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Cowboy Junkies Interview

1988 Interview by Andrew Watt

By Andrew WattPublished 5 years ago 5 min read
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Cowboy Junkies have just announced an Australian tour for 2020. It's amazing that a band that started in such a low-key way have endured so beautifully. When their first international album, The Trinity Session, came out in 198,8 it was lauded for its stark simplicity. It still sounds alluring today. This interview with Michael Timmins was the cover story of InPress on 17 May, 1989. A few years later, an artist I managed, Julia Darling, played several shows with Cowboy Junkies in Southern California when they were managed by my good friend Peter Leak. They were lovely people and it was an honour to work with them.

Original Interview

When Cowboy Junkies recorded the album that would become The Trinity Session, they hoped it would sell a couple of thousand copies in their hometown of Toronto, Canada.

It did. It also sold a few thousand in every decent sized city in America, and their little record, recorded in a one day session, now boasts sales approaching half a million. Their single, a stark version of Lou Reed's "Sweet Jane," is now rapidly ascending the charts in Australia, and the album is becoming one of the surprise hits of the year.

In a world of excess, Cowboy Junkies are a vision of simplicity. ANDREW WATT spoke to the band's founder MICHAEL TIMMINS to find out how.

No-one expected The Trinity Session to be a big success. The album, recorded in one 14 hour day in a Toronto church, simply doesn't fit into any of the established categories of commercial viability. It's a collection of country style ballads performed in a melancholy mood and with the bare minimum of instrumentation. Yet somehow the record captures something haunting and emotional, that all the machines and studio technology in the world could never hope to replicate.

The Trinity Session has been described as one of the most unusual releases of the year, but in reality, the opposite is true. Perhaps it's just that people are so jaded by the excesses of modern music that they are taken aback by the lack of gimmickry in Cowboy Junkies sound.

"Yeah, I think so," agrees guitarist and band founder Michael Timmins. "I think what people are hearing on the record that they don't recognise, and that they are being attracted to, is just people playing music together. You just don't hear that anymore."

"You have people going into studios these days and laying down layer after layer of tracks, and by the time they have finished the product it sounds like a bunch of machines processing."

"With our record all you're hearing is people playing their instruments. You hear the occasional mistake here and there. It's very human and that's what attracts people to it. It's very simple but it works."

Cowboy Junkies consists of three members of the Timmins family—Michael, sister Margo, brother Peter and life long friend Alan Anton on bass. For both Margo and Peter, Cowboy Junkies is their first band; for Michael and Alan, it is the culmination of ten years in music that has encompassed everything from "noise bands" to jazz and blues outfits.

There's a little bit of everything in The Trinity Session, although the prevailing sound is that of country music. In many ways, it's an album steeped in tradition, and yet there is something revolutionary in its creation.

"The forms we are drawing on, and the types of music are very traditional," says Timmins. "We listened to a lot of country music when we were writing this record, and we drew on it all. But we bought our own experiences to it and our own styles of playing. There's a respect for the traditions in the music but it's also very modern. It's definitely white kids from suburban North America playing music. It's not a bunch of traditional people playing traditional music."

The decision to record The Trinity Session in a church had several bases. Firstly it was cheap and secondly the acoustics were ideal. But another factor soon became apparent. The mood of the church is definitely inherent in the album.

"Definitely when we went into the church to record the album, it was strictly for acoustic reasons," comments Timmins, "but as the day progressed and the night came on, the actual atmosphere of the church and the ambience of it took over, and I know it's a large reason for the feel of the album.

"We are not particularly religious people, but we were raised Catholic, so every time we step into a church, we do get some kind of feeling off it. You cant help it if you spent several years going to church every Sunday. It does come into play. When we were in there at night sitting around it's very awe-inspiring. You tend to whisper even if you don't have to."

"Sweet Jane" Video

As well as their brilliant version of "Sweet Jane" and a number of excellent originals, The Trinity Session contains several other cover versions, including songs originally performed by Patsy Cline, Hank Williams and Waylon Jennings.

"This is our country influenced album and we wanted to pick certain covers from different eras and different performers," explains Timmins. "We picked Hank Williams for the honky-tonk stuff and Patsy Cline for her pop-country and Waylon Jennings for the outlaw 70s stuff. That was the sort of criteria we had for choosing the covers, but we'd only play a song if we loved it."

With the success of the album, Timmins admits there could have been potential for a dilemma. The temptation could have been for the record company to throw a pile of money at the band and send them to the big name studio with the big name producer to capitalise on their success. The band decided to get in first and nip that thought in the bud.

"We've just recorded the follow-up album and we did it the same way, but we haven't submitted it to the record company yet so you'd better ask me what they think in a week or so," Timmins laughs. "But the way we structured our record deal was that they were going to let us record at least the next one they way we wanted to. So we'll go from here. If the next one is a big hit they wont be able to step in and change it!"

So does Timmins feel like his band is on some sort of crusade against the excesses of modern recording?

"We want to show that this is a viable way of making valid music," he begins. "It's certainly the most honest form. It's the most honest form of playing music because that's all we are doing. I'm not totally against studios; they can be used properly. Obviously most of my favorite albums of all time have been recorded in studios. They have their uses. Our way is just one way of doing it and we are trying to show that it should be a relevant option for people to use. If they want to get away from the whole studio system, this is a way they can do it."

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About the Creator

Andrew Watt

Andrew Watt is a music writer. and has interviewed 100's of artists for numerous publications. His articles here are enhanced reproductions of those interviews.

https://www.facebook.com/Andrew-Watt-347138795895467/

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