure and about a third of the lyrics came in just the first few weeks of active channeling. The topic and John's impending death made it an intensely emotional song to bring forward, and I would often tear up and lose my way as I sang.

The whole/full karo was simply there by this time, my default vox, and I often got the lyrics and most of their delivery at the same time. Even very difficult deliveries, where the lyrics danced around the lead instrument, just came. It was as though the song and the emerging whole/full vox were a single phenomena.

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and as the years pressed on
each at our own ages our own stages
struggling to know what it was to be a man
to be a brother, trying to figure out the difference

learning the only way to show you care
was insults across the dinner table
unless it was late at night and the campfire
was burning low and the beer had finally. . .

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The song triggered much introspection and thinking about how my brothers and I were shaped by our birth order. What it must have been like for my oldest brothers who had come into consciousness and personal identity long before we were seven. What it must have been like for my youngest brother who only ever knew himself as the seventh son.

At the same time, I was realizing that "I" was not the song's narrator, that the narrator was #7 — "the last to come the last to go". So not quite 'truthful' as autobiography, but still truthful emotionally.

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we were brothers we were seven
even after one had gone to heaven
w as it one for all and all for one?
nah, more like seven cats in a bag

scrabbling, squirming, fighting for space
but sharing that identity
we were brothers we were seven

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By early October, it seemed the song might finish before I shut my house down for the winter in mid-November. I hoped it would. But progress stalled and didn't resume until after I had returned to Lake Erie that December and resumed sub-vocal channeling .

Then I suffered my broken heart, and the song was delayed again. A bit like life.

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and still the years pressed on
with kids and wives and houses and shit
each learning how to be a husband, how to be a father
each succeeding failing in his own ways

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By then I had the sense of the lyrics still to come, but they were jumbly and not settling down. There was a rising then falling bridge in the async track that led into the final verse. I could feel the lyrics wanting to lift and fall with the music but had no clarity until I got that the rising part would count up family events across the passing years, then the falling part would countdown the deaths of the brothers, until there was only one left.

(All of that more easily summarized than actualized as usual. In fact, getting the rising/falling delivery for this section of lyrics would take many months.)

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and there were all the events of a
large and growing family

there were weddings & anniversaries
births & graduations
reunions & wompus hunts

& then there were five
& then there were four
& then . . .
& then . . .

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The song's ending also took some months to clarify. I'd got an image of city lights blinking out on the dark side of the earth back in the winter, and felt the ending would play off that image to bring the song to a resolution. Which the ending arguably did do when it came, but I never felt quite satisfied with it, and wondered if it still might change.

But remember — just the channel. It didn't change.

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now here i am the last to go
it's been like watching the dark side of the earth
as the city lights down below blink out one by one
leaving just the darkness

it's the same darkness we came out of
back before we knew who we were what we were
and all we knew was that we wanted
and we needed to belong

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The last bit of lyric only finally clarified that June, about nine months after the song had started. I'd long had the sense the song would close with spoken lines from the eulogy of the last brother to die. And I thought those lines would come after the music had climaxed and was tailing out, a common karosong pattern. But it just didn't work. I finally saw I had to start and complete the eulogy lines before the music ended.

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and then there were none
they were brothers they were seven

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Even though the lyrics were complete by June of 2022, the song was not mastered until long after the Vancouver sessions ended.

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Post-script

My brother John died of his disease and Covid-19 in late October 2021. I spoke at the celebration of his life, giving the eulogy that had been coming the previous two months. As I finished preparing it, key images from the song inserted themselves into my words, including "the womb we were born into" and the lights of cities on the darkside of the earth blinking out one by one.

John's death left me the oldest surviving brother.