Saturday, May 3
Alternative Rock/Americana
Cowboy Junkies
with opening act Monahans
LAXSON AUDITORIUM | 7:30 p.m.$27 Premium | $22 Adult
$20 Senior | $18 Student/Child
"Cowboy Junkies is powerful yet subtle, this low-fi gem sparkles with jaded élan, one carefully measured note at a time." — dailynews.com
From country to folk, Americana to blues, Canada's rural-rock legends are known for stellar musicianship. The superb songwriting on their newest album has it storming up the record charts. Their signature sound has been described as melancholic, dusty, and lonesome, with a direct kinship to Hank Williams.
Despite its title, the new Cowboy Junkies album, At the End of Paths Taken, is as much about new beginnings as it is about endings. It is also about human connections, the struggle to sustain those connections over time, and the complexities that can arise even when those connections are maintained. It is, in other words, a classic Cowboy Junkies album — a suite of smart, richly textured songs that value subtlety over broad, generic strokes, songs that prize insight and casual revelations over easily digestible cliche's.
Family lies at the heart of the album's eleven songs, and, of course, that is appropriate, too. Three of the band's members — singer Margo Timmins; songwriter, producer and guitarist Michael Timmins; and drummer Peter Timmins — are siblings, and bassist Alan Anton has been a member since the group formed in Toronto in 1985. Few bands have lasted nearly as long with their original line-up intact, and fewer still have created as consistently satisfying a body of work. Albums like The Trinity Session (1988), Black Eyed Man (1992), Miles From Our Home (1988) and Early 21st Century Blues (2005), to isolate just a few high points, chronicle a creative journey that is impervious to trends. Each of those albums sounds as fresh and current today as when it was made. You don't stay together and produce work of that quality and depth without learning something about family and permanence — what lasts, what doesn't, and, perhaps even what shouldn't.
MONAHANS
The Austin– and San Francisco–based band Monahans emerged last year with the release of their debut album, Low Pining, which Magnet Magazine listed as one of its Ten Hidden Treasures of 2007. Previously performing under the moniker "Milton Mapes," Monahans will be supporting Cowboy Junkies as an acoustic duo. Expect a stripped-down version of the band's cinematic landscape rock-and-roll, in the vein of Neil Young, My Morning Jacket, and Califone.
If you enjoy this band, you might also enjoy:
Hills of Home with Doc Watson
Anonymous 4 with Darol Anger & Scott Nygaard
Cherryholmes and Mossy Creek
Ladies of the Slack Key Guitar
Jake Shimabukuro with Joe Craven
Woven Harmony with Robert & Rebecca Bluestone
Celtic Fiddle Festival
Leahy
Assad Brothers Brazilian Guitar Festival