Cowboy Junkies

BY BRIAN D’AMBROSIO

Age has allowed vocalist Margo Timmins to cultivate her self-confidence, to come to decisions she trusts and to see what matters and what will last. The lead singer of the Canadian alt-country-blues-folk rock Cowboy Junkies said she no longer worries about either superficial judgment or popular belief.

“One of the nice things that age brings is confidence, comfort and the openness within yourself,” said Timmins, 56. “Age allows you to get rid of all the other garbage. Obviously, your job as a musician is to sell records. But we rejected all earlier attempts to glam us up a bit or to make us slick. We rejected it not to be rebellious, but because we knew we just couldn’t do it. I would have quit (if I was a glam symbol) many years ago.”

The Cowboy Junkies formed in Toronto in the mid-1980s, a combination of three siblings, Margo, Michael and Peter Timmins, and their friend, bassist Alan Anton. In their earliest days, they stared into the wonderful abyss of frequently empty or extremely sparse clubs in Toronto’s Queen Street West area. Fans quickly connected with the group’s rich pool of talent suffused with its full acceptance of the various moods of roots-fused country and rock ’n’ roll.

It was their second album, “The Trinity Session,” recorded in 1987 at Toronto’s Church of the Holy Trinity, which attracted a loyal following.

“I was a little too old for Corey Hart (Canadian crossover pop star who topped U.S. Billboard Top 40 charts in the mid-1980s),” said Timmins. “But the intense, supportive scene in Toronto was amazing back in the mid-1980s. There were tons of clubs, and lots of fans who could pay $5 to go to see a club band they had never heard of. It was a great time to experiment. When you are a young band, you are happy to play to somebody, or anybody.

“What I loved was that the 1980s punk scene was all about the music, and it was not about success, but just being able to play. It didn’t matter if you were there to play to nobody or to five people. A lot of bands carried that as their message and they had that feeling of just playing.”

In 2008, the Cowboy Junkies released “Trinity Revisited” in celebration of the original recording of “The Trinity Session”; the original session tapes recently were remastered as part of “The Trinity Session” vinyl reissue. Since the band’s inception, its members have adhered to the philosophy of quietly outspoken professionalism: let the recordings and the live performances serve as indispensable communication. Timmins speaks proudly of the band’s status and of her opportunity to sing, not with glibness or with the rhetoric of the professional, but in her own humble idiom.

“When I look back (at “The Trinity Session”) I see music that I love and music that has influenced me,” said Timmins. “Before I was a musician, I was a fan of music. We chose songs that were important to us, and I hope that we would have done it the same way if we had to do it all over again. It’s a brutally honest portrait of who we were at that time. Musically, we’ve remained true to ourselves. I never wanted a sense of being an old lady and looking back and saying, ‘I was forced into that.’ We haven’t been (forced into anything) and we’ve stuck our ground.”

The four-CD Nomad Series, released in 2012, welcomed rawer, more introspective songwriting, including the profoundly saddening “Flirted With You All My Life.” Indeed, one of the band’s strengths is its intricate ability of balancing the slower songs, the moody meditative numbers such as “I Cannot Sit Sadly by Your Side,” with revved-up rock and roll items like “Sing in My Meadow.”

“Much of our music is really quiet and inward, and that was not a conscious decision,” said Timmins. “But it’s just who we were and are. As a singer, in the beginning, I was not comfortable on stage. I’m not an extroverted kind of person (she lives on a farm in Ontario with her 14-year-old son and four dogs). When you watch us grow in our recordings and our live performances, we’ve gotten more comfortable, and we’ve found the attitude that we can rock it. Age has a lot to do with that attitude. When you are young, you are worried about approval, if you are too fat, too skinny, about who’s looking. But as you get older, that goes away. When you are younger, you are more cautious about giving yourself, and you do more hiding.”

What the Cowboy Junkies reveal in 2017 is the talent to rock ’n’ roll soundly and heavily, to dig solidly into every song, to improvise, to shift effortlessly with the generosity of their spirit. Timmins believes that age can bring unique contributions — a fresh view point, matured feeling, an insight advised by life.

“It’s probably a natural progression of who we are,” said Timmins, “which is much louder, and much more crabby as we’ve gotten older, and much more pissed off at the world. My brother, Mike, has always allowed us to grow naturally in our music, not forcing a rock song, or telling us to do it this way or that way. We’ve lasted longer than a lot of marriages, and I think that is consideration of who each player was, is, and respecting what they could do, and, for me, it’s not being forced to pretend, with shorter skirts and tighter tops, or gimmicks.”

Maturity can clarify, edify and illuminate not only the soul but the sounds emanating from it. Timmins’ voice holds a finely aged flexibility — and generosity — that is crucial to the group’s success.

“I think that my voice is stronger now than it ever was,” said Timmins. “At this point, I believe that I have come into my voice. I find that now I can do more with it, like hit that note and hold it for a while, and hold it longer. It is like gymnastics that allows me to take on more material. We did a cover of David Bowie’s ‘Five Years,’ and I didn’t think at first that I could handle it, yet it came easier than I thought.”

Despite hundreds, if not thousands, of gigs, Timmins said that she is finally able after all of these years to experience her vocal work as self-soothing, even redemptive.

“Nowadays, being on stage is one of my most comfortable, serene places. It’s my church, so to speak. Where I used to be nervous, now, I feel and believe that I sing very well, and I’m at peace with that. With teenagers, marriages, aging parents and the whole crazy world we live, I have that piece of my life (performing on stage) that is just mine. When I can’t take the soccer mom role anymore, I can play shows, and then later, go fight about homework, and chores, and all of the other things we get to do.

“I have a job where people are clapping, yelling that I’m beautiful, and giving me flowers, why would I ever quit that job? And I think the older we get, the more we need the good stuff in life, because it’s harder to find.”

Timmins hardly relates to a music world that is run by sales numbers and said that there’s less interest today in growing a band’s career than there is in landing them that one lucrative hit. But the real focus, she said, should always be on the music itself, the work you’re either making or not making.

Synergy starts with one person — a singer, or guitarist or a drummer — bringing people together and bestowing them with the energy to create and connect a larger mood. Timmins said that the most special moments transpire on evenings where everyone — her, her bandmates, all layers of the audience — collectively channels the same unspoken feelings.

“It’s mysterious,” said Timmins. “I can take a song on a harder track or be more aggressive, and they (the band) can follow it or not, and if not, I have to pull back, so there is a give and take. Within some song jams, it can be soft and then someone decides to take it one way, and then we follow. Watch closely, you can see it on a stage. That is part of the excitement of playing live and seeing what happens to a song.”

While the Cowboy Junkies still look into the past, they must execute from the present. For three decades they have gone out into the music world, bringing the pride of their city and country along with them. Music serves as both the continuance and the journey back to authentic identity.

“What you see is what you get,” said Timmins. “We will do a song like ‘Five Years’ and then I’ll tell a stupid, silly story about something that happened, and that’s who I am. I am not serious all the time. I see the world as being silly, and I prefer to laugh at it than cry. Mike keeps his head down and sits there quiet, and he doesn’t socialize much. Pete smiles on stage and he is engaging. Al never smiles or looks up, and I’ve never seen him smile my whole life. But that is who we are — the clothes, the look, whatever — and that has made it easier for us, instead of trying to go out on a gimmick or pretend to be something we are not. We never wanted to paint our faces to become something else.”

The Cowboy Junkies are alive in a multitude of places. Indeed, the recluse in Timmins enjoys the opportunity to simpatico with her emotionally-laden artistic side; this transformation authorizes her reserved personal desires to play out in the performance world. She still marvels that she has gotten to the point where she can truly accommodate her needs.

“I am still in awe that people keep coming back and that people have allowed us to have a career at music. When they do come, I hope they get a sense of realism, of just who we are, and of our offering of that realism.”

© Copyright 2017 Brian D'Ambrosio