The band that made melancholy an art form

3 months ago 11

Ghosts surround the Canadian rock band Cowboy Junkies – musical ghosts and thematic ghosts as well as historical ghosts.

The dark whispers of lead singer Margo Timmins have long defined the group’s sound, along with brother Michael’s spectral guitar work and songwriting. The net effect of going through their nearly 40-year-old catalogue is to walk among the spirits.

And yet the band’s career has been relatively sunny – a track from their second album, back in 1989, made their career. It was a striking reinterpretation, a ruminative, whispery take on the Velvet Underground’s Sweet Jane. Flash forward to now and the band continues delivering unique takes on covers well-known and obscure, even as Michael’s own songwriting consistently created tracks worthy to stand with them.

The Cowboy Junkies never aspired to drive around in limousines.

After some successful shows in their first visit to Australia in 2023, the Junkies are returning this week.

“We’d tried many times [to perform in Australia] over the years, we just couldn’t find a promoter,” Michael says from his home in Toronto. Finally they made it to Australia two years ago.

“It was so fantastic,” Michael says. “The attendance, but also just the reception was so exciting. It was so much fun being down there. We thought, well, that’s good, let’s do it again … while we’re still ambulatory.”

While some may know the band only because of Sweet Jane, their work has remained consistent. Like the band’s covers? Check out Songs of the Recollection, a 2022 release that includes their singular approach to songs by David Bowie, Bob Dylan, The Cure and The Rolling Stones, among others.

Like Michael’s songwriting? 2023’s Such Ferocious Beauty is a powerful suite of songs recorded after the death of the siblings’ parents. The lead track, What I Lost, is one of the band’s finest.

The group started in Toronto, some 40 years ago. Then as now, it consisted of Michael, who writes most of the songs and has taken over production duties; sister Margot, who sings; their brother Peter, who drums; and Alan Anton, Michael’s friend from a very early age, who plays bass.

Cowboy Junkies mix up originals and unexpected covers.

But their story is not quite as simple as a group of friends finding a sound. Michael and Anton first embarked on their own musical odyssey, playing in punk and then improvisational avant-garde bands in London and New York.

The group’s first record bore a slightly pugnacious title: Whites Off Earth Now!! – it was a reference to a political poster Michael saw that he thought was funny and it fit the punk ethos of the time. But the sound was a ghostly blues.

‘I try not to think in terms of how Margo will be able to sing this or what she will bring to it.’

Michael Timmins

The band recorded its second album live in a church in Toronto. The album was called The Trinity Session in honour of that location. Michael and Margo started writing songs, too. That cover of Sweet Jane became an unexpected hit on a select number of influential radio stations around the globe. (Both album and single were minor hits in Australia at the time.)

While the band’s sound is largely contemplative and soft, the Cowboy Junkies’ covers and their uncompromising musicality aligns them with other genres. They are a rock band that shares DNA with fellow Canadian Neil Young but they definitely considered themselves punks when they started – “particularly the DIY aspect”, Michael says.

“We were inspired by a lot of country music, just like we’re inspired by a lot of blues music. There’s a lot of what you’d call rock music and even jazz.”

At the heart of the band, however, is the match between Michael’s songs and Margo’s voice. Does he write for her? The answer is surprising: no.

“I try not to think in terms of how Margo will be able to sing this or what she will bring to it,” Michael says. “If I do that I’m second-guessing her, and I’m also editing myself. It’s up to her to find her way into them from an emotional point. The best thing is if it becomes her song.”

Margo has appreciated the freedom. “Mike, I think, is amazing,” she says. “With a lot of songwriters [she recites a litany], it’s their song and this is what I’m supposed to do and this is how it goes. I think one of the secrets of why we’re still together is that he has given me that freedom, that ability to put myself into the song.”

There was one other secret to the band’s continuing livelihood.

“We never had false fantasies of driving around in limousines,” she says. “It was just play music, that was all. All we wanted to do was play music.”

An Evening with Cowboy Junkies, State Theatre, November 14.

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