Cowboy Junkies: Displaying a new side of a known quantity
Published in Berkshire Eagle, 5/14/10
By Jeremy D. Goodwin
GREAT BARRINGTON—Cowboy Junkies are just getting started.
The popular Canadian band, long-established favorites of the alternative country scene, have entered a particularly fertile period. They just unveiled the first part of what is planned as a four-album series, all to be released in a span of 18 months. And that first album displays an intriguing new side from a band that many considered to be a known quantity.
Cowboy Junkies play the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center on Saturday.
Renmin Park, the first entry in what's been dubbed the Nomad Series (named after a four-painting series by Cuban-American painter Enrique Martinez Celaya), was inspired by band member Michael Timmins' three-month trip to China. It features guest spots from Chinese singer-songwriters, as well as a handful of moody sound-scapes pasted together in the studio by bassist Alan Anton and producer Joby Baker, based on field recordings made by Timmins.
"When Mike was recording some sounds on his trip to China, he came back with all these noises and we thought of working them into loops and building songs around them," Anton explains in a telephone interview from his home on Vancouver Island. "It was a real kind of 'outside' project for us, especially at the beginning. We didn't know if we could go that route. It worked out well I think."
The signature Cowboy Junkies sound—a non-threatening but droopily narcotic slow-march—is very much intact as well, of course; after the album opens with a fanfare cut-and-pasted from Chinese public-square theatre, Margo Timmins' smoky voice emerges over a familiar, mid-tempo acoustic guitar strum.
The conceptual trappings and studio tinkering are a 360-degree turn from the Junkies' last project, a straight re-take of their 1988 breakout album The Trinity Session, recorded, as was the original, live around one microphone in Toronto's Church of the Holy Trinity. This time, special quests like Natalie Merchant and Ryan Adams were on hand; the record was dubbed Trinity Revisited.
The band have spent 25 years embellishing and revising the sonic blueprint laid out on that original keystone album. Renmin Park features some of the heavier electric guitar sounds and overdub-friendly approach also heard on the group's last new studio effort, At The End of Paths Taken in 2007.
The Nomad Series is also slated to include an album of material written by Vic Chetnutt, a friend of the band who died in 2009 (and appears on Trinity Revisited); an album to be dubbed Sing in My Meadow whose identity is "still being discussed and fought over," according to the band's website; and an album of new songs (to be called The Wilderness) featuring songs that have been in the live repertoire over the past year or so. Each release will be complemented by a book explaining its inspiration.
This flood of new material is in addition to the voluminous recordings available only on the Cowboy Junkies' website, where various studio outtakes and live recordings are regularly made available for fans to dig into.
After 25 years, why such a flood of inspiration? Anton points to the group's shift from a traditional record-then-tour model to a regular touring schedule of about ten dates, most every month of the year.
"It gives us a lot of time to sit around and think of doing other stuff. There are a lot of other side projects and things we haven't had time for before because of the way the schedule works, when you have a year recoding and then a year touring. It wasn't really a great way to get a lot of stuff done," Anton explains. "This really spaces it out and gives us downtime. It seems like a really relaxed way to go. We should have done this a long time ago."
Cowboy Junkies known for trying out new material on the road, shifting its setlists nightly, and maintaining a fan-friendly perspective. "No laminated setlists for us!" Anton declares, in reference to the ossified routine of some arena and stadium rock acts.
The band point to their info-loaded web presence as a key intersection with the fanbase, and an excellent method for the Junkies (who've run their own independent label for most of their career) to make new music available.
"We quickly realized that it's a great way to connect with fans, so we've just over the years been putting tons of stuff on it," Anton says. "For someone who's just approaching it, it's kind of daunting I guess—there's a lot to look at and listen to and read. But for fans who've been there for a while, they get new stuff all the time and they love it."
The band have spent 25 years embellishing and revising the sonic blueprint laid out on that original keystone album. Renmin Park features some of the heavier electric guitar sounds and overdub-friendly approach also heard on the group's last new studio effort, At The End of Paths Taken in 2007.
The Nomad Series is also slated to include an album of material written by Vic Chetnutt, a friend of the band who died in 2009 (and appears on Trinity Revisited); an album to be dubbed Sing in My Meadow whose identity is "still being discussed and fought over," according to the band's website; and an album of new songs (to be called The Wilderness) featuring songs that have been in the live repertoire over the past year or so. Each release will be complemented by a book explaining its inspiration.
This flood of new material is in addition to the voluminous recordings available only on the Cowboy Junkies' website, where various studio outtakes and live recordings are regularly made available for fans to dig into.
After 25 years, why such a flood of inspiration? Anton points to the group's shift from a traditional record-then-tour model to a regular touring schedule of about ten dates, most every month of the year.
"It gives us a lot of time to sit around and think of doing other stuff. There are a lot of other side projects and things we haven't had time for before because of the way the schedule works, when you have a year recoding and then a year touring. It wasn't really a great way to get a lot of stuff done," Anton explains. "This really spaces it out and gives us downtime. It seems like a really relaxed way to go. We should have done this a long time ago."
Cowboy Junkies known for trying out new material on the road, shifting its setlists nightly, and maintaining a fan-friendly perspective. "No laminated setlists for us!" Anton declares, in reference to the ossified routine of some arena and stadium rock acts.
The band point to their info-loaded web presence as a key intersection with the fanbase, and an excellent method for the Junkies (who've run their own independent label for most of their career) to make new music available.
"We quickly realized that it's a great way to connect with fans, so we've just over the years been putting tons of stuff on it," Anton says. "For someone who's just approaching it, it's kind of daunting I guess—there's a lot to look at and listen to and read. But for fans who've been there for a while, they get new stuff all the time and they love it."