DERRY, NH – A lot of bands rarely make it past a year, so existing for 40 years is quite the achievement. Just ask the Toronto alt-country and folk rock act Cowboy Junkies, they’ve been around for this amount of time with vocalist Margo Timmins, her brothers Michael and Peter on guitar and drums, and bassist Alan Anton as the creative core. Over the course of their existence, the band has amassed a prolific amount of albums while garnering an abundance of acclaim. As part of a run of shows celebrating four decades, Cowboy Junkies are going to be performing at Tupelo Music Hall in Derry on September 26. The show starts at 8 p.m. and it promises to span their extensive discography.
Michael and I had a talk ahead of the performance about being in a band for such a long time, sharing the stage with a few legends, starting out while utilizing a unique recording process, and plans for a new album.
Rob Duguay: What would you say is your proudest accomplishment as a member of Cowboy Junkies for 40 years?
Michael Timmins: Being around for 40 years I guess would be the proudest thing. That’s pretty good and pretty rare.
RD: Yeah, absolutely. Is there anybody or any band that you’ve shared the stage with that was a dream opportunity for you?
MT: There’s a lot. We did a great tour with John Prine during the mid ‘90s that was fantastic. Townes Van Zandt also did a tour with us for a little while, he was really nice and that was great. We had the pleasure of playing the Bridge School Benefit with Neil Young, he invited us out to be part of one of those and it was pretty great. We’ve done a lot of things like that.
RD: Awesome. Before Cowboy Junkies became a band, you were part of the post-punk act Hunger Project during the late ’70s and early ’80s, which started out in Toronto but went on to be based in New York City and the United Kingdom. When it came to shifting from the sound of that band to the blend of folk, blues, rock and country that Cowboy Junkies has, what inspired that?
MT: In between Hunger Project and Cowboy Junkies, Alan had another band called Germinal that was sort of a free-form instrumental noise band. I think when you hear those Hunger Project, Germinal and Cowboy Junkies records, it’s not the biggest shift. They all have the idea of playing with space and using a structure, but the change really came when I started listening to blues music. I started listening to a lot of Lightnin’ Hopkins and John Lee Hooker, someone introduced me to them and I began diving into that era. That took the music we were doing into these other directions, and then we put out our first record, did a tour in support of it, and then we started listening to early country music.
That brought another layer to what we do, and it sort of went from there.
RD: You just mentioned Cowboy Junkies’ first album, which is “Whites Off Earth Now!!” that came out in 1986, and that one as well as the second full-length, “The Trinity Sessions”, which was released a couple years later, were recorded by Peter Moore while using a single ambisonic microphone. Looking back, what was the experience like making both albums in such an unconventional way?
MT: Back then, we were very fortunate to work with Peter. He was as passionate about recording as we were about playing music, and that was his thing, that was his real focus. He was sort of sick of the sounds that were coming out of studios at the time, the mid to late ‘80s where it was very processed and kind of sterile. We were a young band and we were looking for somewhere to record. We knew that when we went into the studio that we had enough experience and we would be able to get the sound that we liked with sort of the naturalness and the ambient.
That was the vibe, especially back then with studios being an intimidating place and they were also expensive if you didn’t have the money. Peter approached us and he was doing a lot of live recordings in clubs and stuff. We talked to him and we realized what he wanted to do and what we wanted to do, which was to make a one-microphone recording. We got together to experiment and it worked. For “The Trinity Sessions”, we went to the Church of the Holy Trinity in Toronto after using our rehearsal space for the first record, and that of course changed that sound and that’s what that record is all about.
RD: Very cool. What are your thoughts on coming to Tupelo Music Hall? Being from Toronto, the New England region isn’t that far from a global perspective.
MT: We love it and we’ve played in that area dozens of times. We try to come through that region at least once or twice a year, certainly once a year. I grew up in Montreal, and New England is especially close, and Vermont and Maine are places where I’ve spent a lot of time. We’re very familiar with the terrain, the people and the overall vibe. It’s a great place, especially in late September, the fall is so great there.
RD: Yeah, it is. I know it’s been a couple years since Cowboy Junkies released their most recent album “Such Ferocious Beauty”, so are there any plans for a new one to close out this anniversary year for the band?
MT: We’ve written a bunch of new songs and Margo and I have started to work on some others. We have about 13 songs now, so I’ll probably write a couple more, and our plans are to record this winter. I’m guessing that the next record will be out next spring or summer.