 ROCK PREVIEW Home on the Pain The Cowboy Junkies somehow make gloominess fashionable, or at least profitable. BY RICHARD MARTIN
Cowboy
Junkies, Over the Rhine
Nobody would quarrel with the assertion that sex sells and gloom isn't a gold mine. Not that this stops painters, authors and musicians from using their most morbid thoughts in their work. More often than not, however, folks who follow in the tradition of artists like Bosch, Baudelaire and Bauhaus achieve cult status rather than cold hard cash, and many, like Edgar Allen Poe, die in literal or metaphorical gutters. Over the course of seven albums, Toronto's Cowboy Junkies have wallowed in loneliness, taken snapshots of society's darkest corners, turned classic songs into down-and-out mopefests and expressed only the most fleeting hopefulness. (It seems as if all of their song titles either have or should have the word "lament" in them.) Despite the listening public's predilection for sunny-side-up pop songs, it has lapped up each Cowboy Junkies release as if it were an anti-depressant without any side effects; the 1988 sophomore disc, The Trinity Sessions, sold five million copies. On the recently released Miles from Our Home (Geffen), the Timmins siblings--vocalist Margo, guitarist and principal songwriter Michael and drummer Peter--and bassist Alan Anton continue to blend folk, country, pop and rock into melodic yet foreboding backdrops for the exquisitely articulate sense of dread that comes through in Michael's lyrics and Margo's voice. Margo Timmins spoke with WW from her home in Toronto just before leaving on the band's current tour.
WW: The Cowboy Junkies have been together for a dozen years. How do you keep things fresh? Margo Timmins: Y'know, the music does that. We've always focused on making sure that we liked what we were doing. It's not really all that complicated when you're just trying to create something that makes you feel happy. When you try to create something while thinking "Will this sell?" that's when it gets--I would imagine--sterile. Then you second guess yourself, and I'm sure it could lead to a lot of turmoil within the band. It still amazes me how much we enjoy playing music. It hasn't changed since we were kids in the garage. A lot of people have grown up with the Cowboy Junkies, starting when they were in high school or college with The Trinity Sessions. It's 10 years later, and you're still popular. Is it the same people buying your records? Thank god for our fan base, because they've been really loyal. We literally do sell one record at a time. There are some bands that put out a single, then it's all over the radio, then everybody gets it and they sell a thousand at a time. But our records are slow. We don't have huge sales at the beginning, but we have constant sales. It's one by one. This is our seventh album. We've never had a huge hit and we're still doing it--and we're still selling records, so it's great. Wouldn't it make life easier--and be more lucrative--to have a huge hit? Since before we were signed, one of our goals was that we wanted Cowboy Junkies to last. You can do certain things and maybe you'll make a million dollars, but you'll destroy yourself. I'm not saying I don't want a million dollars, but I also want to keep the Cowboy Junkies the way that it is. I want us to go back to a cabin somewhere and play music again and feel free not to have to please anybody but ourselves. That freedom is really valuable. What do you think about The Trinity Sessions now that it's such an integral part of your career? That whole experience was a life-changing time, and I never, ever get bored of telling the story. Everything fell into place, and such a nice place for us. It didn't skyrocket out of the box and sell a million records overnight. We kept selling and selling [over time]; it was this weird experience. I couldn't have written it better for it to have happened the way that it did for the types of personalities we are. Especially for me, because I was never very outgoing, and I never viewed myself as a singer. If the Trinity Sessions had come smashing out of the box and sold five million overnight, I don't think that I'd be talking to you today. I would have blown my head off. Michael wrote some dark lyrics for Miles from Our Home. Does this make it harder for you to sing? Actually, the sadder the song, the better it is for me. I find that the melancholy songs are the most interesting, the most complex. Those are emotions that are really hard to wrap your head around, and yet those are the ones that you need to express the most. As a singer, those are the songs I would prefer to sing, rather than a happy pop song, which I'm not very good at. That's still something I'm trying to do well. Part of the reason I have trouble with them is because I don't need to sing them. When I'm happy and feeling good, those are the emotions that I really don't need to share: I'm feeling all right. But when life is difficult or throws me a curve, that's when you need to listen to music or read poetry or sing or write in your journal. You have to express yourself. I prefer [Michael] to write like that--the more mixed up, the better.
originally published August 12, 1998 |