Cowboy Junkies – Cold grey light of dawn
He’s got a point. Those who date the Year Zero of alt-country to the release of Uncle Tupelo’s No Depression in 1990 likely forget that the Junkies were at least two years ahead in mixing the post-punk sensibility with roots music, selling in platinum quantities to boot.
“We know we didn’t start anything,” Michael continues. “Gram Parsons came before us. The Burrito Brothers, Beatles, the Stones did country stuff. Then Willie and Waylon, that stuff is alt-country. We didn’t think we stepped into a void and introduced this music scene, or whatever. But then when people talk about the current movement, we would kind of like to get mentioned.”
A third attempt at bottling Moore’s single-mike lightning in 1989 yielded The Sharon Temple Sessions, recorded between tours, in miserable April cold at a spooky worship center north of Toronto. The project was shelved, and the band reconvened with Moore in a proper recording studio for 1990’s The Caution Horses.
While touring behind that album, they needed to find an opening act, and Michael half-jokingly pitched for Townes Van Zandt. When the Junkies had first started touring, Van Zandt’s music was a constant in the tape deck. On their first trip to Atlanta, they scraped together pocket money to see him at a club, then laid low so they could catch the second show for free.
To their astonishment, he agreed to open the tour for the band.
“The way he puts words together,” Michael says wistfully, “his guitar and vocal delivery is so bluesy. Some people just touch you, and his voice and guitar just gets me every time. There are so many of his songs I just loved.”
Van Zandt’s reputation as a troubled soul preceded him. “We had him on our bus, which is a scary thing to do,” Margo recalls. “He can be very dynamic, or volatile or whatever you want to call it. But to me, he was a true gentleman. There were some nights where he was in a mood, but he would never let me see it.”
Sometimes, he would hold court in the back lounge of the bus, playing songs and spinning stories. Other times, he would slip up to Margo at the front of the bus and offer quiet encouragement. “He believed in my voice, undeniably. I had to say to myself: Townes thinks I can sing, so I started to believe in it and let it happen, instead of the doubts I had all the time.”
Van Zandt wrote the song “Cowboy Junkies Lament”, which the Junkies covered on 1992’s Black Eyed Man and Van Zandt recorded on his 1995 disc No Deeper Blue. Michael wrote “Townes’ Blues” (also on Black Eyed Man) as an homage to his mentor. On New Year’s Day 1997, they received word that Van Zant was dead. As a final tribute, Michael wrote the song “Blue Guitar” and incorporated lyrics from an unpublished Van Zandt song: “Goodbye to the highway/Goodbye to the sky/I’m heading out goodbye, goodbye.” (It appears on the Junkies’ 1998 album Miles From Our Home.)
“There was such a weird vibe around him,” Michael says. “A very strange spirit thing. A very weird presence. I do believe that is what it was. He was here to channel everything into song. It was like he was declaring: ‘I am a tortured soul. That’s what I do, and I will express it as best as I can.'”
“There’s a lot of great songwriters. We meet a lot of them,” adds Margo. “But we never met anybody like Townes. Never, ever.”
After The Caution Horses, the Cowboy Junkies continued to tour and cultivate a hard core of fans with subsequent releases Black Eyed Man (1992) and Pale Sun, Crescent Moon (1993). Michael took over as producer and grew as a songwriter, while the group extended their sound by developing their own sonic palette and introducing a revolving cast of support players, both in the studio and on the road.
With 1996’s Lay It Down, they jumped from RCA to Geffen. Powered by the driving single “A Common Disaster”, Lay It Down sold 600,000 copies. Geffen was juiced about a follow-up and pledged an expanded marketing budget. Based on the label’s confidence, the Junkies upgraded their studio habits, more out of a sense of obligation than hubris. They booked time at one of Toronto’s top studios and hired producer John Leckie, who had worked with everyone from John Lennon to Pink Floyd to Radiohead. Then they flew to England to record strings and mix the album at EMI’s storied Abbey Road studio. By their standards, it was ridiculously lavish.
“It was such a crazy thing: ‘Let’s just go to Abbey Road,'” marvels Margo. “I’m glad we did it. But if we never did it again, I would not miss it. We learned a lot.”