Cowboy Junkies are an alternative country and folk rock band formed in Toronto, Ontario, Canada in 1985 by Alan Anton (bassist), Michael Timmins (songwriter, guitarist), Peter Timmins (drummer) and Margo Timmins (vocalist). The three Timminses are siblings, and Anton worked with Michael Timmins during their first couple of bands. John Timmins was a member of the band but left the group before the recording of their debut studio album. The band line-up has never changed since, although they use several guest musicians on many of their studio albums, including multi-instrumentalist Jeff Bird who has performed on every album except the first.
Cowboy Junkies' 1986 debut studio album, produced by Canadian producer Peter Moore, was the blues-inspired Whites Off Earth Now!!, recorded in the family garage using a single ambisonic microphone.
The band gained wide recognition with their second studio album, The Trinity Session (1988), recorded in 1987 at Toronto's Church of the Holy Trinity. Their sound, again with Peter Moore using the ambisonic microphone, and their mix of blues, country, folk, rock and jazz earned them both critical attention and a strong fan base. The Los Angeles Times named the recording one of the 10 best albums of 1988.
Cowboy Junkies have gone on to record 16 studio albums and five live albums, with tour dates booked into late 2026.
History Early history Alan Anton and Michael Timmins, lifelong friends who met in kindergarten, formed their first band in high school. In 1979, influenced by post-punk bands such as Siouxsie and the Banshees and Joy Division, they recruited drummer Geoff Railton and vocalist Liza Dawson-Whisker, and formed Hunger Project in Toronto. They moved to Manhattan's Lower East Side and performed at a variety of clubs. In early 1981, the Hunger Project embarked on a multi-city tour of the United States. After that, Hunger Project moved to the United Kingdom, where they toured for three months and released the single "The Same Inside/Assembly" on their independent label, Latent Recordings.
When Hunger Project disbanded, Alan Anton and Michael Timmins remained in London and started an improvisational band named Germinal. The members – Michael Timmins on guitar, Alan Anton on bass, a drummer, and a saxophonist, played whatever they wished on their instruments at the same time. Germinal released two studio albums: Germinal 1 (1983) and Din (1984). The music newspaper New Musical Express said Germinal "ranks among the most innovative and aggressive sounds to emerge from the independent scene this year." Alan Anton and Michael Timmins had a somewhat different take, saying, "It was the ultimate release for us. But for the audience, it was quite a chore." In London, they developed journeyman skills as musicians, and expanded their knowledge of music history — Michael Timmins worked in a record store for a year to make ends meet while with Germinal. Among those who were to influence Michael Timmins and Alan Anton were jazz musicians Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman, and John Coltrane, along with the sound of early blues musicians Lightnin' Hopkins, John Lee Hooker, Bukka White, and Robert Johnson. Germinal broke up after three years in autumn of 1984. Alan Anton moved to Berlin and Michael Timmins returned to New York City.
Upon their return to Toronto in 1985, Alan Anton and Michael Timmins rented a house, insulated the tiny garage, and, with younger brother Pete Timmins sitting in on drums, began exploring a new musical direction. Margo was drafted to join and recalls, "I was contemplating going on to graduate school, staying in school. That was safe. I never wanted to be a musician or be onstage." Nevertheless, Michael Timmins began to hear something in what they were doing with their initial jams, realizing that a female voice was what the band needed. Michael Timmins said, "I thought if you had this female voice on top of it, you could do anything you wanted."
However, the slow musical tempos and whispery, hushed tones that defined their early work was not just musical inspiration, but came about by necessity. Their recording studio was their repurposed garage, which was just behind the house and bordered closely with their neighbours. On their first jam session, the police showed up due to a noise complaint from the neighbour. According to Michael Timmins, "We realized we had to tone down. One thing fed into the other: Margo began to realize that her singing voice was more effective quiet. We began to realize, if we can get down underneath Margo, the sound will be more effective. Pete picked up brushes – he was just learning to play drums at that point. Everything sort of came down. We learned to play with less volume."
When the unnamed band was preparing for its first gig, the members considered various names before choosing Cowboy Junkies. During their early gigs the band would perform at The Rivoli which had a small space in the back. The group would perform a rhythmic groove while Margo sang improvised vocal melodies and portions of old blues songs. Many times the Junkies entire performance would be a single jam session.
Peter Moore, a recording enthusiast who had ambitions of becoming a producer, was at their first show. According to Moore, "I was mesmerized by Margo. The very first show, people weren't paying attention to them, because they were playing so softly and quietly. Margo had her back to the audience a lot of the time."
1980s When the Cowboy Junkies were ready to record a studio album the band sought a like-minded recording engineer. They met Peter Moore at a dinner party, and when they began talking about recording equipment and techniques, they found that Moore's interest in single-microphone recording meshed with their desire to capture the intimate sound of their rehearsal garage. Moore had just purchased a Calrec Ambisonic microphone at the wholesale price of $9,000. The Cowboy Junkies and Moore came together at the rehearsal space on June 26, 1986, and turned the garage into a recording studio. Moore arranged the group around his Calrec, jerry-rigged a control room in the kitchen, and started recording.
The Cowboy Junkies shopped their material but were unable to find a label to distribute their work, so they revived the indie label Latent Recordings that Michael Timmins and Anton had used for their Hunger Project and Germinal works, and released Whites Off Earth Now!! in October 1986. They sold 3,000 copies. The band then toured the US. Michael Timmins described the experience: "While touring Whites we had spent a lot of time in the Southern states, especially Virginia, Georgia and the Carolinas. For some reason the club owners down there took a liking to what we were doing so we spent a lot of time crossing the kudzu choked highways that ran through the heart of the old Confederacy. Those were the days when having to spend a night in a hotel room would mean the difference between eating the next day or paying for the gas to get us to the next town, so we spent a lot of our time sleeping on the floors of friendly promoters, fans, waitresses and bartenders."
The band's next project, The Trinity Session (1988), became their breakthrough. Peter Moore again produced the album. They approached the project as a reaction against the MIDI–dominated musical styles of the '80s. Moore said, "I was angry that music had gotten into drum machines and MIDI. No humanity, no nothing. I'm listening to these recordings from the '50s with two or three mics and I'm going, 'Man that's real music.'" He chose the Church of the Holy Trinity in Toronto for its natural reverb. To better persuade the officials of the historic church, Moore claimed "The Timmins Family Singers" were recording a Christmas special. The session began early on November 27, 1987. Songs with the fewest instruments were recorded first, and then the songs with gradually more complex arrangements. In this way Moore was able to solve acoustic problems one by one. To better balance Margo's vocals against the electric guitars and drums, she was recorded through a PA system left behind by a previous group. By making subtle changes in volume and placement relative to the microphone over six hours, Moore and the band finally reached the distinctive sound of the album.
Music critic for Rolling Stone magazine, Anthony DeCurtis, summed up the result of the group's efforts in a four-star review of the album: "The Trinity Session is in the great tradition of albums that establish a mood and sustain it so consistently that the entire record seems like one continuously unfolding song. The mood in this instance is hypnotic and introspective – an intense, melancholic longing that blends the elemental emotions of country music and the blues with the poetic world-weariness of the Velvet Underground. [...] Having good songs, the skill to convey what they have to say and, most important, a vision, the Cowboy Junkies dispensed with high-tech trumpery and made their record simply and seriously. That attitude helped make the album as important as it is inspiring."
The album was included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die (2006).
1990s The band's third studio album was more challenging, requiring three attempts to get the sound the band desired. Yet despite the problems with the making of it, the band considers it a very exciting and turbulent time in their career and state that The Caution Horses (1990) remains one of their favourite albums. The band rented a small recording studio in the docklands of Toronto with the intention of using the room like the garage their debut studio album was recorded in, instead of a room with live acoustics like the church room they used for The Trinity Session (1988). The session went badly because the group had just come off the road after a gruelling tour and were tired, particularly Margo Timmins who had a terrible head cold. After a few hours they realized the session wasn't working out, and they left.
The second attempt was made on April 21 of 1987 when Peter Moore rented the Sharon Temple, an historic landmark located in the village of Sharon, Ontario. Michael Timmins recalls, "The arrangements that we had developed for this new set of songs were at times so full and lush, unlike the spareness of most of Trinity's songs, that we were immediately confronted with the problem of how to control this swirl of sound so that it didn't just turn to mush on tape. Another problem was that the Temple was a lot more acoustically lively than any of us had imagined. As a result when the music swelled it would often spill over into Margo's vocal mic and feedback." At the end of three days during which the temperature would drop below freezing, Michael Timmins states, "When we packed up and left Sharon that day I don't think that any of us felt that we had captured anything special. It had been a difficult three days and I think that we were all just happy that on that third day we had at least made some decent recordings of the songs if not necessarily memorable ones." Over the next several months the band were touring and playing songs on the Sharon tape. As the band listened, new ideas for them evolved. They also wrote additional songs. Although the band truly loved the recordings, the songs continued to develop on stage, and they believed the session no longer accurately represented where they were as a band. In 2022, however, they released the Sharon session as a special edition vinyl album as well as in streaming formats.