Cowboy Dreams

Having released 11 albums, most of them with two major labels, you would think that even the merest thoughts of going back to their independent roots would fill Cowboy Junkies with dread, but you would be very wrong indeed. The Junkies’ latest album Open, one of their best, was one of their easiest recording sessions ever and the current tour is going down a storm all over the world.

Following the release of their last studio album proper, Miles From Our Home, their label, Geffen, was swallowed up by Universal and effectively disappeared. The timing couldn’t have been worse for Cowboy Junkies, as Alan Anton (the only member of the four-piece who is not a Timmins sibling) explains.

“That record did very little sales-wise. It sold maybe a hundred and fifty thousand, which was good for us, but not what the label expected. They had planned for maybe 600,000,” he says ruefully. “Miles was also our most expensive record. For the first time, we had a real producer, John Leckie, and we had been working in Abbey Road. This was our first real studio effort, in a way, so it was kind of ironic that the most expensive record we ever made was just lost. It was very frustrating.”

Alan remains quite philosophical, however in his assessment of major record companies. “I think that in the mid to late ’80s there were a lot of alternative kinda bands and the majors had this vibe about them, all of a sudden, that they could sell this stuff. So they hired these groovy A&R guys and groovy heads of departments, and even set up separate little labels. But after five or six years they realised that it wasn’t working. They would rather sell 15 million Britney Spears records rather than have 30 bands selling 500,000 each. Economically, it makes no sense: you want to put all your marketing focus into the one basket. It’s just business.”

After Geffen “fell apart”, the Junkies realised that they “can’t play with major labels anymore because it doesn’t match with what we are trying to do musically and artistically”. They reverted back to their independent roots, reviving Latent Recordings, the label they had started back in 1980 but which had been on the back burner in recent years.

“We tested the waters with the b-sides record (Rarities, B-Sides And Slow, Sad Waltzes),” Alan notes. “We specifically made it available just through our website and through amazon.com, to see how it would go, and the response was amazing. We realised that we could make the same amount of money doing that as with a major, because the economics are wildly different – you are making $10 per record instead of $1.50. The only problem is that you get boxed into selling to the audience you already have: it’s really hard to expand it because you don’t have the marketing, distribution and all that stuff. So we looked at that and started to work out what we could do with the larger independent labels around.”

When it came to releasing their new album, Open, earlier this year, they decided to license it out to labels in different territories, including Rounder in the USA and Cooking Vinyl in Europe. Throughout their long career, the Junkies have maintained artistic control over their output, so musically, making Open wasn’t very different to previous albums. The business side, however, was.

“It’s a bit like going from a nine-to-five job to owning your own company, where you are doing absolutely everything,” Alan grins. “We were hiring the marketing guys and publicity people, sitting down with them and working out a plan: they were working for us instead of us dealing with a record company and having lots of problems. It is a lot more work and takes up a lot more time but it is really satisfying.”

However, earlier this year, the band had more trouble with major labels. Their former home at RCA/BMG decided to release a Best Of compilation without the band’s involvement. Originally, the label wanted to call the record Greatest Hits until the band reminded them that they only had one real hit while with RCA, so the “only concession” they made was to call it a Best Of.

The Junkies, through their website, advised their fans not to buy the collection. Since then, however, following all the publicity the band’s stance generated, BMG Canada have agreed to stop production of the CD and to not promote it, as well as agreeing not to release the album in any other world territories. So in many ways, this was seen as a victory for the band over the label.

But the release of Open was a much happier affair. The album is one of their best to date and was probably the easiest recording sessions in the world ever, as Alan explains.

“We were on the road for two years straight, which is unusual for us. We decided to take a couple of new songs out on every leg of the tour, which was about every four weeks, worked them up with a seven-piece band and then go straight into the studio for a day, after that month, and bang it down live in the studio. It wasn’t like making a record where you have 12 songs ready to go and two weeks to record it, and there is all this pressure that it has to be right. We had none of that and it was really nice. It didn’t feel like we were making a record.”

Following the European leg of the current tour, they’re taking a couple of months off, before heading to Australia, New Zealand and Japan. Then there is another two-month jaunt around the States, and the European festival circuit. In the meantime, they want to record an album of Townes Van Zandt covers. For a band who are eleven albums into their career, they are still remarkably chirpy. Their destiny is back in their own hands, they are enjoying touring and looking forward to the future. As Alan sums up, “We’re just feeling really comfortable about it.”