{"id":10773,"date":"2012-05-09T12:02:54","date_gmt":"2012-05-09T16:02:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=10773"},"modified":"2012-05-09T12:02:54","modified_gmt":"2012-05-09T16:02:54","slug":"midweek-music-break-cowboy-junkies-angels-in-the-wilderness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2012\/05\/midweek-music-break-cowboy-junkies-angels-in-the-wilderness\/","title":{"rendered":"Midweek Music Break: Cowboy Junkies, “Angels in the Wilderness”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

[Image: Cowboy Junkies (from top: Alan Anton, bass; Margo Timmins, vocals; Peter Timmins, drums; and Michael Timmins, guitar)]<\/em><\/p>\n

Cowboy Junkies<\/a> was the first band I ever listened two who’d been\u00a0dubbed “alt”-anything. (It may have been alt-country<\/em>, but I’m pretty sure it was plain old alternative rock<\/em>.) This made me feel all, y’know, not quite dangerous, more like adventurous — life on the edge! — because I tend toward the plain-brown-wrapper end of most spectra. For starters, I couldn’t imagine ever talking to anyone I knew about a band with the word “junkies” in its name. My family and friends would wonder with whom I’d been hanging out.<\/p>\n

In truth, I don’t remember. I may have first heard of the Junkies from a magazine, Rolling Stone<\/em>\u00a0maybe, in a review of their great Trinity Session<\/em>\u00a0album. (I’ve featured one song from that album here, a good while ago, as one of the selections in the first\u00a0What’s in a Song<\/em> post<\/a>, about “Blue Moon.”)<\/p>\n

Well, whatever the circumstances in which they first crossed my radar screen, Cowboy Junkies have continued for around twenty-five years to crank out whatever music they want to make, and to tour widely in its support. And they still consist of the same four members (two brothers, a sister, and a childhood friend). Most recently, they challenged themselves: write, produce, and release a series of four<\/em>\u00a0interconnected albums… in eighteen months<\/em>. It actually took them a couple-three months longer than that, but the final piece of the Nomad Series<\/em>, the album called Wilderness<\/em>, finally dropped a few weeks ago.<\/p>\n

Here’s one number from the new release, which (to me) feels very comfortably\u00a0both familiar and, yes, alternative<\/em>.<\/p>\n

[Below, click Play button to begin <\/em>Angels in the Wilderness. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 4:42 long.]<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

[audio:angelsinthewilderness_cowboyjunkies.mp3|titles=’Angels in the Wildernss’|artists=Cowboy Junkies]<\/div>\n

[Lyrics<\/a>]<\/em><\/p>\n

If you’re a Cowboy Junkies fan, you’ll almost certainly want to see their\u00a0Tiny Desk Concert<\/a>\u00a0recorded at the NPR offices recently. It’s a fourteen-plus-minute session, featuring both “Angels in the Wilderness” and “Fairytale” from the new album, bracketing the one number which has come closest to a hit for them, from that Trinity Session<\/em>\u00a0album: “Misguided Angel.”<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Image: Cowboy Junkies (from top: Alan Anton, bass; Margo Timmins, vocals; Peter Timmins, drums; and Michael Timmins, guitar)] Cowboy Junkies was the first band I ever listened two who’d been\u00a0dubbed “alt”-anything. (It may have been alt-country, but I’m pretty sure it was plain old alternative rock.) This made me feel all, y’know, not quite dangerous, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[38,2252,74],"tags":[2985,2986,2987,2988],"class_list":{"0":"post-10773","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-backwards","7":"category-midweek-music-break","8":"category-music","9":"tag-cowboy-junkies","10":"tag-alternative-rock","11":"tag-wilderness","12":"tag-trinity-session","13":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-2NL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10773"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10773\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10788,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10773\/revisions\/10788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}