JODY: On this album, it seems like the fleshed-out touring band of Cowboy Junkies played a greater role. Is that true and why?

MARGO: Well, it's just the nature of how we recorded it. We put this -- the band that you hear on this album was put together for the Miles From Our Home tour. And we added Linford Detweiler and Karin Bergquist from Over The Rhine.

And it was just such a great band. I mean, it was just such a great live band. We had so much fun that we kept them together for the last two-and-a-half years of touring -- three years almost. And so it just seemed natural for us to record this album, because we were writing it, taking it out on the road and then recording it to add them into it and to do it live, just because this band connected so well on -- in a live setting. Like Michael was talking about Open, there's just a lot of that sort of interaction naturally going on without much sort of communication and people playing off of each other. So it seemed to make sense to try and do that in the studio. And the best way to capture a live band is to just set them up, put them mics up and let them play as opposed to breaking it down into pieces and trying to recapture what they can do live by -- in the studio by putting pieces together.

MICHAEL: And it's the way we used to make records. I mean, most independent bands, when they're starting off, bands, this is the way they make records because you can't afford the time to track specific songs. So you go in the studio and play and you're out of there in an hour because you can only afford the hour in the studio. And when we made Whites Off Earth Now and Trinity Session, I mean, those are live recordings. And the reason we were able to pull those off is because we practice on stage. When we'd tour, we'd tour the songs and write them and develop them and then record them. And even Caution Horses, too, is a very -- that's a live band in the studio. And that was our touring band as well.
So we sort of got away from that for a few records, which is fine. We'll probably do that -- we'll probably get away from it again. But we just felt it was time to do that again, to take a band off the stage and put it in the studio.

MARGO: And for me, it's like -- it's...the best way. I much prefer to be really familiar with the songs and into going to the studio and close my eyes and just sing with the band, as opposed to going into a booth and putting on my headset and singing to tape and having that focus on the vocals, you know. If I can just sing and think that nobody's listening, I do a lot more with my voice. I experiment a little bit more.

JODY: I'm sorry, Margo, everyone's listening.

MARGO: Don't tell me that.

JODY: I apologize. (Laughter). There will be people getting the album and pouring over the lyrics because I'm looking at some of the questions we got through cowboyjunkies.com. And there's some people intense about your work. And they have some intense questions. This question is for Michael and centers around the creative processes he uses when writing songs. On Pale Sun, Crescent Moon, there were inspiration credits attributed to William Faulkner and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. My question is: How are your songs influenced by literature and are you actively reading as you are writing and recording' What other outside forces creep into your songwriting?

MICHAEL: Literature does influence a lot of my writing, just because I really love words. And that's what makes up literature, right' And I often will come across a line in a book or in a poem or an idea which I happen to be working on or else I'll think, that's a really interesting perspective on a subject that I might want to work on myself. And that will spur me on to write a song about it. Maybe even using that line as a jump-off point into my own song. And if I do that, I try and credit that, the line, because I think it's important. And it's also fun. I know as a fan of music myself, I like it when other people do that, too. I know Nanci Griffith does it all the time, too. She credits authors. And it's a great way for people to find good literature, I think.

And the other thing -- I mean, everything influences it. You know, certainly stumbling across a new -- a song by a new artist or even a classic old song, you know, putting on "On The Beach," Neil Young's On The Beach, all of a sudden you go: "Okay. Cool, right." You know, I might want to write something this vain or whatever. And you don't necessarily end up writing something like that, but it just gets your juices flowing. And that's -- everything sort of feeds into it.

JODY: And that question came from Richmond Powers in Mineral Point, Wisconsin. And the rest of his question is also a good one. "Do you ever foresee publishing a book of your lyrics with photography of locale or personage?"

MICHAEL: Never really thought about it. I'd certainly like to -- there's been a big call from a lot of people on the website especially to publish lyrics with chord charts. We should do something like that. Because we've never even compiled that. Yeah, I guess if somebody approached me and they had an interesting idea. That's kind of an interesting idea with photographs of locales which reflect directly onto the songs. It might be kind of a neat idea. If somebody approached me with that idea, I'd, you know, say, sure, run with it. But I don't know if I'd put my own time into it.

JODY: Another question from the website. This one is for Margo. It says: "Could you tell us why "Misguided Angel" and "Bea's Song" are two of your favorite songs to perform and what they mean to you?"

MARGO: (Laughs) Ooh - no, I can't.

JODY: And you don't have to.

MARGO: I don't know why. "Bea's Song" was one of those songs that we were talking about earlier sometimes Mike hands me a song and I just know how I want to sing it. And for some reason, I think a lot of women understand that feeling. I really understand where Bea is. I -- you know, I'm sitting by that river. I've been there before and know how she's feeling, just sort of lost and not knowing what's bugging her. And somebody: "Are you okay'" "No." Or no actually saying "Yes, I'm okay." You know, I understand her feeling of confusion. And I don't think that's so rare. I think a lot of people have felt that. "Misguided Angel" for two reasons. "Misguided Angel", to me, represents the band at a younger time when we first started off. So when I sing "Misguided Angel" today, I'm sort of brought back to the Trinity Church and back to that time in our lives. And that was -- it was such a, like, youth, you know. A youth -- the beginning of a band is like being a young person. There's this part of you that is so naïve and open and free and there's no worries. You know, that time was before record companies and industry. We were just a band singing and playing and never had any thought that so many people would be interested in our work. And I, as a singer, was totally naïve. I didn't even, at that point, accept myself as a singer. I mean, I didn't even think in those terms. So "Misguided Angel", to me, represents that time. And it will always represent that time, even when I'm an old woman, it will.

JODY: And that question came from Bob Holman in Atlanta, Georgia. He also asked, "What other Cowboy Junkie songs have special meanings to you?"

MARGO: Oh, there's a lot. "Where are You Tonight'" is a big one. What else is another -- I mean, there's so many. Of course, I can't think of them on the spot. "Escape Is So Simple" is one. You know, if I looked at the list, I could sort of point to several of them. But definitely "Where are You Tonight'" is another big one on my list.

JODY: Onething that at strikes me is that you always had that DIY [do it yourself] aesthetic from the first album, Whites off Earth Now. And after Miles from Our Home and the merger of the label that you were on at the time and the business situation, Cowboy Junkies regrouped and issued a couple of really interesting records that I'm fond of. And I thought we could talk about them just a little bit. There was the Rarities B-Sides and Slow Sad Waltzes. And always thinking of continuity, there was Waltz Across America. Let's start with the Rarities record. Did you always have things you wanted to collect?

MICHAEL: Yeah, for sure, you know. Especially our audience would come up to us and say, "You ought to do a collection of these B-Sides," because there were tons of them. We had tons of film projects and little weird recordings, which we'd released here and there on odd Japanese imports and things like this. And we -- and a lot of songs that we had dropped from records, not because we didn't think they were any good, but because they didn't fit on that particular record. So by the time, you know, we came to do that record, there was a ton of them -- and we still have a lot more actually. We can do a Part Two and we will one day.

But once we collected them all and we started to listen to them, we realized we had a pretty decent-sounding record. And we wanted to put together something which we could then launch our website with. We wanted something to focus on it. We wanted to continue to tour, without the label -- without a major label. So we needed a new release to focus on that. And this was really easy to put together. Everything was already recorded. It was just a matter of compiling them all and putting them together. So it was very successful for us. It did great. And it was a, it was a fun project for us. It really gave us a, as I say, direction.

JODY: And then, Margo, there's Waltz Across America. Cowboy Junkies had already done a double-live CD. How is Waltz Across America different from the earlier record?

MARGO: Well, the earlier live record is live recordings from various times throughout our career, various band combinations. Whenever we go out on tour, we always take extra sidemen. And they always are constantly changing. And so that's on that -- the 200 More Miles live album. But Waltz Across America is a collection of live recordings from the last two years of touring with the same band. The band that I was talking about earlier with Karin and Linford. And, you know, again, as I mentioned earlier, it was just such a great band and we had such a great time touring and we had so much great live material that we decided, you know, let's pull it together and put this out. Especially, there was an audience that kept coming back to the same shows again and again because we kept hitting the same towns and seeing the same people. So we figured, let's do something special for for these people that were always there and for us. I mean, we were just so happy with what happened.

MICHAEL: I think that that Waltz Across America record is a -- it's only available on our website. So not a ton of people have it. But it's a very good stepping stone to Open, the new record. I think people who are surprised by the sound of Open will -- they probably haven't seen us live in a long time. And if you hear that record, you really hear us for that transition. You hear that band really and you hear a lot of the -- sort of the more darker elements or the more tougher elements to our sound, which we've exploited live for a long time now.

JODY: Open really affected me as a listener when I sat down and listened to it. There's a song on there called "Small Swift Birds." It deals with the fleeting nature of life. I'm not going to get too heavy on you guys right now, but is it - do you think it's almost the human condition that we don't realize how beautiful stuff is until it's gone?

MICHAEL: Oh, without a doubt.

MARGO: Yes. I used to have such nice skin (laughs).

MICHAEL: Yeah, there's the classic line that youth is wasted on the young. And that's for sure. That's...

MARGO: Makes you sound so old when you start repeating what your grandfather told you, but it's true.

JODY: It's true, that's right. Well, is "Small Swift Birds" a reminder to yourselves, as much as to the listener, about that fleeting nature?

MICHAEL: For me, definitely, that's what it's written about. It's that, you know, stop. Stop, look, listen, definitely, definitely.

MARGO:The thing that intrigues me about the song is, you know, it's quite a heavy -- the lyrics are quite heavy because the message is kind of heavy. But it's written in such a pop melody. And so there's -- again, there's those two sides. And, you know, if you're not listening to the words, you think it's a happy little ditty going on. But when you start to read the words, you go, oh, wait a minute. Yet, again, it's a happy song.

JODY: And since we're talking about the fleeting nature of things, we have a question, again, submitted through your website from Po Artes in beautiful Pisgah, Maryland. It's a question for Margo. "I know the band has always operated as a team with each person taking their role, no matter how large or small in the overall success that's been enjoyed to date. Do you ever see a time when the group might separate to take on individual projects?"

MARGO: Oh (feigns crying). I try not to look at that. No, I don't see that, because I don't want to see that. You know, I, I see Cowboy Junkies staying together for a long time, as long as the music continues to be fun and creative and we feel that we're doing something new. They only way I see us breaking up is it just getting boring and it's just not real anymore. But I don't see that happening. I, you know there's -- as long as Michael keeps writing, we're okay! Just got to keep him healthy.

JODY: And evolving the music on record is one thing. How do you make the concert experience different since you've done it before so many times?

MARGO: Well, we have a new setup. As I mentioned, whenever we go out, we bring in new musicians, side musicians. And they're always really good musicians, a lot better than we are. So we learn a lot from them. Because of the nature of the band, we always ask them to bring their own interpretation into it. So when somebody starts to play, even some of the very old songs, with a new idea and a new attitude, it changes my interpretation of it or my direction with the rest of the band. It keeps it fresh and fun. And it also teaches us a lot. And it often leads us -- leads the music into another direction, which usually ends up on the next album. So from one tour to the next, you can sort of see the -- where the band is heading…when it comes to recording. You can see it in the live show.

MICHAEL: We also try and bring out a different repertoire. We have a lot of songs now. So we always try and make sure it's always fresh whenever we go out. There's a few in there that we play -- we don't necessary play every night, but it's in the repertoire. But, you know, we dig out some stuff we haven't played in years. And that's important to us, too.

JODY: I've always tried to imagine an artist before they go out on the road. Would you actually grab all 11 of your CDs and spread them out and --

MICHAEL: I do, actually. Yeah, definitely. I just go through them and, we haven't played this is four or five tours. And there's some songs you just get bored with. We definitely won't play that one this tour. And then some of them it's like they're exciting to play again. We've just been working this week, actually, on building a new repertoire up. And it's exciting to play some of the old songs like "O.K., it's going to be kind of fun."

MARGO: It's interesting, too, because it's really the only time you ever listen to your records is when you're setting up the repertoire. I mean, you don't go home and put on a Cowboy Junkies' record. And you start listening to the old records and, "God, you know, that was a good record." (Lughs).You've even forgotten certain songs that you put on them. You know, because you've sort of focused on the other ones. You know, I forgot about that song or whatever. And so that's fun to put the repertoire together.

JODY: The final song of the record is "Close My Eyes." And it, it -- "Close My Eyes." The album's Open. We end with Close. Makes a lot of sense.
But, you know, as the listener, I'm wondering why the singer's closing her eyes. And it seems in some songs, the writer leaves a lot of spaces and it's up to the listener to fill it in. And is that what's going on here? And do some of your favorite songs have those spaces?

MICHAEL: Yeah, for sure. I mean, I do think it's important for the writer -- or a song to bring the listener into it, not to spell out every detail and this is, you know, this is the way I want you to think or this is the emotion I want or even specify the emotion. Obviously, you're trying to get a specific emotion without being too pointed about it. But "Close My Eyes," to me, is -- again, there's a duality to that. Closing your eyes can be closing your eyes as opposed to -- meaning that I'm not going to look. I don't want to see it. I want to ignore it. But closing my eyes, your eyes is also when you pray or when you wish for something or sing or whatever. It's a peaceful moment, too. And so that's really why I think that song's at the end. This song, again, deals -- it sums up a lot of the themes on the record where there's always that desire just to turn around and walk away and close your eyes. But there's also that desire to accept what's in front of you and revel in it and rejoice in it, really. And I think that's the key part to the song is the rejoicing of what you have.

(End of interview)