The Cowboy Junkies, a popular Canadian alternative country/blues/folk rock band, that may have flown under the radar in terms of visibility in Vermont, makes a rare, perhaps singular, appearance at 8 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 4, at the Barre Opera House as part of its Celebration Series.
They are promoting their newest and 29th album, “Such Ferocious Beauty,” which has been described as “a rumination on aging, losing parents, facing mortality and creating space for one’s life in the midst of the ruin that comes from merely living.” If that isn’t a take on life in 2023, I don’t know what is.
The band, formed in Ontario in 1985, has garnered a sizable audience while maintaining its lo-fi approach to its music. They didn’t exactly knock anyone’s socks off with their first album “Whites Off Earth Now!!!” in 1986, which sold a mere 3,000 copies. Many of us became familiar with their singular sound when they hit public consciousness with “The Trinity Session” in 1988. That album includes the Lou Reed song “Sweet Jane,” perhaps their most famous track. “Sweet Jane” has 33.9 million plays on Spotify.
The Cowboy Junkies have built their career not on trendsetting but on their ability to stay their course, maintaining a low impact interpretation of melody and evocative language delivered with a quiet delivery by singer Margo Timmins’ feathery alto. The group includes three siblings Margo (vocalist), Michael (songwriter, guitarist) and Peter Timmins (drummer), and longtime friend Alan Anton (bassist).
While their freshman recording went flat, the group’s fame spread with their second album, “The Trinity Session,” recorded in 1987 at Toronto’s Church of the Holy Trinity. Their mix of blues, country, folk, rock and jazz earned them critical attention and a cult following. The Los Angeles Times named the recording as one of the 10 best albums of 1988, and it was included in the book “1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.”
The Cowboy Junkies were nominated for Group of the Year at the Juno Awards (the Canadian Grammies) in 1990 and 1991. In the early 1990s, Margo Timmins was named “one of the 50 most beautiful people in the world” by People Magazine. The group has toured North America, Europe, Japan and Australia. In 2008, they released “Trinity Revisited” in celebration of the 20th anniversary of the original.
They’ve gotten a lot of exposure on American TV with appearances on “The Tonight Show,” David Letterman, Jimmy Fallon, Conan O’Brien and “Saturday Night Live,” among others. The band was inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2015.
The Cowboy Junkies have received a lot of praise for one of their recordings in particular. On the 2021 release of “All That Reckoning,” the Associated Press said, “Over 30 years into their career, ‘All That Reckoning’ shows Cowboy Junkies in peak form, adding another inspired, alluring album to their repertoire.”
Similarly, NPR said, “Impressed by breadth and depth of this record, as vital as anything they’ve done.” “‘All That Reckoning’ ranks among the band’s best,” was Mother Jones’ take. “It’s equal parts tenderness and edge, sensual and beautifully disturbing,” according to MOJO which gave it five stars.
“‘All That Reckoning’ is all the more surprising for how relevant it sounds, for how well it surveys
our current climate, most crucially for how it suggests that the band’s defining traits — the quiet
vocals, the erratic guitars, the menacing mid-tempo jams — are specifically calibrated to speak to this very moment,” wrote Blue Grass Situation.
“While the band has never strayed far from its trademarked slow sizzle/burn, these songs
have hooks, melodies and especially arrangements that subtly grab listeners, sucking them
into their world,” according to American Songwriter.
And then there is Margo Timmins. “She is, quite simply, the best singer in the lifespan of whatever we might choose to call this genre of music,” according to Americana Highways. Innocent Words added, “Margo Timmins is one of just a handful of singers, alongside Nick Cave, PJ Harvey and the late Leonard Cohen, who consistently manage to take vulnerability, emotional rawness and translate it into powerfully moving records time and time again.”
A band with such high ratings and a career nearly 40 years long should bring out lots of fans to the Barre Opera House on Saturday.
Barre Opera House The Celebration Series presents The Cowboy Junkies, the renowned Canadian rock band, at 8 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 4 at the Barre Opera House, 6 N. Main St. in Barre. Tickets are $29-$54; call 802-476-8188, or go online to barreoperahouse.org
