CD Odyssey Disc 589: Cowboy Junkies

Well damn it, I’m sick. I pride myself on rarely being sick, and I even subscribe to the theory that you can ward off sickness by simply ignoring it for a while.  That strategy worked for about five days, but today I gave in and took some cold medication.

Luckily when you take medication rarely it works really well (that’s another one of my theories – I’ve got plenty of ‘em). I call the experience “the velvet tunnel.”

Alright, back to ignoring the ague, and on with the review.

Disc 589 is….Black Eyed Man

Artist: Cowboy Junkies

Year of Release: 1992

What’s up with the Cover? As the old saying goes, if you cut a hole out of roses, you’ll just get a man’s head, and if you cut away a man’s head you’ll just find more roses.

OK that isn’t a saying, but it could be and it seems to be what’s happening here.  Whatever is happening, I like this picture.  Beautiful Etruscan colours and a jarring concept made somehow gentle, not unlike the music of the Cowboy Junkies.

How I Came To Know It: When I was reviewing “Pale Sun, Crescent Moon” back at Disc 267 I learned that there was an album between it and 1990’s “The Caution Horses” and that album had a Townes Van Zandt cover.  I spent about six months looking for it and then gave up and ordered it on Amazon.

While there is nothing inherently wrong with ordering music on Amazon, I try to hold out for as long as possible and hope to find it in a local record store.  I do this for three main reasons.

1. It is good to support your local record store – they are usually run by fellow music lovers that have turned their passion into a business, usually for very little profit.  Support their efforts!
2. It is more fun and exciting to poke around until you find a rare album – and even when you don’t find what you’re looking for you find other interesting albums.  As Motorhead teaches us, the chase is better than the catch!
3. It helps control my habit.  If I just ordered anything I wanted on Amazon, I’d soon be in the poorhouse.  I’ve got a wait-list of 37 albums right now I’m looking for and I could have them all in ten minutes of online shopping.

How It Stacks Up:  Originally I had “Caution Horses” and “Pale Sun, Crescent Moon”  ranked 1-2 but that was before I bought “Black Eyed Man.” While it falls just short of knocking off “Caution Horses” for first, it is plenty good enough to displace “Pale Sun Crescent Moon for the new #2.

Rating:  4 stars

After a very Canadian-focused album with “Caution Horse” the Junkies adopted a lot more southern US sounds and themes on “Black Eyed Man.”

The decision works well for them. If the Junkies’ music was a film, it would be shot in soft focus.  The guitar is muted and Margot Timmins’ vocals are always breathy and ethereal.  The combination usually makes me think of snowy days and prairie roads – lots of vastness and plenty of room for the notes to explore the emptiness, not to mention the mind.

When combined with down-south themes it introduces a new twist on the starkness.  The emptiness is still there, but you can feel the heat on your back now.  Things seem lazy and relaxed like a summer afternoon, but there is a sense of unease amidst it all.  The cold prairie north creeps in; if not in the surroundings then definitely in the listener.

A great example is “Oregon Hill,” which at first sounds like it is a pastoral song about a man relaxing with his girl, Suzy, as she cuts carrots up on Oregon Hill.  Margot’s voice lilts away as she describes Oregon Hill’s location as:

“A river to the south

to wash away all sins.

A college to the east of us

to learn where sin begins.

A graveyard to the west of it all

Which I may soon be lying in.”

Why such grim thoughts?  Because our narrator soon reveals he remembers Oregon Hill from his prison cell, and live or die, he is planning to escape, even for only a single night with his love.  Foolishly, his plan later is to sleep in and wait for the cops to arrive.  Um…next time tell her to meet you in Mexico, dude.

The desperate quality of the characters on “Black Eyed Man” reminded me strongly of Springsteen’s “Nebraska.”  These are tales about simple folk with real anguish in their lives.  Towns decaying around them, and creeping into their hearts, like on the amazing “This Street, That Man, This Life.”

“This street holds its secrets

like a cobra holds its kill.

This street minds its business

like a jailer minds his jail.

That house is haunted.

That door’s a portal to hell.

This street holds its secrets very well.”

Coupled with Timmins’ delivery you can feel the haunting run right through you like the cold damp of a fog; intimate but clammy cold.

 “The Last Spike” is a song about a resource town, abandoned after its resources are used up. An environmental song for sure, but even more a song about the slow sad death of a town with nothing left to hold on to.

And of course, I would be remiss not to mention the reason I bought the record in the first place; Townes Van Zandt!  The album has a Van Zandt composition written for the Cowboy Junkies (unimaginatively titled “Cowboy Junkies Lament”) which is – of course – excellent and a song about Townes (unimaginatively titled “Townes’ Blues”) which is…er…not as good.  But hey, it is still pretty good, and few can compete with Van Zandt when it comes to writing a song.

Speaking of which, the album ends with a Van Zandt cover, “To Live Is To Fly” – one of my all-time favourites.  The Junkies do a very pretty job of it, starting out very slow and still before catching up to the song’s original tempo, and then slowing down at the end of it again.  I admit I prefer both the original and the Steve Earle version, but this is still a fine imagining.

The songs on “Black Eyed Man” are like a bouquet of roses from some southern garden, pretty but covered in thorns that threaten to draw blood.  It may seem a grim garden, but it is a beautiful grim.  You know what they say: cut a hole out of roses, you’ll just get a man’s head.  I’m pretty sure someone says that.

Best tracks: Oregon Hill, A Horse in the Country, This Street That Man This Life, The Last Spike, Cowboy Junkies Lament, To Live is to Fly