Canadian folk-rocker Bruce Cockburn [ tickets ] will return to the road next spring for a short run across the US.

The acclaimed singer/songwriter is set to kick things off April 4 in Flagstaff, AZ, and visit 10 cities before wrapping in Ann Arbor, MI, April 20. Multiple dates are booked in Colorado and New Mexico. Details are included below.

Cockburn continues to support his 29th studio effort, "Life Short Call Now," which surfaced in the summer of 2006. Several songs on the 12-track set were written during and after the performer's 2004 fact-finding mission to Baghdad. The album features guest spots from Ani DiFranco, Ron Sexsmith, Hawksley Workman and Damhnait Doyle, and includes a 23-piece orchestra--a first for Cockburn.

"Life Short Call Now" follows Cockburn's first-ever instrumental record, 2005's "Speechless," which reached the Top 10 on Billboard's contemporary jazz chart.

In March, the Canadian Music Hall of Famer plans to offer up a live CD and bio DVD entitled "Slice O Life," according to The Cockburn Project website. He also recently recorded tracks for upcoming tribute albums to The Band and Mississippi Sheiks.

The political activist is also the subject of a big-screen affair that premiered in the fall. Cockburn's 2007 journey to Nepal was captured in a movie featured at Toronto's Planet in Focus film festival in October. "Return to Nepal," directed by Robert Lang, tracks the Ottawa-born singer's trip to the country where he witnessed the effects of climate change, according to the Canadian Press.

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