The honey-limned soundscapes of Cowboy Junkies
Every Cowboy Junkies album delivers a fair share of emotional truths, dark reflections and melancholy, and Such Ferocious Beauty, released last June, is no exception. There are echoes of the Louvin Brothers on the spare “Hell Is Real,” with its refrain “Jesus is coming, ready or not” more a stern warning than a promise of salvation. Another stellar track, “Knives” admonishes that “hope is fear in disguise.”
What’s different about the new record is that Michael Timmins, who writes lyrics for his ethereal-voiced sister Margo to sing, tapped into the mood of his family on many songs. Tragically, it extends the tenor of their previous release Ghosts, an eight-song cycle that processed the death of their mother in 2018. Their father passed in 2020, succumbing first to dementia and finally to old age.
Drummer Peter Timmins is the third sibling in the band, but there are three others who aren’t musicians, and each was included in a decision to reveal why the songs were written. This made it both his and his family’s artistic process, Michael Timmins shared by phone recently.
“It wasn’t just my story; it was all our story,” he said. “With these songs and albums, there was something we’d all gone through together. We felt it was something that made sense for our audience and for us personally. That’s how we came to that decision.”
Timmins’ songwriting approach didn’t change.
“There’s always something personal…. The songs are not only supposed to work if you know what they’re about,” he said. “Hopefully, they evoke something in you that goes near what I’m trying to express.”
Anyone who’s experienced a loved one battling Alzheimer’s will feel the gut punch of “What I Lost,” which leads off the album. It’s written from the point of view of Timmins’ dad, as his memory erodes and he holds on to the shards of his past — piloting a plane over Quebec, listening to jazz in a nightclub, missing his wife.
“I woke up this morning, didn’t know who I was,” he cries, and Margo sings, “You ask me how I am / what am I supposed to say / when this is what I lost.”
It’s often said that when a parent dies, each child loses a different person. Thus, one wonders if Michael’s emotions were re-shaped in any of these songs when Margo sang his words back to him.
“That’s a good question,” he said, and began to describe how a typical song comes together. “It’s the ‘frog in boiling water’ process…. [First] I’m writing and it’s a very personal thing; it’s all about me. The next stage, I’m thinking in terms of structuring it for Margo. Then she begins to get involved with her vocals and the way she’s expressing the words. And the lines are coming back at me differently.”
The musical vibe of Michael and Peter Timmins and bass player Alan Anton is major mojo for every one of the band’s songs. Michael describes this crucible as nearly alchemic.
“That’s a whole other thing … by the time we’re finished, the songs are very much beyond where I may have thought they were going to be,” he said. “Or maybe they’re exactly the same, but I’ve kind of forgotten what my initial thoughts were; it’s become a Junkies song. I pay attention all along the way, but I’m very happy to let things be pushed in a direction that I wasn’t expecting.”
On another standout track, music came before words. “Flood” is an edgy song that scoffs at “all this useless talk of turning tides,” and sounds like drowning might feel.
“Alan sent me a very cool bass and piano line … that’s the core,” Michael said, adding he wrote atop that foundation, crafting lyrics and then fleshing it out with scraping, chaotic electric guitar. “Once I had the words, the themes, the ideas and the desperation of the characters, I realized I needed another element in there to express that musically.”
Since forming in the mid-’80s, Cowboy Junkies have recorded and toured constantly, with no hiatuses or lineup changes. When the world paused in early 2020, the group was able to experience down time. “In some ways, it turned out good,” Michael said. “We’re always playing because it’s very important for us to do that, and it’s what we’ve always done. But this was sort of this little forced break to get off the road.”
He spent his time writing and recording, finishing Such Ferocious Beauty, and when live music returned he found himself frequently going to see other artists when he wasn’t performing. “I gotta be more active about this,” he remembers thinking. “I gotta get out there and start going to shows again, because it’s just such a great feeling.”
A few days prior to this interview, he’d seen Nick Cave’s stripped-down solo show at Toronto’s Massey Hall. A fan since Cave’s angsty Birthday Party days, Michael discerns commonality in their career arcs. “He’s had quite a journey,” he said. “We’ve gone through various stages, and as we’ve grown older our outlook on the world is growing different. I hope that we have a similar sort of relationship with our audience.”
Two days later he took his daughter to see Gregory Alan Isakov, after hearing her try to work out the chords to one of Isakov’s songs in her bedroom. “Him and his band opened for us, probably back around 2011 or 2012 in Boulder, when, I think, he was just getting going,” he said. “So it translated down through the ages.
Inspired by the likes of fellow Canadians Neil Young and Leonard Cohen, Michael sees a kinship between himself and Isakov; he begins most of his songs from a singer-songwriter point of view. “Even though that’s not what I am,” he said, “it’s just me and my acoustic guitar. Then I go through the filter of Margo and the band, and they go in different directions, and that’s sort of what makes Cowboy Junkies.”
Cowboy Junkies
When: Sunday, Nov. 5, 7 p.m.
Where: Nashua Center for the Arts, 201 Main St., Nashua
Tickets: $49 and up at etix.com
Featured photo: Cowboy Junkies. Photo by Heather Pollock.
