As we creep towards 2012 and the end of the world, we figured that it is only fitting that we have a big “blow out” sale in the Junk Store. So we’ve discounted everything in the store by 20%. The sale will last until the world ends or January 15th (whichever comes first). I hope you are all having a peaceful and safe holiday season.
I hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday season. Here is the quasi-title track from the upcoming Volume 4 (The Wilderness)…our holiday gift to all of you for taking the time and making the effort to listen to what we create. This song owes a huge debt to the Marilynne Robinson novel “Gilead” (as do many of the songs on “The Wilderness”). I have a habit of copying inspiring passages or lines in my notebook when I am reading. I often refer to these notes when I’m doing my own writing or when I’m stuck and looking for a direction. I think I could have copied half of this novel into my notebook. The novel takes the form of a letter written by an elderly, dying pastor to his seven year old son. It is a dense read and the type of book that you only want to undertake when you know you have a good stretch of time to devote to sitting, reading and thinking (such a luxury these days, eh?). Here is a sampling from the book…mull on these thoughts as you stand in line at Target, waiting to return Uncle Ernie’s holiday offerings…”A father must finally give his child up to the wilderness – trust that there will be angels in that wilderness.” …and as you inch closer to the cashier…”We fly forgotten as a dream, leaving the forgetful world behind us to trample and mar and misplace everything we have ever cared for. That is just the way of it, and it is remarkable.” Have a fantastic break…enjoy the music.
Last year we announced that we were about to undertake a four album project called The Nomad Series and that the project was going to be completed in 18 months. Well, depending on how you do the calculation, today is the 18 month anniversary. The way I figure it, we officially released volume 1 (Renmin Park) on June 16th, 2010, so I count that as the official start of the ticking clock. Projecting 18 months forward from that day lands us squarely in the middle of today. So what can I say…oops…we tried, we failed…mea culpa…. My excuse is that the reality of earning a living got in the way of our ambition and I had to suspend production on Volume 4 when I got offered to do the music score for a very interesting documentary project called My Father And The Man In Black (more on that in the months to come). This set the production schedule back by about six weeks. In any case, the good news is that all of the recording for Volume 4 (The Wilderness) has been completed and we have just started mixing. We aim to have the album finished and mastered by mid January and to have the finished goods in hand when we start touring again in February. Once we have the finished master (in mid-January) we plan to have a one day listening party for the new album on the website, so that we can claim that we only missed our deadline by a few weeks (we’ll give everyone a lot of notice about the date when we finalise the details).
Ultimately, the whole point of the project was to put out four albums that forced us to stretch our imaginations and talents and to pull on the experience that we have accumulated in our 25 plus years as a band. We also wanted to make sure that we pushed the expectations of those of you still listening. We think we have done that and we hope you agree. Quality first…right? We think Volume 4 will be a fitting capper to the whole project. I’ll start blogging about the making of the album and posting audio in the New Year, so don’t wander too far. We will also be having a blowout sale in the Junk Store starting right after Christmas so keep your eyes on the site.
Has it really already been a year? At the end of our European tour last November we decided to take a year off the road. Our most extended break in over a decade. There were a couple of one-offs that we couldn’t pass up like in Budapest and Beijing, but we haven’t seen the inside of a tour bus for twelve months: funny how it seems like only a month or so ago that we battled the bus from hell across Northern Europe.
It has certainly been a busy year. After we got home from Europe we finished off Demons, we recorded and released Sing In My Meadow and have made huge inroads into volume 4, The Wilderness. I also recorded and released a couple of albums for Latent: Ivy Mairi’s No Talker and Cootes Leland’s Trail Of Smoke, as well as working on a number of other smaller projects in our studio. Perhaps that is why this year has passed so quickly.
Hamburg (Nov 2 and 3)
It’s always hard to get going again. The disruption on the home front is always unsettling. My way to assuage the guilt of leaving is to go around the house changing all of the burnt out light bulbs. Once that is done I feel that I have left the family on a firm footing. The flight across the pond was thankfully uneventful (except for the $1700 excess baggage fee) and we arrived in Hamburg without the loss of a single bag or instrument case. On Day 1 the only struggle was to try and stay awake long enough to trick ones internal clock in to readjusting to the time change. Fat chance. The 3am wake-up is inevitable, you’d think we would have learnt by now.
Day 2 was gig day. It was a new venue for us, Fabrik, located in an old factory of some sort: a very beautiful old building (in an industrial kind-of-way) that has been intelligently reconfigured. When we walked in we weren’t quite sure of what it would sound like, but we were quickly won over at soundcheck. Tonight’s show was the type of gig that is responsible for keeping bands like us out on the road for 25 years. One of those magic gigs where the sound on stage is perfect and each player is reacting to what the other is doing, where the band moves as a single organism, growing, growling, collapsing and reacting as a unit. It’s the type of gig that when one comes off stage you think, “I never, ever want to stop doing this”. The audience was also in tune and was willing to come along for the ride as we dipped deeply into The Nomad Series and Sing In My Meadow in particular. The songs on volume 3 are particularly fun to play live and I have a feeling their intensity will grow over the coming years.
Hannover (November 4)
We were due for a bit of a letdown. All of the travel, a couple of days and nights of fighting jetlag and all of the energy spent on the first gig was bound to take its toll. We have never been to Hannover, but it was hard to do too much exploring, my body is confused and sometimes it’s best to just stay relatively still and let it orientate itself. It was a nice enough venue tonight, but it seemed set up for more of a rock band: a very high stage and a PA that was much too powerful for the room. Jared had trouble controlling the sound out front and consequently we had a tough time finding our sound on stage. It wasn’t a terrible night, but not nearly as good as last night. It was more like work tonight, but enjoyable work. Once again the audience was terrific. We have been, and where possible will continue, dividing the show into two hour long sets and reserving the entire first set for songs from The Nomad Series and then playing the “hits” and some obscurities in the second set. It seems to be working and, so far, the audiences seem to be reacting well to the concept.
Berlin (November 5)
Last night was our first night on the bus although we sat all night outside the gig and didn’t move until 7:30 this morning. A four hour trek along the autobahn isn’t the best way to start a day, but what can you do, this is Europe, you roll with the punches. Berlin is one of those cities that you can’t really get a feel for on just one visit. We have been coming here for over two decades (our first time was right before the wall came down) and I can’t say that I have figured this place out. All I know is that it’s got the energy and insanity of all the great cities of the world. It’s always a pleasure to come here. One nice feature about this bus is that all of the bunks have windows in them. This morning I lay in my bunk, watching Berlin roll by on this beautiful fall morning.
This is our fourth time playing this venue (Passionkirsche) and yet I’m still not exactly sure where it is located in Berlin. The neighbourhood surrounding it is very active and full of young families. The square across from the church was occupied by a flea market today and the food market just beyond was full of families out for a late breakfast. I spent some time wandering through the neighbourhood’s old graveyard which was especially spectacular in its fall colours. I even saw a few types of warbler-ish birds that I’ve never seen before. If I had a life list I’d have something to add to it.
The Passionkirsche is a beautiful and still active church that has a lot of musical events, although most of them are acoustic. It’s always a little tricky turning up the amplifiers in here. Fortunately we have some experience dealing with its sonic challenges. We had a magical gig tonight. It wasn’t as musically locked in as the Hamburg show but there was fantastic energy and there seemed to be a real communion between the band and audience: really fun night on both sides of the stage.
That wraps up the German leg of the tour….tonight it’s an overnight drive to Belgium and a day off In Bruges.
The $2.99 deal may be over, but there are still lots of bargains, so please check out our package deals. If you’re still undecided about buying the new album then read what all the cool cats are saying about it…perhaps they can pry your credit card out of your stiff little fingers (or just listen to it for free using the music player on the right hand side of the page and decide for yourself…).
The Daily Telegraph: “..after a quarter century, the Cowboy Junkies are still producing music to challenge and engage…” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/worldfolkandjazz/8828202/Cowboy-Junkies-Sing-In-My-Meadow-CD-review.html
Blogcritics.com: “among the most brazen effort in the veteran band’s entire catalog…reverb and thick, corrosive riffs drive this thing, alternating between robust, menacing cuts and comparatively abstract, mood-driven ones..” http://blogcritics.org/music/article/music-review-cowboy-junkies-sing-in/
Metromix.com: “…the Junkies at their rawest and roughest…shows yet another side of the most versatile, underated bands of the last 25 years.” http://newyork.metromix.com/music/standard_photo_gallery/new-music-in-stores/2862890/photo/2862948
No Depression: “..an exciting glimpse into the bands depth and power..” http://www.nodepression.com/profiles/blog/list?user=312u3do8fof3z
Paste: “..sounds like it would fit right in with their platinum records from early in their career…” http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2011/10/cowboy-junkies-sing-in-my-meadow.html
quick before it melts: “…few bands, have managed to keep challenging and pushing boundaries a quarter century after forming the way that Cowboy Junkies have…” http://www.quickbeforeitmelts.com/2011/10/3rd-crusade/
This is it folks…grab your $2.99 download by midnight tonight or turn into a pumpkin.
In case you missed it in the fine print…..you can download our new album, Sing In My Meadow, for $2.99 until this coming Tuesday. Also, we’ll be posting the contest winners tomorrow, so check back here.
Welcome to Sing In My Meadow day! The new album is available today through our site and at a selective few independent record stores throughout North America (it will be available in the UK/Europe next week). It will also be available digitally, over the coming weeks, at all of the big internet digital download stores.
If you are only interested in the digital version you can buy it here, for the next week, for just $2.99. Before purchasing it make sure that you check out the other bundles available. The album is available on CD and on vinyl. Also available is a Bonus EP of live tracks recorded on the 2006 Paths Taken tour and a very limited edition Sing In My Meadow t-shirt.
If you haven’t been here in a while please check out the Clubhouse Subscription. For a very modest price you can download all four volumes of the Nomad Series as well as all of the downloadable music on our site (which includes hundreds of recordings not available elsewhere) and we will send you the Nomad Series book which we will be releasing in early 2012 after the release of Volume 4. If you are already a Clubhouse member you can get the new album now, inside the Clubhouse (and we thank you, once again, for your generous patronage).
Or you can just hang around and listen to it for free…..pass the word, “Happy Sing In My Meadow Day!!”.
Enjoy.
Only six more sleeps until the release of Sing In My Meadow (Volume 3), but in the meantime you can download a free song off of the Bonus EP that we will be releasing along with the album. The Bonus EP is made up of five live recordings that we made during the Paths Taken tour in 2006. By entering your email for the download you will also be entered in a draw to win a bunch of stuff. To find out more about the prizes and to get the free download click the “download and contest” button on the right of the page or just click here. Also, make sure that you check back on October 18th as we will be selling the new album real cheap for the first few days.
In case you didn’t know, we will be having a Latent Recordings night at Hugh’s Room, in Toronto, on October 29th. On the bill will be Cootes Leland, Ivy Mairi and Finlayson/Maize (of Skydiggers fame) as well as us. Everyone will perform a short acoustic set followed by Cowboy Junkies. We will be performing with the full band and will play between 45 – 60 minutes. We are going to road test a lot of new songs off of the first three volumes of the Nomad Series and we might even throw in something from Volume 4.
Hugh’s Room is an excellent listening room with good food, excellent beer and a tiered listening area so there are no bad seats in the house. It’s also a tiny space, so if you live in the area or are planning a trip to our fair city, come on down. It should be a fun night. Get your tickets here.
