MUSIC REVIEW: Cowboy Junkies at the Mahaiwe

Submitted by Seth Rogovoy on May 16, 2010 - 7:20pm

Classical Music

Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center
Cowboy Junkies with Adam Michael Rothberg
Saturday, May 15, 2010

Review and photography by Seth Rogovoy

Margo Timmins, lead singer of Cowboy Junkies, at the Mahaiwe [photo by Seth Rogovoy]

(GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass.) - Cowboy Junkies performed an intense, moody, gripping concert at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington on Saturday night. Lead singer Margo Timmins, as always, was a mostly enigmatic figure, although her stage banter was friendly, welcoming, and sincere. At one point, she introduced a song by Neil Young as one "by another depressed Canadian," giving a hint of Timmins’s self-effacement and self-understanding of the group’s music. The stage lighting, sound, and overall vibe contributed to the narcotic, jaggy quality of the group's intoxicating show.

Having seen the Junkies several times over the course of the group’s 25-year-career, including one of its very first U.S. shows, at the old Iron Horse Cafe in Northampton, I can say with some authority that the Junkies are at their peak. Margo Timmins has never sounded so powerful – who knew she possessed a voice with the dynamism of Janis Joplin and a full-bellied vibrato? Timmins holds that power in reserve, and mostly she is known for her gauzy, whispery vocals, which are more about mood than melody. But she let loose on occasion and made it count when she did.

Michael Timmins, Cowboy Junkies main songwriter and guitarist [photo by Seth Rogovoy]

It’s the same strategy the band as a whole uses instrumentally. Arrangements based in simple country-rock, peppered with pedal steel guitar, harmonica, and mandolin, took left turns and exploded into Sonic Youth-style noise-rock jams. Margo’s brother Michael Timmins, the group’s songwriter and guitarist and, therefore, really, its creative force, is as distinctive a guitar stylist as Thurston Moore in his use of distortion and feedback.

But the group revealed its other musical patron saint in two well-chosen covers of songs by Neil Young – “Tired Eyes,” appropriately enough, from Young’s junkie album, Tonight’s the Night, and “Don’t Let It Bring You Down,” from Young’s After the Gold Rush (also appearing on Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s live album, Four Way Street). Beyond the obvious musical and cultural connections – the Canadian country-rock, the thematic melancholy of so much of the music – it’s easy to overlook Young’s influence on the group as a noise-rocker. Not for nothing did Young take Sonic Youth on the road with him as an opening act – he’s been engaging in the same sort of love affair with the music of guitar distortion and feedback since the Timmins siblings wore short pants.

Of course all this goes back to the Velvet Underground (although, surprisingly, the group opted not to play Lou Reed’s “Sweet Jane,” the cover tune that first gained it widespread recognition), and Michael and ensemble took some right turns down V.U. lane in some of the extended jams.

The band played a generous selection of tunes from its terrific, forthcoming album, Renmin Park, which, surprisingly, engages in a cultural conversation with Chinese culture and music of all things. While on paper this sounds as far from Cowboy Junkies as one can get, Michael’s genius (and it’s his – he’s the one who lived in China for a while and recorded music and found sounds that he samples on Renmin Park, using some of those samples in concert) made for an effortless blend.

Adam Michael Rothberg warmed up the crowd for Cowboy Junkies at the Mahaiwe [photo by Seth Rogovoy]

Speaking of best-concert-ever by a frequently seen performer, the Berkshires’ own Adam Michael Rothberg was drafted to warm up the crowd as a last minute replacement for a cancelled opening act. Rothberg was the perfect choice and did a great job of entertaining and focusing the crowd with his clear, accessible folk-pop songs and his dazzling, virtuosic guitar playing. Even when he was forgetting his own lyrics (as did Margo Timmins later), Rothberg was totally in the zone in his set, and undoubtedly garnered new fans who came specifically to hear the headliners.

Please visit our extensive .

Seth Rogovoy is Berkshire Living’s award-winning music critic and editor-in-chief, and the author of Bob Dylan: Prophet Mystic Poet.

Bookmark/Search this post with: