Cowboy Junkies: Music Is The Drug - The Podcast

Welcome to the 50th episode of "Music Is The Drug", and we're marking the occasion with Michael Timmins and Alan Anton discussing perhaps the Junkies' best known recording, "Sweet Jane", from "The Trinity Session". A song that was in the repertoire as far back as "Whites Off Earth Now!!", we look at the reasons why "Sweet Jane" and the Velvet Underground have always been Junkies' touchstones and hear just what songwriter Lou Reed thought of the band's recording of the song that takes ...

Welcome to the third part of our special series of podcasts to mark the release of Cowboy Junkies’ new album, “Such Ferocious Beauty”. With the help of music from the album, some demos and an excerpt from an as yet unreleased track, this time we’re talking to Alan Anton to get his take on the record, its writing and production and playing it live. To watch the video for "Hard To Build. Easy To Break.", click here. To watch the video for "What I Lost", click here. To order "Such Feroci...

On June 2nd 2023, Cowboy Junkies release their new album, “Such Ferocious Beauty”, an album of ten songs that is up there with anything they’ve done right across their career. To celebrate its release, we’ve got a two part conversation with Michael Timmins about the thinking behind the record, its themes and its recording process. Added to that, there’s plenty of music both from the record itself as well as the songwriting and early production demos. In this second part of our "S...

On June 2nd 2023, Cowboy Junkies release their new album, “Such Ferocious Beauty”, an album of ten songs that is up there with anything they’ve done right across their career. To celebrate its release, we’ve got a two part conversation with Michael Timmins about the thinking behind the record, its themes and its recording process. Added to that, there’s plenty of music both from the record itself, the songwriting and early production demos and even a demo of a so far unreleased track sp...

A morality - or immorality - tale for a modern age "Simon Keeper" looks at how greed can, sometimes, bring business to its knees, and, on the opposite side of the coin, how once a scammer, always a scammer... Recorded originally for "Open", using the songwriting demo, the "Open" mix and the finished version on "One Soul Now", Michael Timmins. and Alan Anton go through the story of bringing "Simon Keeper" to life and also ponder just how tough it is to put a concert set list together when you...

"Where Are You Tonight?" was first released on "The Caution Horses" in 1990, was on last year's "Sharon" release which looked at the band's first pass at recording that material, was included in the "200 More Miles" live album and is still often included in the live set to this day. So what makes a song such a hardy perennial in the Junkies' huge catalogue, why has it endured and where did it spring from in the first place? Michael Timmins and Alan Anton have the answers on this episode of...

When Cowboy Junkies were putting together "Early 21st Century Blues" in 2005, their response to a post 9/11 world where the possibility of greater understanding and unity had, as ever been bulldozed by the rush to war, they were looking to find songs with an anti-violence message, in all the possible senses. On the 2004 "One Soul Now" tour, they had been playing George Harrison's "Isn't It A Pity", and that was a song that translated perfectly to that album's themes. In this episode, we re...

In this episode, it's the turn of "Hard To Build. Easy To Break.", another new song from the band's upcoming album, "Such Ferocious Beauty", to come under the spotlight. Like "What I Lost", the song is a co-write by Michael Timmins and Alan Anton and they are both here to talk us through it, along with some exclusive clips from the songwriting demo to boot. Musically built on a loping groove that has roots that you might not immediately associate the Junkies with, the lyric looks at ...

Cowboy Junkies were in the midst of recording 'Renmin Park' for what became the 'Nomad Series' when they heard of the sad death of Vic Chestnut on Christmas Eve 2009. Vic had toured with and supported the band on a number of occasions and their immediate reaction was to produce an album that was a tribute to him and his songs. 'Demons' was the upshot and from that album, in this episode Michael Timmins and Alan Anton discuss Vic's song 'Supernatural' and the joys and challenges of covering ...

In our last episode, we talked about a brand new song, "What I Lost", from the band's upcoming new album, "Such Ferocious Beauty". In it, Michael Timmins referenced its thematic links with "Follower 2", a song from "AtThe End Of Paths Taken", so what better time to cover that song than in this episode? Mike and Alan Anton discuss the thinking behind the song, including the string section that so illuminates the track. We've got a few little heard clips of the recording session to illustrat...

"Music Is The Drug" is back for a fourth series and we're starting out by talking about a brand new song, "What I Lost" from the band's upcoming new album, "Such Ferocious Beauty". A co-write by Michael Timmins and Alan Anton, they take us through the writing and development of the new song and explain why it's the first song to be aired from the new album. But don't waste your time reading this, dive in to the podcast. You're going to love it... To watch the video for the song, click he...

Taken from "At The End Of Paths Taken", "My Little Basquiat" is a song that still has its place in the Junkies' live set some 15 years later. built around Alan Anton's bass groove and featuring on of Michael Timmins' favourite guitar solos, Mike and Alan are here to tell us all about writing the song - or their versions of it anyway - and just what part the 1976 Montreal Olympics had to play in its completion... To make sure you don't miss out on each weekly episode, remember to subscribe...

Going back to Cowboy Junkies' first album, "Whites Off Earth Now!!", in this episode, Michael Timmins and Alan Anton take a look at the whys and wherefores behind the inclusion of Bruce Springsteen's "State Trooper" on a record that otherwise concentrates mainly on earlier blues performers like Robert Johnson and John Lee Hooker. Dark, brooding, intense, Springsteen's opus to a police encounter on the freeway might well have been dictated to him by Johnson from the other side, wondering whe...

Some songs never quite make it onto albums not because they're not up to standard, but because they simply refuse to fit in with all the other songs. In the olden days, they'd get scooped up and used on the b-side of a single or 12", but in the modern world, they tend to have to wait until a band is ready to issue a 'rarities' stye record. "Ikea Parking Lot" is one of those songs and when you listen to it, you can see why. Eerie, atmospheric, even harrowing, what song would you put it befor...

"Breathing" is a song from the "Ghosts" album that was released by Cowboy Junkies as the world began to slip into Covid lockdown in March 2020. Deeply personal, strikingly minimalist, powerfully emotional, we'll just leave it to Michael Timmins and Alan Anton to explain it all to you... "Music Is The Drug" is available wherever you get your podcasts. Please remember to subscribe at your favourite podcast provider - Apple, Amazon, Google, Spotify, Deezer, Stitcher, TuneIn, Podchaser and all...

"Renmin Park" is surely the most unusual album in the Cowboy Junkies' canon, an album that grew from a trip Michael Timmins and his family took to China. Using ideas and field recordings from his time out there, collaborating with Chinese musicians and writers, leaning heavily on loops and grooves put together by Alan Anton and producer Joby Baker, it's a record that sounds unlike. anything else by anybody else. In this podcast, Mike and Alan explain the thought process and the recording pr...

Having beguiled the world with their first three albums, as Cowboy Junkies approached "Black Eyed Man", they felt it was time to change things up a little, breaking up much of "The Caution Horses" band, bringing in new musicians, different instruments and a different approach to recording. "Southern Rain", the opening song on that album, exemplified that change in style, having a more up-tempo feel, introducing Ken Myhr on guitar and showcasing more of the band's classic rock sensibili...

Back in late 1999, we were thinking less about partying and more about whether or not the modern world was going to collapse at midnight on December 31st, ravaged by the Y2K bug. Sean Connery solved that one for us, as Alan Anton points out in this podcast... But the dawning of a new millennium was also time for a little reflection on life, the universe and everything, personally and globally, and that mood was caught perfectly in "Thousand Year Prayer", a song from "Open". A meditation on...

1979 might not seem an obvious episode for a podcast from a band that didn't start until six years later, but it was a pivotal year for Alan Anton and Michael Timmins as they put together their first ever band, Hunger Project. Inspired by the bands that broke through that year - The Cure, Public Image Limited, The Fall, Joy Division and others - Alan Anton talks us through the records he and Mike were listening to that year, how they inspired the to get a band together and how that mus...

In this episode, we’re going back nearly 35 years, to a song from “The Trinity Session”, the album that put Cowboy Junkies on the international map. One of the biggest songs from that album was “Blue Moon Revisited (Song For Elvis)” which was released as a single and was a heavy rotation video on MTV back in the day. We'll hear from Michael Timmins and Alan Anton how it was that the song missed the cut on the original Latent vinyl release of "The Trinity Session", how that unforgettable bas...