TIME, SPACE, QUIET … AND COWBOY JUNKIES JOY
- Bernard Zuel
- Oct 17
- 7 min read
HARDLY ANONE LASTS 40 years as a working band. No one lasts 40 years as a working band with the same lineup – that is, no temporary splits, minor feuds or members shuffled in and out, dead or alive. Especially not if you’ve got family in the band. That’s madness even if your names aren’t Gallagher, Everly or Reid.
For that to be even a chance of happening you’d have to be the friendliest, most easy-going people in the world, the musical equivalent of Canadians. Or indeed, actual Canadians. Like Cowboy Junkies.
The band of three Timmins – Margo, who sings; Michael, who writes and plays guitar; Peter, who drums – and one Anton – Alan, who plays bass – have nearly 30 albums in more than 40 years. With a signature sound built on the atmospheric surrounds created around Margo’s ghost-in-the-machine voice that hasn’t aged even if those of us listening to it most certainly have.
With an Australian tour mere weeks away (see dates below), Michael Timmins, in typical accommodating Canadian fashion, even though there was no phone reception where he was and we were relying on wonky internet, agreed to take on The Reverse Kondo.
Not a Japanese martial art or Italian snack but a test of psychology and truth, The Reverse Kondo switches declutterer Marie Kondo and says, forget throwing shit out, what would you like to add to your life in each of these five categories to bring joy?
Cowboy Junkie Michael Timmins, your time starts now …
A PLACE
I’m actually there right now, the Adirondack Mountains, in upstate New York. It’s a huge state park filled with wilderness areas and very little cell reception, which is great. We have a cabin here and the more time I get here, especially at this time of the year and early spring, it’s so quiet, that’s a lot of joy there. That’s certainly a happy place. The isolation accentuates the natural elements, because that’s all there is: there’s no light pollution, there is no noise pollution, there are very few people so you are basically humbled, to be trite about it. You walk out and look across the lake to the mountains and it’s quite amazing.
Is being humbled a good place to be for a creative person?
I think so. For me it’s great because that’s what I’m trying to get at these days: I’m trying to figure out, as I get older, my place in the universe and what life is and what it is all about. As I started to slow down a little bit and try to appreciate things around me, that is part of it, getting a little perspective on oneself. For me nature does that.
A SONG
There are so many songs I wish I had written. But I’m still writing. That’s what I’m doing up here in the Adirondacks. We are about to start recording a new record in the winter and I’ve written 13 songs for that and I’m working on a few more now. A lot of them are trying to focus on that idea of, at my age, asking – to be fully boring about it – what is the meaning of life?
One thing about being “at my age” as a writer is you can drop in references to Greek mythology in your songs – such as Circe And Penelope on the Cowboy Junkies’ most recent album, Such Ferocious Beauty, and people are perfectly comfortable with it.
I think I’ve always done that [he laughs] but people may not have noticed it. I tend to lean on those more, whether they be Greek mythology or biblical stories or allusions, Shakespearean references or whatever. I guess things that were once considered part of the Western canon, which I guess has been blown up now. Those are touchstones that I’m very comfortable with and I think they are very strong and full of great imagery and great symbols.
That’s something another Canadian songwriter, Leonard Cohen, certainly understood with his drawing on Christian iconography alongside Jewish tales: they provide such rich imagery and the references are so deep in the roots of Western Anglo conversation and culture.
I think especially for someone like Leonard Cohen they provided so much mystery too, the mystery coming from the fact that everybody interprets them a little bit differently. Also if you use the symbol, a Christian symbol in a song, people grab onto it from different perspectives and for different reasons, or reject it for different reasons. Songs are kind of like that: as a songwriter you want people to bring their own interpretation or their own meaning or their own prejudices to it and see where they go.
A PERSON
Can it be a dead person? I just recently got into this poet, Louise Gluck, an American poet who won the Pulitzer Prize a couple of times I think. I’d like to have more of her work in my life and her presence. Sometimes you discover somebody after they died and you think I wish I’d been around to listen to new creations.
She was described in one English newspaper as “a poet who never shied away from silence, pain or fear”, which could be somebody describing The Cowboy Junkies.
Maybe that’s the attraction.
One thing about having a career as long as The Cowboy Junkies is it will be some time yet before people say I would wish I’d been around when they were working unlike most people discovering Tim Buckley or Nick Drake. For now there is the satisfaction for fans of having been here for some or all of it. Is it the same for the band?
Yeah, for sure. And the satisfaction that I l think we are still getting better as a live band. The whole idea of 10,000 hours, that that’s what it takes to get you to a plane of excellence, I think we’ve put in our time. Playing live music there’s a lot of intuition and a lot of experience, especially four people playing together, and we still love it. The actual travelling and touring gets pretty exhausting and you don’t necessarily look forward to the movement every day, but the actual playing every day is still pretty great. I think it’s because we all recognise how special it is. It is very rare, especially these days, for four people to still be playing together as a live musical unit. So it’s pretty satisfying just from that point of view.
I don’t look forward to being in Poughkeepsie in New York again, I’ve seen it, believe me, more than once, but at least when you go to a place like Australia and New Zealand, we’ve only been there a few times in our lives so it’s still exciting. But the getting there, that’s the hell.
ANOTHER PIECE OF ART/FILM/BOOK
To be very bougie about this, my wife and I spent a week in Florence a few months ago. She had never been to Italy and I hadn’t been there enough. She’s a painter, and for the first time I really – obviously everybody appreciates the Renaissance, you can’t say oh the Renaissance is boring – really got into Renaissance art and I began to focus on all the various depictions of the Annunciation.
(We interrupt this answer for those playing at home but without a Catholic or indeed classical education, who are now confused. The annunciation is when the archangel Gabriel told Mary she was going to spring a surprise on her husband, Joseph, by giving birth to a son conceived with the Holy Spirit. So, not doing the deed, just miraculously up the duff. Hence the whole virgin birth thing. You are now returned to Michael Timmins.)
So my goal in Florence was to try and find every version of the Annunciation I could find, because every artist painted it in that era. So that’s what I would like, more and more Annunciations. There were two favourites. One was the Fra Angelico one I found in the monastery he lived in for many years and basically painted every room. He painted a huge Annunciation that’s really beautiful.
And then, as boring as it is to say, the da Vinci one is still … it stands out. There’s a reason why everyone remembers that guy. It’s so out of time. There’s something about it when you realise where it sits in the place with all the others – it seems so behind and in front and forward of all the others.
The contrast between the two is interesting: in the Fra Angelico Mary is subdued, looking down, while in the da Vinci she is regal, maybe even exultant.
That’s the beauty of all those and why they’re’ so fascinating, because Mary is depicted so differently in all of them. There are times when she is saying get the fuck out of my face, and there are times when she is looking like oh I’m so happy to be chosen, then times when she is scared. That’s the beauty of them
HIS CHOICE OF SOMETHING TO BRING INTO HIS LIFE
Another big thing I do is I flyfish and I find, especially up in Canada, the seasons are so short, so that’s what I want more of. Flyfishing is the physical, outside, part of it, but there’s the meditation of it, there is the challenge of it, and there’s the solitude of it.
More flyfishing in my life would make my life happier and would definitely bring more joy.
At the risk of pop psychology assumptions here, flyfishing and Louise Gluck and quiet and Cowboy Junkies - he does not live a life separate from the art he creates.
Exactly. It comes from an honest place.
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SEE MORE
Cowboy Junkies play
Fortitude Music Hall, Brisbane – November 11
Civic Theatre, Newcastle – November 13
State Theatre, Sydney – November 14
Astor Theatre, Perth – November 18
Woodville Town Hall, Adelaide – November 20
Palais Theatre, Melbourne – November 23
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