Long before Broken Social Scene, Arcade Fire, and the formidable Arts & Crafts label created an indie music gold rush in Toronto, Cowboy Junkies filtered their post-punk roots through a minimalist approach to recording that enamored college radio stations. The success of their version of Lou Reed’s ‘Sweet Jane’ established them as one of the most interesting bands of the late 1980s and set in motion a successful and consistent career now passing 25 years. After riding upon major label support for over a decade, the band returned to their indie roots at the close of the century. Since then, the band has continued their pattern of touring and recording with a DIY approach to every aspect of the music business.
For their newest project, the band has utilized their website to bring the listener deep inside the writing and recording process in ways few artists have ever done.
Inspired by four paintings given to the band by artist Enrique Martinez Celaya, the idea of releasing four albums in 18 months was born. Titled The Nomad Series, volume one, Renmin Park, appeared in April and features some of the band’s most ambitious work to date. It was inspired by guitarist Michael Timmins’ three-month stay in China with his family. It was an emotional experience for the family and the first time his two adopted daughters visited their place of birth. With his days free, Timmins explored the local community recording what he heard from parades to badminton games. Renmin Park uses these field recordings of everyday life in China to create the atmosphere and even rhythm patterns that the band builds the songs around. The album includes two covers translated from Mandarin and a performance by Zuoxiao Zuzhou, an influential artist in the underground music scene of China. For listeners willing to engage the project, the album bridges two cultures and reveals itself more with each listen.
In addition to making demo versions of the project available through the band’s website, Timmins shares his experience in China through stories, pictures, and video clips that give Renmin Park a context that might be lost to those who have not experienced China firsthand. One of the most heart-wrenching pieces on the website is hand-held video of an orphanage where his eldest daughter was brought after being left in a ditch. The images are not easily shook and hearing the songs again with a better sense of the experiences that created them adds to the emotional depth of the album. In an industry that continues to devolve information to Facebook updates and Twitter blasts, it is refreshing to find an artist swimming against the current and using technology to engage and challenge its audience.
I caught up with Michael Timmins recently and we talked about the project and the decision to open up his personal life to his audience.
Over the last few months, you’ve used the band’s website to share stories about your family’s experiences and the people you met in China whom inspired the songs on Renmin Park. What made you decide to share such personal experiences with visitors of the website?
MT: It was initially a difficult decision, but when we were working on the album, I realized that my discussing the genesis of the songs would be an interesting (and maybe necessary) extension to the music and lyrics. Despite the extra work, I like the idea of turning our website into an extension of the creative process: this is one of the positives of the “internet” era in rock ‘n’ roll…
How important is trust on an album like Renmin Park? The rest of the band were approaching the writing and field recordings without the same experiences and the album pushes the boundaries of what your audience might expect on a Cowboy Junkies album. Were you confident in the band and audience’s willingness to embrace such a different record?
MT: I wasn’t really sure how to approach this album, because of the band issues that you mentioned. And I think the band was a little uncertain about where it was going to head and what it would turn in to. In reality, it’s no different than any of our albums where I bring all of the songs that have sprung from my own experiences, except this time there was a tangible experience at the center of all the songs. Once we started working on the material, all of those worries evaporated and everyone fell into the process. I think it was an exhilarating album to work on for everyone. As far as the audience is concerned, we never really consider them when we are working on an album. We put our faith in the belief that if we make the music that we want to make, it will connect with some, and those that it doesn’t connect with will at least respect our decisions to follow our “muse”.
What are the odds that Renmin Park could have come to fruition if Cowboy Junkies were still operating on a major record label? Does the freedom of pursuing any artistic avenue with the band make the day-to-day running of the operation a little easier to bear?
MT: We had many disagreements with our label partners/masters over the years but we never felt that we were ever prevented from creating the music that we wanted to create. What might have happened (and what did happen in a few cases) was that the label might have refused to promote the album, for whatever reason. Where we might have had a problem was with the whole Nomad Series concept. Four albums in 18 months would have been too much “product” for any label to handle.
Throughout your career, your writing has been honest and centered around real life experiences that many of us deal with. For whatever reason, many critics and listeners have labeled this “dark” and “depressing” which completely misses the hope nestled throughout, I believe. However, many of Vic Chesnutt’s songs are truly dark and a song like ‘Flirted With You All My Life’ is an artist at his barest. How did you engage his catalogue when choosing which songs to cover?
MT: We have recorded 19 of Vic’s songs for the upcoming Demons (volume 2 of The Nomad Series). There were lots of criteria for choosing a song, ranging from songs that one or all of us have always loved, songs on which we felt we could put an interesting spin, songs that we felt were important to his catalogue and songs that would be fun for us to perform in concert. It has been an intense experience for us digging in to Vic’s work.
You’ve written on your website that the last album in The Nomad Series, The Wilderness, will likely include songs written and performed live a few years ago and new material. On One Soul Now, the material also pulled from different writing periods resulting in what I’d consider the least cohesive Cowboy Junkies album despite some exceptional songs. Will you take a different approach with the new album when you assemble all the material?
MT: The material on The Wilderness (volume 4 of The Nomad Series) will all be songs written for that album. Some of the songs might be a couple of years old by the time we release the album (and some we have already performed live a number of times) but that is not unusual for us. In the past 15 years, we have released an album of new material about every three years, so some of the songs are usually a couple of years old by the time we release them. One Soul Now was made up of songs and ideas that were developed over the course of three albums as well as songs written specifically for OSN…so the two situations are very different.
In addition to writing, touring, and managing Latent Records, you find the time to also work as a producer for other artists. On the website, you’ve mentioned how producing Mary Gauthier on The Foundling expanded your understanding of an orphan’s experience, which is the central theme of her album and a major part of Renmin Park. When you signed on to produce The Foundling, how far along was the Renmin Park project and how did working with her affect your own project?
MT: I had written (or had drafts) of some of the songs that ended up on Renmin Park when I began work on The Foundling but we hadn’t yet defined the album and what approach we were going to take. It was immediately after working with Mary that I had a clear vision of which direction to push Renmin Park. After that, the whole project came together very quickly. I think it was seeing how brave Mary was in dealing with the issues that she was dealing with that gave me the courage to deal with some of the extremely personal aspects of Renmin Park.
Interview conducted by Jason Lent