Dave Bowler - Music is the Drug: The Authorised Biography of The Cowboy Junkies

T hat this book came about at all says as much about Cowboy Junkies as the words contained in it. Catching them at the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall in October 2004, I was struck by Margo Timmins comment from the stage that they were about to celebrate their twentieth anniversary. Seemed to me it was a good time to record that history, so I emailed them. Pretty much by return, Michael Timmins replied, and within a week had essentially given the green light, a remarkably open response, completely at odds with the secretive way in which most normal rocknroll bands operate.

You can tell from the music that the Junkies are anything but a normal rocknroll band and, as the research process for this book unfolded, that impression grew stronger, taking things in different and totally unexpected directions from those I originally had in mind.

This is not a biography in the classic sense theres plenty of biographical information in here, but if youre looking for a simple chronological journey from A to B, this aint it. Instead, as the hours of interview tape mounted, it became obvious that the story of Cowboy Junkies was far richer and far more complex than that, leaving me with a series of impressions of who they are, how they operate, where the music comes from and what impact it has on the musicians and on their audience. To try to make sense of it, the chronology is there as the backbone of the book, its chapters, but hanging off that, in between chapters are shorter tales, things that dont necessarily fit the business of recording the history, but which are, I hope, all the more illuminating for it. Theyre the notes falling slow, if you like, that couldnt fit the main narrative but were worth saving.

Right from the outset, Mike made it clear that their twentieth anniversary was never simply an excuse for nostalgia, for its as much a time for looking forward as back. Just as well given that, by the time this book was finished, the thirty-fifth anniversary was looming. As it always has been, maybe more so now than ever, Cowboy Junkies is an intellectually and emotionally ambitious, artistically driven unit which clearly believes that its best work is yet to be done. I cant think of another band, three decades in, where you would consider that possible. But the Junkies make believers of us all. That is their singular gift.

Ill come clean here. Im a Junkies junkie, a believer. Given the chance, Id be clocking up the miles in pursuit of more concerts just like Cookie Bob and Crazy Ed if you havent met them yet, dont worry, all will become clear. So much for objectivity, then, but lets be grown up about this. Ive been on the fan side of the Cowboy Junkies equation since way back in 1988, a pretty thankless side of that equation if you happen to live in Junk-starved, junk-fuelled England. That makes you appreciate the records all the more, makes you devour them increasingly voraciously, instantly destroying your impartiality credentials. You either get it and live with it, or you move on to somebody you can see a little more often. And anyway, putting this kind of book together from five time zones away is hardly the work of the disinterested observer.

In this increasingly compartmentalized world, where every interest has its own TV channel, the idea of someone casually picking up a book about a band theyve never heard of is, sadly, ever more absurd. So I think its safe to say Im preaching to the church here. And, like me, I guess most fans are pretty frustrated by the lack of recognition the band gets, despite creating a songbook as emotionally powerfully as anything created during their time as a band. They may not have changed the world the way The Beatles did, but for some of us Mike, Al, Pete and Margo make music that affects our personal universe every bit as much as did John, Paul, George and Ringo. Thats no idle comparison, either, for, like the Fab Four, Cowboy Junkies is a band in the truest sense of the term, a unit where every member is important and valued, where each plays a part, obvious or otherwise, in holding it together, taking it forward and allowing it to create something which is a whole that far exceeds the sum of the individual parts.

It wasnt the intention, but as things turned out the interviews for this book were carried out over, oh, just the decade and a half. In hindsight, its as well it was for if it had been completed in those early days, wed have missed The Nomad Series and All That Reckoning, which both play a huge part in the unfolding story. Equally, Cowboy Junkies of 2005 are not the same Cowboy Junkies of 2020: they write differently, record differently, tour differently. Those are developments wholly typical of them, a vital entity not afraid to question, to evolve, to change. If we revisit this thing in another ten years, therell be new things to say by then, too, and that is an exciting prospect.

To give you some sense of how this was pieced together, the interviewing started in a snow-covered Montreal in February 2005 as Early 21st Century Blues was coming together in their Clubhouse studio, and then on the United States of Canada Blues States tour, a blisteringly hot trek through the northeast United States in June of the same year as the title of the tour suggests, it was hard then to conceive of a more divisive president than George W. Bush. Simpler days. I then went back to Toronto in November 2006 as the strings were being added to At the End of Paths Taken at Metal Works studio in Mississauga, tagged along with the electric and acoustic tours of the UK in early 2007, took in the June dates of that year back in the northeast USA, followed that up with the Trinity Revisited tour of England that year and then hopped back over to the States to travel through Arizona, Texas and New Mexico in 2008. We added some more material on their brief jaunt to the UK in 2013 and finished it all off over the phone and then in Bristol and Holmfirth in 2019. They truly have the patience of saints.

Throughout that period, the band and those that work with them could not have been more helpful, open or welcoming. Whatever good there is in this book stems from a pretty admirable group of people who live a stranger professional existence than you might imagine. Whatever good there isnt well, youd be within your rights to shoot the messenger.

C owboy Junkies is a band that defies categorization, that refuses to be pinned down. You think you have a hold on them, their music, a heavy shot glass in which you swill lifes golden liquid. Then, as you think youve got it taped, the tumbler tumbles, the whisky slips through a crack in the floorboards, and turns up behind you in a cocktail glass.

In years to come, the guy from Where Are You Tonight? might still be you, someone like you, someone who was you, or will be you, but he wont be listening to Crazy all night long. Itll be Cause Cheap Is How I Feel or Something More Besides You or Notes Falling Slow. And itll still make the sound of a splintering life just the most beautiful, beguiling noise you ever heard. Because, somehow, in those slivers lie the hope that gets us all out of bed again to confront the next day. In The Great Gatsby, Nick Carraway speaks of Gatsbys heightened sensitivity to the promises of life an extraordinary gift for hope. He would have recognized that in Cowboy Junkies, too.

Wrap yourself in The Trinity Session or At the End of Paths Taken, and youll be seduced and shocked, romanced and slapped across the face by reality, drawn in by emotions and by music that delivers on the duality that their name promises. Cowboys, junkies, lovers, losers, leavers, leavees, travellers, shysters, seers, searchers, scapegoats, bewildereds theyre all in these songs.