Cowboy Junkies lyricist talks tour, new songs & alt-country/folk band's legacy

MARSHALL TWP. – Nobody quite knew how to categorize the Cowboy Junkies when the Toronto band moseyed onto the music scene in 1987.

Descriptors like "lo-fi" and "Americana" hadn't been put into use yet as a catchall for a band blending folk, country and blues melodies, with Cowboy Junkies adding an extra unique touch of hushed vocal dynamics and sparse, emotional instrumentation.

Canadian bands aren't prone to boast, but don't Cowboy Junkies deserve credit for blazing a trail?

"I think if you look at a lot of the trends recently, like the lo-fi thing the Americana thing, we were certainly ahead of that wave," the band's lyricist-guitarist Michael Timmins said. "So, I think we must be influential somewhere along the line, though I have no idea where or to who. I mean, The National just released an album and the one single ("Eucalyptus") namechecks our band, so I guess we're influential somewhere."

Maybe more kudos will come on June 2, when Cowboy Junkies release "Such Ferocious Beauty," the band's first studio album in five years.

"It's funny with albums; you work on them for a long time as a band and a writer, and then you finish them and put them in motion and release them and it's a long process, so by the time you release them they're ancient history to you in some ways," Timmins said in an April 13 phone interview. "But then you have to get familiar with them again to play in live shows."

Cowboy Junkies didn't premiere any of the new songs on the quartet's six-date early April swing through Ohio, Michigan and Illinois.

But fans will get a first taste of the new material when the Cowboy Junkies play a fresh leg of eight U.S. shows including May 4 at Tarrytown Music Hall in Tarrytown, N.Y.; May 5 at City Winery Philadelphia; May 6 at the Pollak Theatre in West Long Branch, N.J.; and May 9 at Jergel's Rhythm Grille in Marshall Township, Pa.

"Such Ferocious Beauty" sounds like vintage, alt-country, chill Cowboy Junkies, with the most revved up track, "Hard to Build, Easy to Break," suggesting a latent jam-band/Grateful Dead-ish quality.

"Yeah, that has a really nice cool groove to it, and it keeps coming up as a song that we can make a staple of the set; something that we can expand and work on and it'll grow live as we work off that really cool baseline," Timmins said.

Joined in the band by his sister Margo Timmins (vocalist), brother Peter Timmins (drummer) and Alan Anton (bassist), Michael Timmins began writing the new album in the summer of 2020.

Was there a COVID influence to the lyrics?

"We were still under COVID protocol, so I guess in a way, though I wouldn't say there's a direct relationship to it," he said. "There's an element of impermanence to the songs. I suppose COVID brought a sense of impermanence to us all and how our daily routine goes. Though, a bigger aspect is we were dealing with my dad's battle with dementia so that certainly fed into it. And the social construct that was being laid to waste in 2020, so a combination of both those things."

The album's leadoff track, “What I Lost,” reflects on the last several months of the Timmins’ father’s life, and conversations Michael had with his dad in that span, “memories of his flying days as a bush pilot in northern Quebec and his love of jazz and his experiences of seeing the great big bands of the '50s."

An accompanying music video, out now, poignantly shows their father in his final months, interspersed with Super 8 footage from late '50s Montreal, and family films including the kids. The song's most conspicuous line, “This is what I lost,” sung with aching intensity by Margo, becomes more gripping with the realization it's not from the point of view of their father, but from the Timmins siblings themselves, who no longer get to hear their father's tales.

When the Timmins' watch that video, "It's hard, but it's good, rather than dancing around the subject," Michael said. "I think especially with our audience, which is an older audience, a lot of people are going through or have gone through it with their parents or even their partners. So, we feel it's relevant for us to talk about it and share it. As with all things, it's good to talk about it."

Timmins lyrically explored similar territory in 1997 with "Come Calling," a song drawn from the real-life story of an Alzheimer's patient married to the Korean War veteran who ferried supplies to the remote Ontario island where Cowboy Junkies wrote the songs for the acclaimed "Lay It Down" album.

A number of "Lay It Down" tracks, notably "A Common Disaster," remain in Cowboys Junkies' live repertoire.

"It's still one of our favorite records. It was a great period for us, the writing and recording of that album," Timmins said, noting the songs written on that isolated island near Toronto got completed in a five-week span in Athens, Ga., under the production of John Keane, best known for his work with local acts R.E.M., Indigo Girls and Widespread Panic. "He really wanted to focus on just the four core members for that record ― for previous records we had a lot of extra musicians ― so we pared it back down and it came out really well, and 'A Common Disaster' was a pretty big hit. So, it was successful on many levels."

Cowboy Junkies hope for success again with the June release. One standout track, "Hell Is Real," starts gently with chirping insects and lightly strummed acoustic guitar, leading to Margot's almost whispered, cautionary singing, beginning with the line "Hell is here, hell is hot/Jesus is coming, ready or not."

Timmins said, "That song is one of those that can be taken as irony or literal as sung by a character. I'm not really sure what it is yet, but I think the main lines in that song that are real are the refrains, 'I'm scared, and I'm angry,' 'I'm scared, and I'm lonely.' That's actually what the song is about. People are lost in their own little words, whatever those are and whether you can call them hells. That's the hell I'm talking about; finding oneself in a place in the world where you just don't know where you are, and you're scared, you're lost and you just can't figure it out."

Another new song, "Mike Tyson (Here It Comes)," begins with Margo mustering torch-song intensity, singing "Every man has a plan till he's punched in the mouth."

Timmons pulled that line from a Tyson quote, back in the boxing champion's prime, when asked his thoughts on opponents who said they had a plan to defeat him.

"That was a very philosophical quote I thought," Timmons said. "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the nose. That's a great lesson in life. You can plan and design all you want; and say 'Next year I'll do this,' or 'When I'm this old I'll do that,' but when you get punched in the face ― literal or metaphorical ― things change often fast."

Between legs of the tour, Timmins set aside late-April time for fly fishing near Johnsonburg, Elk County and the Clarion River in northwest Pennsylvania.

"That state is a playground for any outdoorsman, but especially for fly fishing it's so amazingly beautiful," Timmins said. "It's fantastic how many state parks you have and that you kept them public."

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As true Canadians, the Timmins brothers also still play hockey together. Is Michael the power forward and bass-playing brother Peter the stay-at-home defenseman?

"No stay-at-home, though Pete will play defense. He's more the Paul Coffey type," Timmins said with a laugh.

Having three siblings in the band heightens the telepathy that musical groups develop naturally when together for as long as Cowboy Junkies.

"It's hard to tell the difference between playing together as a band for 35 years and then that telepathy which would happen naturally between brothers and sisters. There is something to be said about that. I think anybody who's been raised with the same backgrounds, values and many of the same memories you share a lot of the unspoken," Timmins said. "On stage, that's important to understand the mood of the other person who's playing; what they're feeling that day, what they're expecting from their instrument and then you can complement it or juxtapose it. I do think that's a big part of us live. And playing together 35 years helps, too."

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They'll keep playing and making music history.

Cowboy Junkies are, after all, one of the few bands that can say they earned praise from the notoriously testy alt-rock icon Lou Reed. The Cowboy Junkies' most famous single, off the band's 1988 breakthrough album "The Trinity Session," covered Reed's classic, "Sweet Jane."

"When we first released that record, we did get feedback from him and we used the quote, which sounds corny, but he said something like 'The best, most authentic version of 'Sweet Jane' I ever heard," Timmins said. "When you hear it from Lou Reed it's pretty cool, because he didn't give away praise lightly. Then we met him a couple times and he was really gracious to us and talked about music and the biz. It was great."

Scott Tady is entertainment editor at The Times and easy to reach at stady@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Beaver County Times: Cowboy Junkies lyricist talks about tour, new album & band's legacy