Believe it or not, the Cowboy Junkies have been together and making music for almost twenty years. The band from Toronto, which features siblings, vocalist Margo Timmins, guitarist and songwriter Michael Timmins, and drummer Peter Timmins, along with bassist Alan Anton, just won’t go away—and neither will their fans.
After their split with Geffen Records in 1998, the band chose to record independently, retreating back to their own indie label, Latent Recordings. Since then, they have created their own wonderful website (www.cowboyjunkies.com), released 2001’s Open, which they toured and ultimately released a DVD of their Open Road Tour adventures, and now, on June 8th, they will release their ninth studio recording, One Soul Now.
One Soul Now covers familiar ground, asking questions about relationships that deal with uncertainty and life’s struggles. Recorded without an outside producer or engineer, the album celebrates the Junkies’ ability to capture their unique sound, one that they are comfortable with and proud of being able to duplicate over and over again.
At the center of this sound is lead vocalist Margo Timmins, who sings the words of her brother, Michael. Her vocals are strong and comforting; they are often the highlight of each recorded track or live performance. Glide recently had a chance to speak with Margo about One Soul Now and the overall confidence of the band. Calmly and openly answering each question, Margo seemed at ease with where she and the band are headed, which is, back out on the road, ready to tour what they have just created.
Now that you’ve returned from the European promo tour, how is it getting back into the primary stages of touring, and how are people responding to the album so far?
Well, getting back is great. It’s been a long time and I’m looking forward to touring, which has been a really long time, so the band is definitely ready. And the first responses have been from journalists and it has been good, the Europeans seem to really like it. So it’s been good.
When you’re starting to prepare for another album, I’ve always wondered if you have a particular audience in mind, or certain intentions with your studio releases.
You know, not any more. This is like our ninth or tenth record. At this point, we have our sound and we know what that sound is and we know how to do our part. So, it’s not…in the old days I used to get a song and think, “this is sort of a Neil Young kind of song,” so we should do, you know, whatever style Neil Young was doing or being associated with, and then try to do what he was doing, and then try to incorporate that. But I don’t really do that anymore; now I sort of hear a song and figure out the way I want to do it. Sometimes when we’re working on a song and trying to create a groove, if we’re having difficulty, we’ll talk in terms of that and say, “well this is sort of a Neil Young and Crazy Horse sound,” something like that, and it will put us all to say “ok, yeah, got it.” So we sort of talk in terms of that, but again, none of us feel like we have to do it that way. (Laughs)
Was it important this time to get back to basics and do a record that was primarily just the four of you?
It wasn’t important, it’s just that was the way this album was done this time. I think that what happens with albums is that one tour leads to the next album. So when we did Open…prior to Open, we were touring the Miles From Our Home album and we were touring with half of Over the Rhine—Lindford Detweiler and Karin Bergquist. So as we were touring with Miles, we had this big seven-piece band and we really sounded great together. And then we did Open, and once we did Open, it was this big band sound and then we got back to the four of us and a quieter sound. So you’re just always changing and you’re always experimenting.
Which is good for the music.
Oh, totally. I mean, I think if you’re always trying to do the same thing, you’ll just get bored.
The Anatomy of An Album CD-ROM that you’re releasing with the album gives a very intimate, behind the scenes look, and it’s interesting to see how the songs take their shape. It seems Michael writes a song, does a rough recording of it, and then introduces it to you. Is this a process that the Junkies have used for a while?
He has always sort of written a song and given it to me on tape, you know, a rough mix. And I’ve always sort of taken it and figured out what it means to me, and then Mike and I work it out together. And then we take that to the band and then they add their parts and the song has changes from there on in. But yeah, it’s always sort of worked that way, except for the early, early stuff.
As a singer who mainly sings your brother’s lyrics, is it hard to find a voice to some of Michael’s songs — maybe a song like “From Hunting Ground to City” or “Simon Keeper” might be difficult?
You know, it depends on the song. It’s not that difficult…first of all, it’s not that difficult because Michael, as a songwriter and as the leader of the band, he really lacks an ego and really appreciates the band. He really allows us to bring our parts to the song. So even though he might have a vision of how the song should go, if he hears and sees other visions and it’s good, he’ll go with that, so it allows everybody to get into the song. So as a singer, Mike never really said to me, “This is what I’ve written, this is how I want it, this is the message, and this is how I want it to go.”
Because what he brings to the song, I interpret it with my life experiences, just like when you hear the song you interpret it with your life experiences and it might not be exactly what Michael intended. And I think with Michael as a songwriter, I think he realizes people will think what they want. Some people will see it as bad or depressing, some people might be able to see it as positive. But yeah, there have been songs that I have brought to Mike and have had no clue as to what the hell he is talking about! (laughs) You know, and I will be begging him, “Please help me!” (laughs again) And usually if he doesn’t tell me—and sometimes he won’t—the way I’ll approach it is that I’ll let the band figure out what they are going to do with it and then I’ll just go with what they’re going with. I’ll work with the phrasing and the word placement and the rhyme of the song and sort of work it out with the notes. And if I am totally in the wrong and don’t know what I’m doing, well, I don’t know what the hell he wrote! (laughs) And we’ll work it out. I think sometimes he is surprised with the direction that I have taken a song—or the band—but he has never sort of said, “No, this is not what I intended.” So that’s great. It’s really a band effort as opposed to just Michael’s vision.
I hear a lot of your various styles and influence on the new album. “He Will Call You Baby” could easily fit on your ‘86 debut album, Whites Off Earth Now!! “The Stars of Our Stars” could have its place on ‘98s, Miles From Our Home. And the whole album is well sequenced. If it were on vinyl, it could almost be like “Side A” and “Side B,” with the first side ending with “The Stars of Our Stars.”
You know, it’s interesting. We are in our 40’s and we grew up with vinyl, so I think we still think in those terms, but not consciously, you know, to think, “this is Side A and this is Side B”—we don’t really do it that way. And when we’re thinking of the length, we’re still thinking in terms of vinyl. You know, anything that is longer than 10 songs is too many songs! (laughs)
Yeah—too many albums have like, 20 songs.
Yeah, I just can’t do it. So for us, definitely, just because you can put all those songs on a CD doesn’t necessarily mean they should be on it.
I interpret the subject matter to be a bit lighter than Open was. Do you agree?
I don’t know. It’s funny, cause I….it depends on how you look at it. (pause) You know, it really does depend on how you look at it. I think that this album might be even darker in some ways. It’s not as directly dark (laughing), but this album really deals a lot with, uncertainty and confusion and insecurity and all those things that make it edgy. And so, you know, I don’t know…being so close in age to Michael, usually what is going on in his life is also what is going on in mine, so obviously whenever he is affected by something, it could be his darkest moment! (laughs)
Well he’s very effective in leaving space for ambiguity. I compare a lot of the songs on this album to a song like “Ring on the Sill” from ‘93s Pale Sun Crescent Moon, where you kind of know what is going on, but you don’t know completely. “Notes Falling Slow,” is a great example from One Soul Now, with the line, “he fears today what might come tomorrow.”
hat is a very good line to pick out. I think that line is really the theme of this whole album. That this album is sort of focusing on our global world situation, which is, we have no idea what is going to happen tomorrow (laughs). And also, because of that global situation, I think that goes down to the macro level, the family level, and, I don’t know about you, but in my life, people are just wondering if you’re going to have a job tomorrow (laughs). You need to have a level of security, especially when you get older and you get into your 40’s and things get a little bit more complicated. There is more of this uncertainty and I think that line encompasses that, you know, you sit there and you are worrying about what might come tomorrow. And as the album progresses and at the end you have a song like “The Slide” and I think that the focus of “The Slide” is, you know, yes there are a lot of questions, yes there is a lot of uncertainty, a lot of unanswered things, but the focus is to hang onto the good moments, you have to hang onto the things that you know are there, you can count on and just go with the slide, just go with it. Because that’s how it is. You’re never going to have a moment in your life where you’re going to know everything and it’s all going to be “ok.” We’re all waiting for that day, but it’s not going to come! (laughs)
That’s actually my favorite song on the album. It reminds me of “A Horse in The Country.”
Oh really?
Yeah, because I’ve always imagined that song to be saying, you know, “the money would be pretty good…even if the sun would shine a little brighter—but despite all that—I still have this constant thing I can look forward to.”
Yeah, I can see that. That’s good, yeah. I think it’s the same sort of attitude and the same outlook.
In “The Stars of Our Stars” and “My Wild Child, ” the new album also touches on the constants that we have in our lives. Is the ability to recognize these constants the beauty of their existence?
Yeah, you know I think that again, I have found as you get older you realize that you know less (laughs). In fact, you know nothing (laughing). But the things you do know are those things that are important and, you know, the smaller things—and some of the bigger things, too. I mean, “The Stars of Our Stars” talks about, that there are bigger things than us and you have to find the strength to focus on them. And then there are the smaller things like watching your kids walk, and you think to yourself, “how did that happen?” This little organism figured it out all by himself! And those are the things that you go back to, or else you’ll collapse or become delusional.
I’ve also felt that your album cover artwork often imitates what the individual songs are about. For One Soul Now, it seems the palm lines and the fingerprint on the inside cover say that there are things that are traceable and identifiable in your life, but you still question them.
Yeah…you know, I think that’s right. I mean, I haven’t really thought about it. We pick out work that goes with what we are doing, but we don’t sort of go any deeper than that, and that’s why doing interviews is always a good thing for us because you guys always think those things a little deeper, and we’ll say, “ok, you know, that was there subconsciously.” We picked out the venus fly trap for Open because we really liked it and thought it was really pretty (laughs). But that doesn’t necessarily mean that if we were shown something else that was really pretty that we would have picked it because I think that maybe subconsciously there are…I think that with Open, a lot of different people talked about what the venus fly trap meant and you say, “well maybe that was subconsciously why we picked it,” but you don’t sort of sit around, look at it and go, “well this means this and that means that.” But, that’s why it’s fun—to do interviews—to go, “what do you think, and what do you think.”
You’re also releasing a 5-song EP, which features covers from Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen, and Townes Van Zandt. I guess you all still enjoy playing cover songs. And do you miss Townes?
We’ve always loved cover songs and I think that’s a big part of who we are. And it gets harder to find songs because they have to sort of work with what we’re doing, and they don’t always work with what we’re doing. We do a lot more live than we do in the studio. All of those songs developed…like the Bruce Springsteen song (“Thunder Road”) we did a lot last year on the road and then people sort of asked, “Where can I find this song, I really like it?” So we started a place where we can sort of…well, they are important to us and figured that we can cover them and figure out a way of releasing them. And as far as missing Townes, totally, I mean, I miss the fact that he’s never going to write another song—and we won’t be able to cover it! (laughs) That is a big loss in this world. As far as our friendship …our friendship wasn’t something that we were actively involved in, where we were talking every Friday night. But the loss of him was….was bad.
And covering his music is also a good way of bringing it to people who aren’t familiar with his work.
Yeah, definitely. You sort of have to put a little thought into it and try to understand it and I think that when we do a cover, it is something familiar to people and it is easy for them, so it brings them in a little bit. Yeah, you know, I really like it. Especially in a live show, it sort of gives them a break. And for us, it’s a real joy. There are so many great songs in the world. And for me as a singer, singing Michael Timmins or Bruce Springsteen—they are both great songwriters and have a lot of great songs.
compare the two a lot, actually.
Yeah, and the other thing I think for the boys, especially Mike, to do a cover, it gives him the total freedom of just being a guitar player and not worry about lyrics and arrangements and everything else. He can sort of go into the song and look at it, see how it works, and then sew it back together in your own way.
So you’re kicking off the tour later this month in Toronto.
Yeah, we have the Toronto show and then we’re going off to Europe to do about 10 gigs there. And then we come back and do a promo tour in the States and then in July we start the big tour in the States, and so we’re working our way around the country.
For the last two years or so you were touring behind Open. So now touring in support of a new album, is it a refreshing feeling?
Yeah, it’s refreshing. We’ve been in the studio a long time and really haven’t played a live gig in quite a while. And playing live is the best part of our job. It’s a lot of fun. And we’ve got a whole bunch of new songs and it’s a challenge. You know, talk to me next November and I’ll say, “Oh God, I just want to go home!” (laughs) But right now, I’m keen.
Get on the bus, right?
Exactly!
