Cowboy Junkies

Track	Album
Shining Moon	Whites Off Earth Now!! (1986)
200 More Miles	The Trinity Session (1988)
Where Are You Tonight?	The Caution Horses (1990)
A Horse In The Country	Black Eyed Man (1992)
Bea’s Song	Lay It Down (1996)
December Skies	Early 21st Century Blues (2005)
Betty Lonely	Demons (2011)
Missing Children	All That Reckoning (2018)
I’ve Made Up My Mind To Give Myself To You	Songs Of The Recollection (2022)
Circe And Penelope	Such Ferocious Beauty (2023)

Two stories to begin.

I interviewed Margo and Michael Timmins on college radio in Peterborough, Ontario, in 1986. They were very friendly and answered the convoluted questions of a 19-year-old undergraduate thoughtfully. I told them they should change the name of the band because the combination of cowboys and junkies would go down badly in the US. They topped the LA Times Readers Poll the following year.

I moved to Australia in the mid-1990s and waited, and waited, and waited for the Cowboy Junkies to visit. I had a ticket for a show that was cancelled twice owing to the global pandemic. They turned up, finally, in January of 2023 on a tour that had to be abandoned when Margo lost her voice. Luckily, I saw one of the Melbourne shows. Margo was clearly ailing but the concert was still transcendent. Perhaps because of her condition, they took a break after they’d played about six songs, one of which was their biggest hit, a cover of the Velvet Underground’s Sweet Jane. During the brief interval, I heard a guy behind me say, ‘Well, I might as well go, I’ve heard the only song of theirs that I know.’ Yes, we’ve all sat near this guy but I was struck by just what a small portion of the Cowboy Junkies iceberg is on the surface. This prolific Canadian band has been releasing album after album for 40 years. And their strike rate is, I think, outstanding. There are albums I prefer to others, naturally, but none that I would dismiss as a misstep or a trainwreck. 

Sticking to 10 songs meant having to skip entire albums, phases even, of this remarkable band’s career.  But here goes …

When they turned up at the radio station that afternoon, they had yet to record Sweet Jane. They were touring in support of the curiously titled Whites Off Earth Now!!, their first album. It has been rereleased recently and I urge you to pick up a copy. When you do, try to imagine what it sounded like in the mid-1980s when bombastic snare drum-infected music was mixed on shimmering, cocaine consoles. Everything on the radio sounded like a crystalline anthem or a smug jingle. We Are The World indeed! I can remember putting down the needle and hearing the opening guitar riff on the first song, a cover of Lightnin’ Hopkins Shining Moon. It was so quiet and understated. In the time of Bruce Springsteen’s Born In The USA, they’d included a version of State Trooper from Nebraska. It seemed like a sign.

The spirit of John Lee Hooker hung heavily over proceedings with three of his songs, including a spectral Decoration Day from his sublime 1966 album and possible template, It Serves You Right To Suffer. Local critics were comparing them to the Velvets even before the famous cover and others saw a blues link with the Gun Club. But really, this first album was a breathtakingly original statement in 1986.

The band’s lineup has been consistent from the beginning. Michael Timmins writes the songs and plays guitar. Margo Timmins sings the songs. Peter Timmins plays drums. They are siblings. Alan Anton, Michael’s best friend from childhood, plays bass and helps out with the writing. Another Timmins brother, John, was an early member who rejoined for a time in the early 2000s. Jeff Bird, the fifth Junkie, is the genius behind most of the stunning harmonica work on their albums along with fiddle and mandolin. All sorts of folks turn up on their records, including John Prine whose duet with Margo appears on their fourth album, Black Eyed Man.

When I am visiting my hometown of Toronto, I usually stop in at a small church behind the enormous Eaton Centre mall downtown. Trinity Church is a very progressive Anglican place of worship that does valuable work in the community. It is also where one of the greatest sounding albums was made in November 1987. The producer, Peter Moore, recorded The Trinity Session, their second LP, with one microphone, in one day. Think Paul Horn’s 1969 Taj Mahal record, Inside. It’s a similar sonic masterpiece. I could have chosen any song on this album, Sweet Jane for instance, but I’ve always loved 200 More Miles. The 3am road-worn atmosphere, the winsome harmonica, and the guitar sounds are timeless. You could imagine it on Sticky Fingers, you could imagine Jimmie Rodgers singing it.

But let’s not get mired in The Trinity Session because they followed it up with a record many felt was its equal, if not its superior. The Caution Horses features two much-loved Junkies’ songs, Sun Comes Up, It’s Tuesday Morning, a Blood On The Tracks level break-up song, and Cause Cheap Is How I Feel, a heartbreakingly sexy song about what happens after the big break-up. I chose Where Are You Tonight? It’s a high lonesome, bass driven shuffle with a set of lyrics that aptly demonstrates Michael Timmins’ skills as a storyteller. The cheeky country boy in the bar and the narrator’s sad acceptance of the situation are both drawn with great literary aplomb. A Horse In The Country, from the almost unfeasibly great Black Eyed Man, album is further evidence of Michael Timmins’ capacity for combining compelling lyrics with evocative chord changes. Margo’s rendering of these stories with such grace and sympathy completes the picture.

I have to skip an album or two here and jump to Lay It Down which appeared in 1996. At the time, reviewers who only knew Sweet Jane searched for adjectives to suggest something louder without making it sound like a Rainbow album. In truth, their sound had been evolving the entire time. Lay It Down seemed to me like the band saying, ‘You want Americana? We can do that.’ 1996 was a peak year for this genre and the Cowboy Junkies could justifiably claim some prescience. When American critics were coming up with dopey labels like ‘cowpunk’ to define Jason and the Scorchers in the 1980s, the Junkies were recording the second greatest ever version of Walking After Midnight. Here’s my hot take: Americana, in its 90s form, was invented on Queen St in Toronto at the Cameron House, ten years earlier. If you were there, you know. The Cowboy Junkies were part of a remarkable flowering of country, rockabilly, western swing, and ‘roots rock’ that happened under the radar, north of the border, and east of Bathurst Street. 

The song from that album that I’ve chosen is called Bea’s Song. It is another one of Michael’s exquisite snapshots of a character’s inner life. A woman sits beside the Speed River with her husband, imagining that she is being pulled under. Her feet are stuck in the mud and she is sinking. Her spouse doesn’t notice. We’ve all been there. It contains a wonderful observation:

But if there’s one thing in my life
That these years have taught
It’s that you can always see it coming
But you can never stop it.

Amen to that.

In 2005, they released Early 21st Century Blues, an album that again highlighted their brilliance with other people’s songs – Richie Havens’ Handouts In The Rain is subtle and devastating but try Springsteen’s Brothers Under The Bridge or Dylan’s License To Kill. I’ve chosen an original, December Skies, which was apparently inspired by Canadian author Timothy Findley’s 1977 novel, “The Wars”. In the midst of the conflicts that followed 9-11 and the growing sense that history had not, in fact, ended, it was a sobering message. The sound is psychedelic Morse code, played on a backward-tracked electric guitar. Margo digs deep to get these difficult lyrics across. The song caused some disquiet when they played it live in the US in 2005. The antiwar message is not subtle.

Jump forward again, with a quick stop at a heavenly set of Vic Chestnutt songs as part of the 4 volume Nomad Series (2011). You need to hear Margo sing Betty Lonely. Immediately. Something like a 1970s Wurlitzer replaces the finger-picked guitar on the original. This draws out the gothic implications of the lyrics in spectacular fashion.

I land on Missing Children from 2018’s All That Reckoning, a suitably dramatic William Blake inspired track from a dark album that was, as it said on the box, a reckoning with the world as it stood in that now somewhat lost period before Covid. Crunchy guitar and distorted fiddle underpin the unsettling vision. It sounds like Neil Young dropping by a Waterboys’ session.

Speaking of the pandemic, it was around that time that I heard their version of I’ve Made Up My Mind To Give Myself To You. I’d barely registered Bob Dylan’s original when the Cowboy Junkies had me gasping for breath. With a Bob Dylan song, you have to somehow make it your own without turning it into cheese. Emma Swift’s Blonde On The Tracks album is a recent masterclass. The Cowboy Junkies found something in this song that is perhaps more elusive in the original. It’s the bittersweet declaration of love and the fragility of a life where love matters. It was included on Songs Of The Recollection, a covers record that also featured surprisingly effective readings of Bowie’s Five Years, and The Cure’s Seventeen Seconds.

I’ll finish my list with a song called Circe And Penelope from their latest album, Such Ferocious Beauty. The album, influenced by the siblings’ father’s battle with dementia, is as dark, though not as jagged sounding, as All That Reckoning. This is the older end of Generation X, with aging parents and teenage kids. The musical ground has shifted sonically, culturally, and technologically in the 40 years that this band has been making music. The album sees them doing their thing, their way, without giving in to nostalgia or anyone’s idea of who they are. It’s a heavy listen and Circe and Penelope’s country waltz with moody fiddle is something like a light moment on the record. The eternal wanderer’s two love interests sit on a bench chatting about him. I hear a song about missing someone.

I often wonder why Michael Timmins isn’t more acclaimed as a songwriter. Perhaps it is the old riddle of the auteur. He writes most of the songs but ultimately they are collaborations. Margo doesn’t simply sing. She is like a method actor, digging deep into the characters and her own experiences. There is a recent clip of the two of them performing Circe And Penelope in a studio setting. Watch Margo. She is deep inside this song’s story while responding to Michael’s guitar work at every turn. It’s a brilliant illustration of the Cowboy Junkies’ process. Then add a versatile and sympathetic rhythm section and the result is one of the most satisfying bodies of work in rock and roll. If you only know Sweet Jane and/or The Trinity Session, there is a deep dive available here. Leave the snorkel at home, you’ll need tanks for this one.

To conclude: I’ve included three covers in my list above. Interpreting other people’s material is sometimes downgraded in discussions of rock and roll but the Cowboy Junkies are masters. Keep in mind that the famously tetchy Lou Reed gave his stamp of approval to their Sweet Jane. Here are five more songs they’ve made their own, without wholly abandoning the original:

1. Tired Eyes (Neil Young) – More Acoustic Junk (2025)
2. Lost My Driving Wheel (David Wiffen, Tom Rush) – Studio (1996)
3. The Way I Feel (Gordon Lightfoot) – Songs of the Recollection (2022)
4. Rake (Townes Van Zandt) – Acoustic Junk (2009)
5. Jesus Is Coming Soon (Blind Willie Johnson) God Don’t Ever Change: The Songs of Blind Willie Johnson (2016)

There is an excellent book about Cowboy Junkies called “Music Is The Drug” (Omnibus Press, 2021) by Dave Bowler (see Book Reviews Page). The Canadian music writer, Michael Barclay, has also written eloquently about them over the years.

Official Website

Discography

YouTube Channel

Cowboy Junkies at CanadianBands.com

Michael Barclay interview with Michael Timmins (2016)

Tony Thompson is a Canadian writer and lecturer based in Katoomba, New South Wales. He is the author of several books, including two On Track titles for Sonicbond Publishing, The Doors and Creedence Clearwater Revival. His most recent book is a novel called Hey, Zazou! (Ford Street, 2025). It’s about a young guitarist caught up in a resistance operation in Paris in the 1940s. If Charlie Christian, Django Reinhardt, Jimmie Lunceford, or Joe Venuti get your foot tapping, the musical references alone will keep you reading!

Read the Toppermosts of some of the other artists mentioned in this post: Vic Chesnutt, Gun Club, Blind Willie Johnson, Gordon Lightfoot, John Prine, Jimmie Rodgers, Townes Van Zandt, Velvet Underground, Waterboys, Neil Young

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