Cowboy Junkies Biography

The Canadian alternative band Cowboy Junkies was established in the mid 1980’s by founding members Alan Anton, Peter Timmins, Michael Timmins, and Margo Timmins. The Timmins siblings had been performing in other projects separately prior to the formation of the group, but in 1985 after Anton and Michael Timmins’s current group disbanded, the Cowboy Junkies were formed and began performing around the Toronto area.

White’s Off Earth Now!!, the group’s debut album, was released in 1986 to positive reviews, but it was the Cowboy Junkies’ sophomore effort, The Trinity Session, that brought the group international acclaim and commercial success. On the strength of the songs “Sweet Jane,” “Misguided Angel,” and “Blue moon Revisited,” the album rose into the top forty on the charts in both Canada and the United States, setting the stage for a career which has lasted now well into the new millennium.

Since that time, Cowboy Junkies have released the albums: The Caution Horses (1990), Black Eyed Man (1992), Pale Sun Crescent Moon (1993), Lay It Down (1996), Miles from Our Home (1998), Open (2001), One Soul Now (2004), Early 21^st Century Blues (2005), Trinity Revisited (2007), and the four Nomad Series albums (2010-2012.) The albums have spawned the additional hits “Sun Comes Up, It’s Tuesday Morning,” “Rock and Bird” (featuring Lyle Lovett), “Southern Rain,” “A Horse in the Country,” “Hard to Explain,” “Anniversary Song,” “A Common Disaster,” “Angel Mine,” and “Miles from Our Home.”

Cowboy Junkies have been nominated multiple times for Group of the Year awards at the Juno Awards, and upon the release of The Trinity Sessions, they were credited with one of the “ten best albums” of 1988 by the Los Angeles Times. In addition to their studio albums, Cowboy Junkies have released a number of live and compilation albums, including: 200 More Miles: Live Performances 1985-, The Radio One Sessions (2002), In the Time Before Llamas (2003), and Acoustic Junk (2009.) The group continues to perform and record, with appearances and projects scheduled for the next coming years.