On Stage with the Band: Cowboy Junkies
Cowboy Junkies. Photo by Chris Buck.
The Alys Stephens Center consistently brings top-notch talent to town, and I’m always anxious for the release of the next year’s lineup. But even when the season is set, they don’t let that format restrict creativity and new additions, as you’ll see this month when the ASC launches its On Stage with the Band series. The Jemison Concert Hall will be transformed, with only 110 seats on stage and 220 in the choral balcony, creating an unusual and intimate concert experience.
Cowboy Junkies kick off the series on Feb. 10. When I interviewed her for our February issue, ASC Director of Marketing and Programming Jessica Simpson told me that the band’s enthusiastic fan base made them the perfect act to launch the series with. The show has already sold out, but I spoke with Cowboy Junkies’ Michael Timmins to get a sneak peek at what concert goers will hear Tuesday night.
Birmingham Box Set: I’m especially interested to talk to you about this show because it’s the first of its kind at this venue, and the first time I’ll attend anything quite like it. Have y’all played in a setting like this before?
Michael Timmins: I can’t remember if we’ve played exactly in a place like that, but we’ve played a lot of different venues. It’s always nice to break away from the standard theatre or the standard club set up. It adds a certain energy … so it should be fun.
BBS: What size rooms do you typically play?
MT: It all depends on where we are and what we’re doing. Generally these days, a club or a theatre is in the 800 seating range. When we go into cities where we haven’t been in a long time or we don’t have a history like Birmingham, it’ll be smaller. We haven’t been there in seven, eight years, so … I think 2001.
BBS: Will the intimate setting make it differ at all from your other shows?
MT: Yeah, it does to a certain extent. Again, it depends—the size of room matters, but again the type of room. If it’s a club then it certainly affects it differently than a theatre of the same size. There’s a repertoire we can choose from, if it’s a club and it’s a Friday night and it’s sold out, we might play a more upbeat [set].
BBS: Let’s talk for a minute about the music. How did y’all select the guest musicians [Ryan Adams, Vic Chesnutt and Natalie Merchant] who joined you for Trinity Revisited?
MT: There was a sort of a medium-length list of people who were interested in contacting. Our criterion was we wanted people who were influenced by that record, who had a certain amount of attachment to the record as a musician or a fan … [who could] then bring their talent to this recording. The first one to really jump out was Ryan, Ryan Adams. This record was really important to him as a person and a budding musician at the time. Once we had him, things kind of fell into place. …
He’s amazing. He’s such a great singer, such a natural singer so it’s a real pleasure to work with him.
BBS: With so much material to pull from—including Trinity Revisited and your latest studio album, At the End of Paths Taken—what’s your set sounding like these days?
MT: It’s kind of hard because we do have the Trinity thing that came out, then we have the new record that came out—which is not that new anymore—then we have new album we’re working on. [Then the rest of the catalog.] We kind of choose liberally from that set.
Again, it depends on where we are, it depends on how long it’s been since we’ve been to a certain town. Again, Birmingham we haven’t been to in a long time so it opens up a lot. We try to keep a very large set of music available to us.
BBS: What’s next for y’all?
MT: A little bit of touring. We’re always sort of touring to a certain extent, then at the same time we’re working on a new record too. The next album is [sort of starting now].
Our own label, Latent Recordings, is launching its own download site which will include a lot of unreleased Junkies stuff as well as other artists. [The site is set to launch at the end of February.]
Tickets to Tuesday’s Cowboy Junkies show are sold out, but you can learn and listen at cowboyjunkies.com. Got a suggestion for the Alys Stephens Center’s next On Stage with the Band artist? Send it to ‘em online at alysstephens.uab.edu/feedback. And if you attend Tuesday’s show, come back and let everyone know what you thought!
