Cowboy Junkies at the Ark in Ann Arbor

Saw the Cowboy Junkies at Ann Arbor's jewel of a community music theater, the Ark, last night. If you haven't been to the Ark, it is a wonderful place, run by volunteers as a non-profit. This allows the booking of top-notch national acts while keeping prices very low. I think my Cowboy Junkies tickets were something like $30.00 apiece. The Ark has good sight lines, nice acoustics and the cozy atmosphere of a concert in your living room. You can view their upcoming shows at www.a2ark.org/. Now that I have the commercial out of the way, let me tell you about the show. 

Cowboy Junkies are a 5 piece band with the Timmon's siblings, Margot, Pete and Mike at it's core on vocals, drums and guitar. Bassist is Alan Anton. Multi-instrumentalist Jeff Bird fills in the sound with everything but, I guess french horn, and if he pulled one of those out I would not have been shocked. The band has been around since the late 80's when they broke in with their  "Whites Off Earth Now" release.Their next release was the "Trinity Sessions" recorded live to tape in a decommissioned chapel in Toronto.  I don't know how you pigeonhole the Junkies sound but I guess they specialize in an ethereal, psychedelic folk. In the the voice of Margo Timmons I hear echoes of Hank Williams, Elvis and Patsy Cline. The heart of the band is the interplay between Margo and her brother and co-songwriter for the band Mike Timmins who can play clean is a knife when he wants to but loves to experiment with feedback and distortion in a way that would make Neil Young or Thurston Moore proud. Margo sits on a wooden, high backed stool, with a lyric book just below her eye line. Mike sits stage left, hunched over his guitar like a younger, more Caucasian Mississippi Fred McDowell. Seemingly, Mike is adrift in a world of his own as he backs Margo's vocal stylings, sometimes with delicate electro-acoustic filagrees, sometimes with squalls of feedback. I came to the show already a fan of Margot's, as is my wife who loves her voice. I came away with a newfound appreciation for Mike's talents which, I think to some degree, have been hidden in the grooves and ones and zeroes of their studio albums. 

The Cowboy Junkies are touring behind what they call the "Nomad" series. Four discs of new material, available separately and as a box set with a bonus set of outtakes. Very ambitious. They divided the show into two sets. The first, all new material from Nomads, got a nice response from the audience, many of whom were avid fans. The second set was nearly all "classic" Cowboy Junkies material starting which opened, after an intermission with their classic version of Lou Reeds' "Sweet Jane." 

As much as I loved this tune, my highlights were "Thirty Summers" recorded originally on their "Caution Horses" album, performed during the second set, with Margot's breathy vocal setting a mode of "edge-of-the-seat" intimacy. That one might have been a request, accoring to her pre-song patter. 

The other highlight, for me, was the first set's "The Wrong Piano" which was a song written by the late Vic Chesnutt. Faithful readers of this blog (Cousin Ken and Dave Guest) will recall that I blogged about Vic and his passing some time ago. Disc two of the Nomad series, titled "Demons" consisted solely of covers of Vic Chesnutt tunes. The performances of this material were outstanding. Cowboy Junkies may be my favorite interpreters of this outstanding body of work, aside from Chesnutt himself. As great as the their originals are, the Junkies have become known for their outstanding covers, as the two I have posted here demonstrate. 

If you are interested in finding out more about this great band, please check out their link at:

http://latentrecordings.com/cowboyjunkies/

I am posting the setlist from the show for those who are into that sort of thing. Cowboy Junkies don't stick to a standard setlist by any means so I don't think I am spoiling anything for those who might catch the next show. 

Sing in my Meadow

Wrong Piano

Square Room

Third Crusade

Late Night Radio

Damaged from the Start

Confession of Georgie E

Stranger Here

Renmin Park

Sweet Jane

Notes Falling Slow

Common Disaster

Lay it Down

Witches

Horse in the Country

Thirty Summers

Hunted

Good Friday

Follower 2

Misguided Angel

Fuck I Hate the Cold

Two shows in two nights could not have been more different, yet I enjoyed both immensly. One show, hard rocking, expansive, big as all America, drawing you in with all the subtlety of a carny barker, the other intimate, insular, the players standing in a space about the size of an area rug, very Canadian in their manner. Music produced by people who had spent cold winters indoors. 

But both were great.