Cowboy Junkies: Music Is The Drug - The Podcast

Just like "Hunted", which we looked at in an earlier podcast, "The Slide' is a song that Cowboy Junkies have taken two studio bites at, initially on "One Soul Now" and then again on the box set "Notes Falling Slow". With the help of Michael Timmins and Alan Anton, plus some rare recordings of the song from the "Anatomy Of An album" CD ROM, we chart...

"Angels In The Wilderness" is one of the cornerstone songs from the fourth album in the "Nomad Series", "The Wilderness". It's a song that has gone through a number of changes since it was first played live in 2008 and one where the definitive performance hasn't been easy to pin down. Recently reintroduced to the live repertoire, it's a song worth redis...

"Missing Children" is a song that reaches across the ages - from one poem written by Michael Timmins to another written by William Blake 200 years ago - to approach a subject that still confronts us all too often today. The song has become a live favourite since its release on "All That Reckoning" and features all the hallmarks of an enduring Junkies song - a chunky rhythm, pro...

We've got a bonus episode for you this time, when special guest host Jason Lent (@VelvetRebel1984) quizzes usual host Dave Bowler about his biography of Cowboy Junkies, "Music Is The Drug", published in 2021. You can find out how the book came about, how the band approached being interviewed for hours on end, and all the behind the scenes stuff that goes into writing 250,000 words -...

It's 21 years ago this month that Cowboy Junkies released "Open", their first album after going independent again, so we thought we should celebrate it with an album special podcast this time around. We're taking an overview of the album as a whole, looking at the thinking that went into leaving the major labels behind, the approach that they took to recording and the input tha...

When you first put "Pale Sun Crescent Moon" in the CD player back in 1993, the opening strains of "Crescent Moon" alerted seasoned fans to another development in the Cowboy Junkies' sound. With Michael Timmins and Alan Anton, this episode explores how and why that change came about but we also delve deeper into "Crescent Moon" itself, a siren song of sorts, givin...

From the "Sing In My Meadow" album, we're enjoying a hefty chunk of nostalgia in this episode as Michael Timmins and Alan Anton help us take a closer look at "Late Night Radio". With a lyric rooted in Mike's childhood, it's a lyric that all of us of a certain age can identify with in one way or another. From listening to the baseball game to trying o find that on...

It's not often that songs come in "his and hers" versions, but "Come Calling" from Cowboy Junkies' "Lay It Down" album did just that. With the help of Alan Anton and Michael Timmins, we'll trace the song's evolution from the writing sessions on Rock Island in Ontario through to completion. We'll look at the real life story that underpins the l...

We're heading away from our usual song approach with this episode and instead devoting this podcast to "At The End Of Paths Taken" to mark the 15th anniversary of the album's release in April 2007 - where did all those years go... Rather than look at specific songs, we're taking an overview of the album as a whole, one where the band went in for radical change as far as th...

We're trawling through dark waters in this week's episode of "Music Is The Drug", as we look into the story behind "Murder, Tonight, In The Trailer Park" from "Black Eyed Man". One of their hardest driving songs, certainly as far as their early albums go, Alan Anton guides us through finding the baseline that propels it, as well as the urgency that working o...

Welcome back for the second series of "Music Is The Drug", the Cowboy Junkies podcast. According to Michael Timmins, "Good Friday" is one of those songs that "just descended" on him, written very quickly on a day when, for a brief moment, the world was suddenly connected and everything made sense. That feeling is crystallised in a song that has a special sparkle to it...

Completing our look at Cowboy Junkies' new album, "Songs of the Recollection", we're turning the vinyl over today and talking about the tracks on side B, with the help of Michael Timmins and Alan Anton. The songs under the microscope in this episode are "The Way I Feel" (Gordon Lightfoot), "I've Made Up My Mind To Give Myself To You" (Bob Dylan), "...

To mark the release of Cowboy Junkies' new album, "Songs of the Recollection", we've put together a two part special about the record. In this episode, we're covering the thinking behind the album and then the songs that go to make up the first side, for those of us till thinking in terms of vinyl. With the ever present help of Michael Timmins and Alan Anton, we'll be...

"Mountain" was the climax of 2007's "At The End Of Paths Taken" - an album we'll be revisiting in detail in a special edition in April. With the help of Michael Timmins and Alan Anton, we'll be tracing the development of the song  through to its conclusion, employing a few rare recordings along the way. Looking at how it has some of its sonic roots in The Beatles...

Going back to "The Trinity Session" this week, and one of Michael Timmins' first solo songs for the band, a hymn to a life on the road and the band's hoped for destiny of being part of the chain that takes the music and passes it on down to the next generation. With Mike and Alan Anton, we look at how the song was pieced together from impressions gathered when they were on the...

Taken from "Sing In My Meadow", the third album in the "Nomad" series, the song "3rd Crusade" is a reminder that those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it. With Michael Timmins and Alan Anton, we cover the thinking behind the song, its parent album and the different light that this more raucous, psychedelic album shines on the band.  To make sure you don&apo...

"Hunted", originally released on "Pale Sun Crescent Moon", remains one of the darker corners of Cowboy Junkies' discography to this day, nearly 30 years on from its original release. In this episode of "Music Is The Drug", Michael Timmins talks about how he can to write the song and he and Alan Anton also trace its development in concert over the years, through t...

You'll have probably heard Cowboy Junkies' new cover of David Bowie's "Five Years" by now - and if you haven't, click here - but the Thin White Duke wasn't the only guy that could write hymns to dysfunctional times you know. From the "All That Reckoning" album released in 2018, "The Things We Do To Each Other" talks to the weird times that we&...

We have two songs to cover in this episode, both slow, sad waltzes from the same kind of period in Junkies history, both written somewhere around 1991. "Five Room Love Story" was a new song that was being played on the "Caution Horses" tour, but which didn't quite make it onto the next album. Michael Timmins and Alan Anton explain what the song was about and why it missed...

Following on from "I'm So Open" in the last episode, "Why This One" from 2004's "One Soul Now" picks up a lot of the threads from that song and finds us all three years further down the line and not a lot the wiser for it, but with plenty more questions to ask. As in life, so in art... As well as discussing the song in proper detail, Michael Timmins and Alan...

After leaving Geffen, Cowboy Junkies embarked on the 21st century as a newly independent band again, marking that with the release of the album "Open" in 2001. "I'm So Open" was that album's rallying cry in many ways, as Michael Timmins and Alan Anton explain in this episode, marking a new start lyrically, sonically and in the way in which the band recorded.  The albu...

Whatever day you're listening to this podcast, rest assured, it's Tuesday morning... "Sun Comes Up, It's Tuesday Morning" has long been one of the best loved songs in the Cowboy Junkies' canon. A hit single from "The Caution Horses",  it was released as the Junkies were adjusting to the huge success of "The Trinity Session" and adjusting to recordi...

In our third look behind the curtain at the songs of Cowboy Junkies, we've picked out "A Common Disaster", a top 20 hit single in the US in 1996. The lead single from "Lay It Down", the band's first album on Geffen, it saw the Junkies getting back to their roots of the "core four" after using extended bands over their previous four studio records. Michael Ti...

Having opened this series with the first song Cowboy Junkies put on record, for our second episode, we've gone to to the other end of the spectrum with "Ornette Coleman", the final song on their most recent album, "Ghosts". It's one of Michael Timmins' most obviously autobiographical songs, about the time he and Alan Anton spent in London in the early 1980s, play...

For this first episode of "Cowboy Junkies - Music Is The Drug", a look through the recordings of Cowboy Junkies, where else could we start other than side one, track one of the band's debut album, "Whites Off Earth Now!!"? Although "Shining Moon" was a cover version of a Lightnin' Hopkins song, many of the elements that came to define Cowboy Junkies were alr...