Happy 35th Anniversary to Cowboy Junkies’ second studio album The Trinity Session, originally released November 15, 1988.
In 1989, Cowboy Junkies knew they’d made it when cocaine addicts started writing to tell them that their album The Trinity Session, released the year prior, had helped them kick their habits. It was the ’80s after all, cocaine was the drug of the decade, and the simple joy of losing oneself in The Trinity Session’s slow, subtle, unhurried ethereality was apparently enough to quit blowing lines. Nobody, it seemed, wanted to listen to “Blue Moon Revisited” with a nosebleed, the sweats, and their heart pounding out of their chest.
A junkie, however, typically connotes a different type of addict—the prick of a needle and the slow, syrupy nodding off on smack, and that’s what I was thinking of when, as a young teen, I bought The Trinity Session. I had never heard of Cowboy Junkies, but the band’s name reminded me of the 1989 now-cult classic movie Drugstore Cowboy (about a Matt Dillon-led crew of drugstore-robbing junkies in the ’70s), so I took a chance. I’ve bought albums for dumber reasons, but I’ve never once regretted my purchase of The Trinity Session.
In actuality, though, Cowboy Junkies were neither junkies nor cowboys. They were a family of tame, maybe even stereotypically polite, Canadians—Mike, Margo, and Pete Timmins—along with bassist Alan Anton, a longtime family friend. Long before the three of them started a band, the Timminses were local celebrities, owing to the town of Timmins, Ontario, which their great-grandfather had built around a goldmine in the early 1900s. The family fortune had dried up, however, before the Timmins kids could be spoiled on it, and so their father had worked hard in the aviation industry to provide for his six children. Growing up in Montreal, the Timmins brood were raised with a strong work ethic, a shunning of status, and the radical notion that they could be whatever they wanted.
Music was revered in the Timmins household—albums were the family’s most common Christmas gift—and the eldest Timmins brother, John, was a music obsessive who was fortunate enough to come of age in the late ’60s during the dawn of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Velvet Underground, and the Doors. “As the older brother, I was bringing this music into the house and I didn’t exclude my younger siblings any more than any other older brother would. They listened to my music with impunity when I was home,” John said in Music Is The Drug. Alan Anton, best friends with brother Mike Timmins, was also absorbing all this music on his visits over to the Timmins house ever since he and Mike were in kindergarten.
Although they were all music fanatics, neither the Timmins siblings nor Anton ever actually thought they could be musicians. Most of the music they were listening to was produced with such sophistication—particularly after the Beatles turned Abbey Road Studios into its own sort of instrument—that making music just didn’t seem accessible to a group of everyday kids in Montreal. “It was all so expensive, so technical, we could just never imagine playing music within the business,” Anton observed. “You listen to Steely Dan, you never think you can be in a band.”
But when punk rock exploded in the mid-’70s with its DIY ethos and simple, snarling, gloriously primitive approach to making and recording music, it changed the blueprint—particularly for Mike Timmins and Alan Anton. Mike had gone off to university in Toronto and Alan was still living in Montreal, but soon the two childhood friends rented guitars, found a practice space in Toronto, and began fumbling around trying to figure it all out. They christened their first band Hunger Project, tapping into the influences of Joy Division, the Velvet Underground, and Siouxsie and the Banshees. A small punk scene had flared up in Toronto, only to burn out shortly thereafter, and so in 1979 the duo took off for New Wave New York.
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They rented a cheap place on Avenue B and navigated their rough-and-tumble East Village neighborhood with equal parts humor and trepidation. In their peeling apartment, Mike and Alan created a practice space by cutting a hole in the floor, which allowed them into a close, cavernous space in the cellar, which they walled off with cinderblocks for soundproofing. Although they practiced like madmen for hours on end, their timing in New York was off (New Wave had begun dying down) and so after a year they decided that—owing to their passion for Joy Division, The Cure, and the Banshees—England was the natural next place to be.
Unfortunately, Mike and Alan’s timing was off again, and they didn’t find much happening in London in 1982. Over the course of the three years they’d spend in the city, the only bands they really liked who were also living in London were The Birthday Party and the Jesus and Mary Chain. English music had begun moving in the direction of synth-pop, with production becoming equally plastic and polished, so Mike and Al became disillusioned with the scene. “Pop music at that time was dead to us,” Mike recalled.
So they broke up the Hunger Project, and started a new band called Germinal, ushering in a musically eclectic period in their lives. They began experimenting with improvisational jazz, and while Mike was working at a record store in Notting Hill, a fellow employee turned him onto the blues of Lightnin’ Hopkins and John Lee Hooker. Meanwhile, Alan, who had played dueling guitars with Mike in their previous band, switched to bass, drawing inspiration from The Stranglers’ Jean-Jacques Burnel, Peter Hook of Joy Division, and Jah Wobble of PiL. Though Germinal would end once Mike and Al left London, all of this wild experimentation would eventually form the basis of Cowboy Junkies’ unique sound.
Once Mike and Alan returned to Toronto, it wasn’t long before they decided to form another band, with blues as the touchstone along with a tinge of the Joy Division influence they’d always favored. They recruited the oldest Timmins brother John for a brief interlude, along with youngest brother Pete, who couldn’t play drums but was willing to learn. Their sister Margo became their natural pick for singer, all because Mike remembered that she’d sung in the school play as a child and stunned everyone with her subtle yet voluptuous voice. “I never was a shy person, but the idea of standing onstage was a place I’d never imagined myself to be or even wanted to be,” Margo recalled to Magnet magazine in 2010. “I wanted to have six children like my mom and make beds.” Yet she took on the role of chanteuse with strength and resolve and has excelled at it ever since.
The Timminses and Anton managed to pin down their particular bluesy sound—quiet and understated instrumentation to complement Margo’s hushed, dusky vocal style—and they began mostly performing covers that were not so much faithful renditions, but interpretations. Around this time, brother John quit to move to back Montreal, and instead of finding a way to fill in the spaces left in his wake, Cowboy Junkies left them blank, which created a hypnotic sparseness that became part of their signature sound. Soon, the band set about recording their independently released debut album Whites Off Earth Now!
Cowboy Junkies knew right away that they didn’t want to record in a studio—they had very little studio experience and weren’t versed in the lingo necessary for conveying the aesthetic they desired. Enter sound engineer Peter Moore, whom the band had come to know casually via various social gatherings around Toronto. Moore was equally disillusioned with the robotic, plastic sound of the ’80s, and had become obsessed with recording in as natural and unadorned a way as possible. So, a single microphone was ordered—a Calrec ambisonic microphone—and on the day of recording, Moore came over to the garage where the Junkies practiced and, through lots of experimentation, he figured out how to arrange the band around that single mic. It was summer during a heatwave, and Moore’s recording managed to capture the closeness, the intimacy, and the sweatiness in a way that perfectly complemented the band’s sultry, nuanced Southern blues.
In support of Whites Off Earth Now!, Cowboy Junkies embarked on a no-frills van tour of the United States. It was during this tour that they began to develop an appreciation for country music from long hours of listening to the radio, as well as a ‘History of Country Music’ compilation they purchased at the Smithsonian. “As Canadians, we’re quite fascinated with what’s going on in America,” Margo mused to Magnet. “We have this big, huge neighbor that we have a lot of things in common with and a lot of things that aren’t in common.”
The Junkies’ newfound love of country inspired them to begin writing more of their own material and helped them hone the modern alt-country they’d have a hand in pioneering. In fact, the band had chosen the name Cowboy Junkies randomly, mostly for its potential to spark a memorable reaction. But the band’s first real tour of the United States ended up solidifying “Cowboy Junkies” as a sincere and authentic descriptor.
When they returned to Canada in the summer of ’87, Cowboy Junkies began planning their next record. This time, they wanted to bring on more musicians for an expansive yet intricate sound, and so they asked big brother John to provide guitar and background vocals. John then introduced them to a musician from Guelph named Jeff Bird to play fiddle, mandolin, and harmonica. Then they also added Jaro Czerwinec on accordion; Kim Deschamps on guitars and dobro; and Steve Shearer on harmonica.
Sound engineer Peter Moore had scouted out the Church of the Holy Trinity in Toronto, a modest Anglican church built in Gothic revival style in 1847. He chose the church for its nice reverb, and he’d successfully recorded some jazz and string outfits there previously. He booked the space under the name “Timmins Family Singers” instead of Cowboy Junkies, so as to avoid upsetting any pious churchgoers or men of the cloth. Moore was again going to try to record everything using just one mic, and despite the challenges of a much bigger space, he would succeed—spectacularly.
Instead of everyone sitting stationary as they had in the band’s garage, recording in the church became a matter of choreography. “There was a lot of marking out on the floor where the positions would be, like a fader move,” Moore remembers. “You’d mark out where you stand in the chorus, where you stand in the verse, for your solo. Visually, everyone watches the mandolin player walk up to the mic, so naturally everybody playing supports him, they sit back and let him solo.” The resulting album’s magic resides in the vivid feeling that you’re right there among the players and the music, sitting quietly in a pew and absorbing The Trinity Session’s simultaneously intimate and spacious godliness.
The Trinity Session opens with the sound of a furnace rumbling (Moore timed it perfectly on that chilly November day, switching the furnace on right after he hit record) followed by Margo’s crystalline acapella vocals on “Mining For Gold” (appropriately titled considering the Timminses’ family history). The song follows the slow, stoop-shouldered progression of hardened miners with rock dust in their lungs and scoliosis in their bones. “I feel like I’m dying from mining for gold,” Margo sings with silky sadness.
The church turns still and the blues wail in with melancholy harmonica on “Misguided Angel,” amid flutters of accordion and its full band of pedal steel, bass, drums, and mandolin. Margo’s voice stays understated, yet the band never overshadows her, her voice floating in and out of the instrumentation. “I said, ‘Mama, he’s crazy and he scares me / But I want him by my side / Though he’s wild and he’s bad / And sometimes just plain mad / I need him to keep me satisfied,” Margo pleads. In 2004, Margo told NPR that she couldn’t sing “Misguided Angel” in the same way anymore. “When I first started, that song was more of a romantic story of bad boy meets good girl. Now I think... maybe it's not such a good idea,” she said, laughing.
A gauze of innocent, woeful ’50s romance floats in on the waltzing, trance-like “Blue Moon Revisited (Song For Elvis).” The band had originally planned to perform the song as a cover but it morphed into their own loopy groove and became more of a tribute than a faithful rendition. The song is then followed by the slinky, shimmying “I Don’t Get It,” written by Mike and Margo, and it rumbles with dark, moody bass, honky-tonk harmonica, and Margo’s sultry, shivering vocals.
Next, a cover of Hank Williams’ “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” takes the galloping original and slows it down to an unhurried flow of honey, turning it into something sparse and sensual. In contrast, the pedal steel-infused “To Love Is To Bury” is a light waltz that stays true to the country tradition—and it’s all about spousal murder.
“200 More Miles” is a road song that looks forward, while paying ode to the process that made The Trinity Session possible—“I got Willie on the radio / A dozen things on my mind / And number one is fleshing out / These dreams of mine.” The slightly haunting “Dreaming My Dreams With You,” a Waylon Jennings cover, showcases Margo’s willowy and whispery vocals: “Someday I’ll get over you / I’ll live to see it all through / But I’ll always miss / Dreaming my dreams with you.”
“Working On A Building” brings the sexy back with sensual guitar flourishes and Margo’s shivering shimmy, while also drawing attention the church they’re recording in—“Working on a building, a Holy Ghost building / For my Lord, for my Lord.”
Next comes everyone’s all-time favorite, the Junkies’ sublime cover of the Velvet Underground’s “Sweet Jane.” Appropriately dark and slow, dusky and saccharine, it’s a cover even the notoriously cranky Lou Reed loved, and he even went so far as to call it “the best and most authentic version I have ever heard.” (Instead of covering the more well-known version of “Sweet Jane” on the Velvets’ fourth album Loaded, the Junkies instead chose the version that appeared on the live album 1969.)
“Postcard Blues” is sparse, whispery blues—a dead-of-night, cold-sweat lament—about trying to get a lover to come back: “I long for you and your expert hands / To ease this white heat from my head.” The album ends with the swaying, sashaying “Walking After Midnight,” a Patsy Cline cover and a bluesy slow jam about searching for a long-lost love: “I stop to see a weeping willow / Crying on his pillow / Maybe he’s a-crying for me.”
Cowboy Junkies released The Trinity Session in much the same way they’d released their debut album—as a humble little independent record. But soon it began garnering increasing radio play, attracting the attention of BMG Records. The Junkies signed to the major label’s RCA imprint, and then came the tsunami of media attention. The New York Times deemed Cowboy Junkies “the hippest band in the world,” and not long after cocaine addicts started kicking their habits just so they could lose themselves in Trinity’s slow, spacious, haunting atmosphere. In fact, you might even call it a religious experience. “Those recordings obviously gave people a way to escape their trauma, to go inside it for forty-five minutes, go somewhere else,” mused sound engineer Peter Moore. “That’s a pretty big thing to have been a part of. To me, the fact that that music helped says a lot.”
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