The Cowboys' Way

Another venture through the archives and a sit down - from June 2001 -  with Michael and Margo Timmins of Toronto's finest The Cowboy Junkies...

 

Dark. Depressing. Melancholic. There are many words you could use to describe the sound of the Cowboy Junkies but those are the three that seem to pop up most often.

The verdict is probably due to the success of their seminal 1988 recording The Trinity Session. A collection of original songs and classic tunes, the record’s sparse, acoustic arrangements and Margo Timmins’ vocals pretty much define the Junkies’ distinctive sound and, arguably, it was the forerunner to the thriving alt country scene of today.

However, that’s not the whole story. The Cowboy Junkies may have retained a distinctive sound but they’ve grown musically. As for that depressing tag…

“I think ‘sad’ is a better word,” says Michael Timmins, Margo’s brother and the band’s guitarist and songwriter. “There is a sadness to the songs, and the themes tend to be introspective and focus on the darker aspects of relationships. I try to spin them so there’s a suggestion that there is another side to it – sad is one emotion but the flipside is happy, and you can’t have one without the other. Life goes on, the sun does come up.”

Margo is more succinct. “We don’t really want to depress people!” she laughs. “I just think it’s easy to say that. In our society we like pigeonholing – ‘that one’s depressing, put it over there.’ I just think the people who think it’s depressing haven’t given it a try.”

“And sad songs are inspirational,” continues Michael. “Anything that invokes an emotion is a very positive thing, there’s nothing depressing about that.” He smiles. “The only depressing thing is to hear a song that does absolutely nothing for you.”

The speed of their answer suggests it’s an accusation they’re used to defending. Ironically, the latest album, Open, (the band’s 11^th) is their heaviest to date and Michael previously described it as being “about growing old… about waking up at 3am and, for the first time, coming to terms with the knowledge that one day you are going to die.” So not depressing at all then…

Michael grins. “This record is very dark. It starts very, very dark and holds that darkness for about five songs. But it begins to open up and with the final song Close My Eyes there’s a sense of…” He pauses for a few seconds. “Redemption. Realisation. And acceptance of reality. You have to look at what you have and hold on to it.”

Did you intend to write about those themes?

“It’s more a reflection on the way I felt,” he replies. “Our records start off very subconscious, as far as lyrics are concerned, but they tend to reflect issues or experiences. And then, about halfway through, you start recognising the themes. I didn’t think ‘I’ll write about being 40,’ you just begin to realise there’s this common thread. Then when you’ve finished you remove the songs that don’t fit in to make a cohesive thematic unit. At that point it becomes deliberate, but it doesn’t start that way.”

As well as Margo and Michael, their brother Peter (drums) has been in the band since the beginning. Does that closeness help?

“I think so,” says Michael, gesturing towards his sister, “particularly with our relationship. It’s easier for me to write a song and hand it to her and for her to take that song and have a deeper understanding of it. Margo’s the one that has to express the lyrics so the more she understands, the stronger her interpretation and, hopefully, the stronger her communication with the audience will be.”

Margo agrees. “The song has nothing to do with me directly – I didn’t have whatever experience inspired it or I wasn’t there – but I’m his sister. He may write a song that I know is inspired by something that’s gone on with his daughter, for example, and I’m his daughter’s aunt! So I’ll always have a personal connection to whatever’s going on.”

The Cowboy Junkies formed in Toronto in 1985 and, while they’ve added a few musicians for various projects, the core of Michael, Margo, Pater and bassist Alan Anton have stuck together for 16 years. Did you ever think it would last that long?

“You always hope it’ll last,” says Margo, “but you don’t sit down and think about it. You just do it. I remember holding our first record – you never think that there will be ten after that! You’re just thinking about how you’re going to get you next gig.”

“Yeah,” agrees Michael. “I don’t think we ever sat down and said ‘gee, I hope we’re still around 15 years from now.”

“Now I do,” laughs Margo. “Now I want our 20^th record.”

“I think we all agree that we want to keep on doing it as long as it’s fun to do,” says Michael. “It’d be a horrible thing to still enjoy it but have to stop because we couldn’t afford to do it. It’d be fine if we decided we’re too tired or we’re not inspired but to be forced to stop because you can’t get tours or sell records must be a horrible way to end. I guess that happens but there’s so many ways for bands to break up it’s rare that they just run out of steam and places to go, places to play.”

“Unless they made it really big first time out,” interjects Margo. “They don’t really generate an audience. They have a huge hit, then the second album doesn’t do as well… you don’t have that loyalty with your fans. I think when you’ve been around as long as us, there’s such a loyalty out there that even if they don’t buy the records they come to our shows so at least we could reach them that way.”

Amazingly, they’ve achieved this longevity without any real radio support or smash hit singles.

“We never really considered one way or the other if any of our songs was going to get on the radio,” says Michael. “Formats are too fickle. We’ve never relied on it. It’s nice when you do” – he chuckles – “it makes everything a lot easier. But we survived this long without getting played a whole lot on the radio. We rely a lot on the press, the specialty programmes.”

“Word of mouth,” chips in Margo.

“TV, a lot of late night shows in America… there’s tons of different ways of doing it, the radio is regarded as the only way but it’s not. Certainly if you’re going to generate a huge hit you have to be on the radio but that’s nothing we’ve really considered.”

Of course, the irony is that many of the new wave of alt. country bands are getting airplay.

“I don’t really think about it,” says Michael. “I mean, I know about it mainly because” – he smiles – “journalists tell me. But you don’t really know what’s happening to other bands unless they’re huge.”

Unusually, rather than record then tour the songs, the band decided to road-test the songs for Open before entering the studio and performing them “as live”. How did that feel?

“It was great,” states Michael. “That was the way we recorded our first few records. We’ve attempted, to a certain degree, to keep all our records as live as possible but this is the first since The Caution Horses where we’ve gone in with a complete band and played like we were on stage. And for these songs it was a very easy way of doing it because we had performed them live, we had a really good dynamic feel between the people in the band and could say ‘let’s just perform and not worry about what’s going down tape’- we’d worry about that afterwards. It’s a very nice way, a very casual way, of recording and I think that you get that feel off the record – there’s a dynamic to it.”

It’s a policy that suits Margo too.

“It’s cool,” she grins. “It’s a great way for me with my style of vocals. If I know a song intimately from playing it live, I can go into the studio and just close my eyes and sing while the rest of the band’s playing – without even being aware of being taped.” She laughs. “As soon as I’m aware of being taped, I start to sound like Julie Andrews! And then you find going into the studio day after day, it just becomes a job. Recording it live, it doesn’t.”

Open is released on the Junkies’ own label, Latent Recordings. That must give you more flexibility.

“Yeah,” agrees Michael, “but we’ve never had problems with the musical side of things.”

“We’ve been lucky,” suggests Margo, “because of the way we started with The Trinity Session and all that stuff, somehow we were able to get away with a lot. The labels didn’t come around and bug us – and we were always really protective about it.”

Margo smiles. “Long after nobody’s listening, when I’m an old woman, I will always be a Cowboy Junkie. Those CDs will always have my name and my face on them. I don’t ever want to listen to them and say ‘why did I do that?’ At the end of the day, if you’re going to put something on your record you’ll regret, don’t! It’s a long life! I can honestly say there’s nothing on any of our records that I regret putting on.”

So will you be touring?

Michael nods. “We’re in the US and Canada all summer, and we’ll be in the UK in mid-October.

“And you know,” observes Margo, “everywhere else in Europe we’ve been having real tea. We come to England and the ol’ bags!” She laughs. “I’ll have to tell the Queen about that when we come back…”