Rena's Cowboy

The Cowboy Junkies' 2012 collection The Nomad Series combines all of the releases the band recorded over an 18-month cycle and conceptualized around common but separate narratives. Included is 2010's Renmin Park, which featured songs built around loops, conversations, street performances, and found sounds recorded during guitarist/songwriter Michael Timmins' time adopting two children from China…

After touring in support of Gregg Allman, only Scott Boyer and Tommy Talton remained of the original band. The release of Boyer & Talton, still using the Cowboy moniker, proves justified, as this record is a natural progression from 5'll Getcha Ten. Utilizing a crack support band made up of musicians in the Capricorn corral, Boyer & Talton deliver the goods and then some. From the opening "Patch & Pain Killer" right on through to the close, "Houston," this Cowboy outfit rock and soul with just the right amount of smooth Southern charm to grab hold of and keep your listening attention. Probably this band's finest hour.

Who says you can't make a great record in one day – or night, as the case may be? The Trinity Session was recorded in one night using one microphone, a DAT recorder, and the wonderful acoustics of the Holy Trinity in Toronto. Interestingly, it's the album that broke the Cowboy Junkies in the United States for their version of "Sweet Jane," which included the lost verse. It's far from the best cut here, though. There are other covers, such as Margo Timmins' a cappella read of the traditional "Mining for Gold," a heroin-slow version of Hank Williams' classic "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry," "Dreaming My Dreams With You" (canonized by Waylon Jennings), and a radical take of the Patsy Cline classic "Walkin' After Midnight" that closes the disc. Those few who had heard the band's previous album, Whites Off Earth Now!!, were aware that, along with Low, the Cowboy Junkies were the only band at the time capable of playing slower than Neil Young and Crazy Horse – and without the ear-threatening volume.

Such Ferocious Beauty is vintage Cowboy Junkies and another dimension from the lo-fi Canadian band comprised of, well, family. A tangle of sonic textures, Beauty is a rumination on aging, losing parents, facing mortality and creating space for one’s life in the midst of the ruin that comes from merely living. “Mike has never shied away from the darker, harder and sometimes uglier realities of our human condition,” Margo Timmins explains of the band’s singular focus, “nor has he shied from its beauty. Thankfully, with one comes the other.” 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 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 using the ambisonic microphone, and their mix of blues, country, folk, rock and jazz earned them both critical attention and a strong fan base.

On January 12, 1970, 'Time' magazine placed The Band on its cover with the headline, 'The New Sound of Country Rock.' In the taxonomy of popular music, Country Rock was now a thing, a categoryby 1970. There were Country Rock browser bins in some stores, and trade magazines like 'Billboard'routinely classified records as country-rock or country/rock, expecting readers to know what they meant.

On January 12, 1970, 'Time' magazine placed The Band on its cover with the headline, 'The New Sound of Country Rock.' In the taxonomy of popular music, Country Rock was now a thing, a categoryby 1970. There were Country Rock browser bins in some stores, and trade magazines like 'Billboard'routinely classified records as country-rock or country/rock, expecting readers to know what they meant.

Sharon the alternate recording of what would become Cowboy Junkies 1990 The Caution Horses album and follow up to the band’s iconic album The Trinity Session, is available for pre-order for the first time on 180-gram vinyl. The one-microphone recording, captured over 3-days at Sharon Temple in the Spring of 1989, is a ‘lost’ album featuring many songs that became The Caution Horses.