PicoBlog

Something from the Have Not Been the Same files today: a 2000 conversation with Margo Timmins, the singer of Cowboy Junkies, and one of three Timmins siblings in the band, along with bassist Alan Anton.

Cowboy Junkies play the Danforth Music Hall Tuesday night, October 3. There are still tickets available. (This week’s live music listings here.)

This year marks the 35th anniversary of their landmark album The Trinity Session. Their new album, Such Great Reckoning, came out this past June. It features this haunting song about dementia, written about the patriarch of the Timmins family.

It’s their third album in the last five years; I was a fan of 2018’s politically tinged All That Reckoning:

Do I need to introduce this band, almost 40 years into their career? I first heard them on either Brave New Waves or Night Lines, CBC’s late-night radio shows that changed my life. I may even have been listening in the woods north of Peterborough, which would have made the experience even more eerie. I definitely remember listening to my vinyl copy of the original indie pressing of The Trinity Session in those woods, jolted alert every time the piercing harmonica on “Postcard Blues” stabs the song’s somnambulant vibe in the chest. And whenever I wasn’t listening in the woods, their music would always take me to mysterious, enchanting and occasionally terrifying places.

I only remember seeing the band once during their prime, at the Ontario Place Forum on The Caution Horses tour. Their version of “Me and the Devil” that night was one of the most mesmerizing things my teenage self had ever seen; that performance can be found on their 1995 live album 200 More Miles. I remained a big fan through the ’90s, although a tiny bit of the appeal wore off for me when accordionist Jaro Czerwinec was no longer around — that man’s playing is a big part of why I wield that instrument to this day.

Jeff Bird, the Junkies’ not-so-secret weapon for 35 years now (ever since The Trinity Session), became a friend and collaborator when I lived in Guelph; he produced my band’s second album, which was a total thrill. An absolute gent in every way. Below, Margo tells a funny story about meeting him (or not meeting him, really) at the Hillside festival a couple of years before she hired him.

Cowboy Junkies are often underrated, especially in their home country; they continue to play much larger venues in the U.S. They’re also underrated because they’re so prolific: they’ve put out more new music in the last 25 years than most of their peers, and most of it has slid under the radar, from people who just want them to be the exact same band they were 35 years ago. Some of their recent material is much better than the rest, of course. But there are plenty of gems throughout. I would never write this band off. They remain a class act.

This conversation is with Margo, conducted for Have Not Been the Same in 2000. I also had a very long conversation with Michael then, which I’ll share one day, and likely break into two parts.

Were there local female singers in Toronto you enjoyed or looked up to early on?

We really didn’t play very often with local people up here. Most of the bands we did play with were male. The first woman we worked with or had open for us was Michelle Shocked. There was a bit of a threat to it, I remember thinking, ‘Oh god, I have to go on stage after her.’ She’s a good singer and she has her own style, and I had a lack of confidence in those days. Then we did a tour with Lucinda Williams, who nobody knew about then, in the early 90s, or Caution Horses time. We loved her, thought she was great. That was hard to do every night, to listen to her and what she can do with a song, and then I’d have to get up and sing ‘Blue Moon.’ But locally, as far as women, it was a really male scene at that time.

A lot of people tell me, ‘The first time I saw Cowboy Junkies, it was so different, so shocking to see on Queen Street.’

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