anyone who’s ever had a heart
Twenty years ago The Cowboy Junkies recorded “The Trinity Sessions” in Toronto, ON. One microphone, direct to tape - the atmospheric vocals and sparse instrumentation were the perfect setting for Margo’s voice and the low moan of the guitars.
Earlier in the summer 1987 I met M. and R. in Salzburg, Austria at a hostel whose gimmick was to play “The Sound of Music” 24 hours a day in the lobby for ironically inclined backpackers from around the globe. We climbed the hills where Maria sang cheesy songs and wandered through the settings so familiar to the movie. Both R. and M. ended up in Toronto later that year. R. entered law school at York and M. followed her sister to the hipper environs of Toronto and away from their Edmonton home.
We saw the Cowboy Junkies on a cold December day just a few weeks after they recorded the record at a location I’ll never remember. Suffice it to say that at that point in their career very few people outside Toronto were clued in to what the Junkies were up to. The show was mesmerizing - quiet, intense and exhilarating all at the same time. I remember wondering who else could play that slow and yet include so much emotion in the spaces between the notes.
I dreamed of moving to Canada where people were friendlier and didn’t move in the same harried circles of imagined hipness that most of my friends did. There was a trust and openness that I could scarcely imagine among those who I knew who lived there at the time and I pictured myself as part of it. It wasn’t to be. I ended up living on the coast of Maine which, in fairness, had it’s own share of pleasures. In July of 1989 I was sitting on my back porch watching the sunset over the Penobscot Bay when I got the call. R. had been hit by car while riding her bicycle and had died in the hospital a few hours later.
Stunned and in between gasps of silence I put “The Trinity Sessions” on the stereo and drank my sorrow into oblivion - sitting alone and working out the emotions. I have been mostly unable to play the record again. It’s been twenty years though, twenty years. When critics complain “why did someone bother recording song xyz again” they have their reasons for not wanting to listen to a different version - a different musical thought process. I have mine too.
“Sweet Jane”
“Misguided Angel”
Trinity Revisited - Ryan Adams, Natalie Merchant etc.
Love the music, and that you shared this special memory, but what a sad time for you. Wounds can take very long to heal, especially when life keeps rolling on and you can’t stop the train.
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/johnmayer/stopthistrain.html
Sorry for your loss. You say twenty years like it’s a long time. It really isn’t, time doesn’t really heal all wounds, some just become bearable.
Music has an amazing way of becoming connected to certain times and events in our lives. You of course have a hyper-personal connection to that album.
On a lighter note, this would be the song and video that caused a crush on Margo, love the brunettes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjKEkDKaa1k.
Try that one.
I do love the junkies. Gave musicmaven a link to the anniversary song for her
and her hubby’s anniversary.
Thanks, Shouter, for opening up the past to bring this music. I downloaded “Sweet Jane,” “Misguided Angel,” “A Common Disaster (thanks, Kired),” and “Angel Mine,” and am putting them on a new CD mix.
After today, I’ll be gone for a couple of weeks. Our building is being shut down for a capital project, and we won’t be allowed back in until it’s done. This is the first time I’ve ever desired to have the internet at home. I’ll miss my “friends in the ether” (nice bit of poetry, that).
Shouter, I visited this morning as I usually do and was stunned by your post. I so wished for something to say that could make the memories less painful for you but found instead I had to leave and deal with a memory of my own that unexpectedly came crashing in on me. It’s been a little over 25 years since the phone call that told me the person who had been my best friend, self proclaimed big brother, mentor and occasional unlicensed psychiatrist was suddenly gone from my life. No one can ever truly know how another person is feeling - the best we can do is relate to each other based on our own experiences and offer our support and understanding.
I’m glad you were willing to share that piece of your history with us and sincerely hope by sharing the music it may have helped you to listen to it again - if only to the revisited versions. The thought occured to me today that perhaps it is better not to lose the pain than to risk losing the memories we value.
On a lighter note - - First became aware of the Cowboy Junkies from a concert on the Rave channel. Liked them and had listened to them off and on but tonight I spent a little time learning about them and listening to a larger sampling of their music. Ran across this which you probably are already aware of but thought I’d bring it over.
http://www.cowboyjunkies.com/albums/trinitysession/index2.html
Shouter. I forgot to tell you that I am sorry for your loss.
It’s hard to lose some one you know. I know this personally.
I’ve lost too many friends, co-workers and schoolmates at too young of age for
various reasons.
It’s hard.
Just for some perspective . . .
I don’t carry this around with me that much anymore. It’s mostly in the past. Still, I’m amazed, as I have always been, by the power of music to place me in a specific time and place.
Yes, the power of music.
Take for example Dan Folgelberg’s “Same Old Lang Syne”, may he rest in peace. That one takes me back to time I experienced something similar to the lyrics in that song. He was a great lyricist.
I saw my taping buddy recently, and asked him if he had ever heard of the Cowboy Junkies. He had, and started reeling off song names. His favorite song of theirs, and he said maybe his all-time favorite song, is “Common Disaster.” Lyrics have always been very important to him, and he found this part of the lyrics especially inventive: “I found myself a friend, but he’s crooked as a stick in water.”
“The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes - ah, that is where the art resides!” ~Artur Schnabel