Last week at the Latent Lounge a number of Latent artists covered songs off of The Trinity Session. Pete and Mike sat in on a few of the songs, it was an amazing night. We have been and will continue to be posting songs from all four Latent Lounges so make sure to subscribe to the Latent Recordings YouTube channel.
Here are Skydiggers, Jerry Leger and HarpAcash with their Trinity interpretations…Enjoy!
We had an amazing time at the third installment of Latent Lounge last night, celebrating the release of Jerry Leger‘s new album Nonsense and Heartache as well as the songs of The Trinity Session. We will be posting some videos of the night in a day or so on our Cowboy Junkies Facebook page and on the Latent Recordings Facebook page (please Like them if you haven’t already). But in the meantime you can check out all of the videos that we have posted so far on the Latent Recordings YouTube channel. Here is David Bowie’s Five Years from last weeks Dead Heroes cover set.
You can also still access the live stream of the complete 2nd night of Latent Lounge which includes our performance of 4 new songs. Click here and follow the links.
We grew up in the same town, Montreal. And even though his age placed him more in my parents generation, he defined the youthful energy of Montreal in the 60’s and 70’s: respectfully contrary, with one foot in the old world and one in the new, sophisticated and urbane. This modest, gracious Jewish gentleman whose poems and songs tried to work through the paradoxes, the beautiful victories and the terrible defeats of life and love, taught us what it was to be cool.
He came backstage after one of our shows in LA in the late 80’s with the most strikingly beautiful woman on his arm. The next day at our show, somewhere down the coast, two dozen yellow roses showed up with a note; “Thank you for your music and hospitality – Leonard”. Many years later he sat in the first balcony at Massey Hall where, along with our peers and contemporaries, we saluted him in song. But my favourite memory takes place outside a concert hall in Vancouver after he had just been inducted in to the Canadian Music Hall Of Fame. My wife and I were trying to hail a cab. Beside us was a dapper looking older man (he would have been close to my current age) standing alone, waiting for a cab or his car. It was Leonard Cohen. I went up to him and introduced myself. He held my hand for an extra beat and slowly intoned, “cooool band”. So long Leonard, you taught us well.
Latent’s latest signing, HarpAcash and the Morals, have taken Cowboy Junkies version of Blue Moon Revisited and re-invented it in their own image….I guess we could call it Blue Moon Revisited Revisited. Please take a look and a listen. It is also available as an audio download through their website. The band has a new album coming out in September and will unveil a few more covers songs (including another Cowboy Junkies tune) throughout the Summer.
We just want to let you all know that we have signed a new artist to our Latent Recordings label. The name of the band is HarpAcash & the Morals and we will be releasing their debut album (produced by Michael Timmins) in the Fall. In the meantime we have launched a new series on our Latent youtube channel called Latent Uncovers, featuring Latent acts covering a wide range of songs. Please take 3 minutes and check out The Morals version of Drake’s “One Dance”.
We had a fun Canada Day long-weekend celebrating it with a show at Toronto’s Harbourfront and then heading to beautiful Prince Edward County where we played a show at the Regent Theatre in Picton.
Tomorrow we are back on the road heading to the wonderful Stone Mountain Arts Center in Maine. Over the next two weeks we will be playing our way down the coast including; a show at the legendary Stone Pony in Asbury Park; a trip to Amagansett on the tip of Long Island where we’ll be playing at the funky Stephen’s Talkhouse; three shows in NYC at The City Winery; and a handful of more destinations.
You can find all the dates on the Tour page and also follow along on Facebook or Instagram where we’ll be posting as we move along.
We hope to see you out there.
https://cowboyjunkies.wpengine.com/tour/
The Skydiggers new album, Here Without You, is now available everywhere. It’s a beautiful, meditative album: a stripped down exploration of the songs of the late great Gene Clark. The pairing of Andy Maize and Jessy Bell-Smith’s voices is exquisite. Take a listen to the new single Set You Free This Time and you’ll see what I mean. You can find it on itunes or, even better, purchase the CD directly from the band. And its all brought to you by your favourite label, Latent Recordings and produced by Michael Timmins.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WK1ehzo1lBM
On June 14, 1974 David Bowie brought his ground-breaking Diamond Dogs tour to the Montreal Forum. Earlier that day, Al and I met some stranger under the escalater on the ground floor of the Alexis Nihon plaza and bought two tickets off of him. We went to the show that night and made our way down to the floor and had our lives changed forever. This was a revolutionary concert tour, full of drama and theater not seen before on such a huge scale. We watched Bowie shadowbox to Panic in Detroit, appear on a cat-walk high above the stage singing Sweet Thing and then float in a most peculiar way above the audience in a tin can as he serenaded us with Space Oddity. After the show we sat in stunned silence as we watched the crew tear down the stage. We were determined to not let the experience disappear. Our plan was to talk to one of the “roadies”, join the crew and head out on the road with them. We ended up not running away with the circus that night, but our life path was no doubt changed: we were both fourteen years old.
We may not have run away with Bowie that night but he had definitely captured our young minds and imaginations: for the next five years he took us on a journey that opened us up and exposed us to new ideas, concepts and worlds. This journey played a huge part in forming the people who we are today. The Man Who Sold The World, Hunky Dory, Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, Diamond Dogs, Young Americans, Station To Station, Low, Heroes were all albums of which we absorbed every detail, they made us question what we thought we knew and headed us off on paths of discovery that we didn’t even know existed until Bowie pointed them out. In the late 1970’s, punk rock invaded our world and we championed it as our own. Part of the punk rock ethos was to sacrifice your heroes to the cause and so we did….we kicked Bowie off the pedestal that we had built for him and headed down our own path. Bowie would have wanted it no other way.
I had a chance to meet him in the late 90’s. We were at a small gathering and Bowie held court in the corner of the room. I kept hovering around, trying to build up my confidence to go up and say “hello” and “thank you”, but I never did. The moment passed and I have regretted it ever since.
So…in case your listening…hello and thank you, so very, very much.
Our new box set, Notes Falling Slow, is now available throughout North America and Europe “wherever fine music is sold”. It’s also available on-line through all the usual mega-suppliers (itunes, Amazon etc). If you can, please patronize your local indy music store, if they don’t have it in stock give them hell and tell them to order it. You can find out more about the box set here (you can also order it directly from us if you so desire). If you weren’t keeping up on our blogs about the inside workings of some of the songs on the box set you can catch up by scrolling down this page.
We are heading back out on the road this week. You can follow our progress through our Facebook page and through our Instagram account. We also have some dates lined up for early in the coming new year. You can check out the dates on our Tour page. We hope to see some of you out there.
Words Falling Slow is a twice weekly blog series written by Michael Timmins in which he writes about the writing, recording, history and inspiration behind some of the songs included in the Notes Falling Slow box set. You can pre-order Notes Falling Slow here. You can listen to a new recording from the box set here.
This song, true to it’s title, slowly drifted together. During a particularly sleepless night I decided to while away the late night hours in my basement with my guitar. In a half daze and in tune with the time of night/morning and in tune with the weather (cold and snowing) I came up with the basic melody and chord structure and the line “this ain’t no depression just notes falling slow, an early snow and notes falling slow”….then I drifted off to sleep, or simply drifted away, and there it sat for awhile.
When I went to the Adirondacks to start the writing process for the One Soul Now album I brought along this scrap of an idea. It had been echoing in my head for a while and I knew that it was an idea desperate to be completed. On my first night at the cabin the song completed itself with the help of a few very talented “friends”. William Shakespeare provided the opening couplet from his Sonnet CXXXVIII (I have always loved those lines) and the brilliant Andre Dubus’ short story A Father’s Story provided the inspiration for the pivotal line “Do I have the strength to bear their passion?”. The rest of the song was carried in on the same cold fall breeze that was teasing the wind chimes that kept me company outside the cabin window.
The song is a meditation on relationships, age and children (the basic themes of the entire box set). It is also a comment on our own music and an answer to all those people who ask why we write such depressing songs…..they’re not depressing they’re just sloooooooow.
