Two Artists Doing Neil Young Songs

Not better. Just different.

How artists can put their own twists and bends. How they can put their own personal mark on a song.

It's a big topic in theater. Playwrights hand over their work, and Lord knows what could happen to it.

The Timmins family, and Gillian and David are some of the most talented musicians today. So, what do you do when your work falls into the hands of "artists" (ahem) less talented?

Honestly? I think I actually like the Junkies version of Powderfinger much better. It's more controlled. Crazy Horse does it like a ride down the Colorado River rapids. Which is their style. But Margo Timmins? She reminds me of something I once heard about James Taylor. She could sing the phone book and make it sound good.

(If you don't know what a phone book is, I can't help you. I guess you could Google it.)

Angel Mine Video from the Cowboy Junkies

Sweet song with a simple melody, but it catches in my throat every time.

Cowboy Junkies--Cause Cheap is How I Feel

Listen to that harmonica intro...

I've listened to this song a hundred times, but it's not until today that I really listened to that intro and really appreciated how hard it is to play, and just how soulful it is, and how important it is to the song, setting the mood and the stage for the story that comes.

More and more music is opening up doors to my mind, helping me see and discover nuances in the world that I just either didn't notice, wasn't privy to, or that now is simply time for me to notice.

But the one thing I've said over and over again is what an underrated songwriter Michael Timmins is. Listen to this song and just try to figure out how he wrote it.

Thunder Road: The Cowboy Junkies

I'm not a big Springsteen fan, but I do love this song. And I love the way Bruce lays down a power grind of this song, but there's nothing like a new take, a new perspective, the kind the Junkies put on the song. Margot's mournful voice makes you realize it ain't all Jersey and cars. And I and see Michael sitting next to her, head down, concentrating the way does, feeling every nuance...

You Will Be Loved Again

This was my birthday wish from Dede...she's the birthday queen...she's always dead on with her presents...

thank you, darlin'...




How could he take you in his arms
And help you to be free
Then leave you forgotten
And is it enough to cry?
When you're so broken...

Her cold eyes tell you you're not welcome
She tells lies but you'll take her back again
And is it enough to die?
When you're so taken

You will be loved again
You will be loved again

But will she sing and will she dance
And will she forever
And will he sing and will he dance
And will he forever

Someday you will feel a love so deep
And you'll find someone not lost in sleep

And you will be loved again
You will be loved again
You will be loved again

Miles From My Home

That's not just where I want to be, that's where I am. Searching. Fumbling. Waiting.

When I was a kid I was on the fringe. Not a part of one group, but accepted by all--hippies, greezers, blacks, the popular kids. I could play the game, but never joined a team. Part of the reason was a lot of family shit. Nurture or nature, it was just who I was. Who I am. I always had one friend. That one friend you could always trust and talk to and feel yourself around.

Second sons are the wandering ones
so we were the best of friends.
I never felt more like myself
than when I stood beside him then.

Miles from home. Out on the fringe. Like the coyote. Smart. Wary. Out on the perimeter, trotting along, stopping now and again to sniff the air. It's where and how I'm most comfortable. I made the mistake of trusting too many people who couldn't be trusted.

In the end I barely got away with my skin.

One night, it seems a long time ago, Sue and I were talking. And I told her if she told her friends about me, they'd tell her to run like hell. I was flat broke, emotionally and financially, I'm divorced with two kids, plus at that point I had a host of other problems. She told me she knew better, that that's not what she saw. It took me about three weeks to take all that in. Sniffing at it like a coyote. Smelling the wind. Trying to figure out what it was. Could I trust it? Remembering to another time when I said something like that to someone else.

It seems every time I turned around there was Sue. She put her money where her mouth was. She didn't run. And she didn't get too close. So for a while I just watched her. From a distance.

I didn't want to get too close. You don't know if you get too close if they'll suddenly turn on you, because you're close and that's what certain people do, draw you in close and then go for you. I've seen that. They're called borderlines. People with nothing inside so they draw you close then steal everything inside you to fill themselves up and leave you, for dead.

I don't ever want to lose my ability to get along by myself. Out there, miles from my home. Because I've learned so much and changed so much. How to survive, for one. I guess just like the coyote and the rattlesnake learned to get along, I'm made a certain way to get along with all the other species that live alongside me. Around me. Snakes bite and coyotes howl. I'm just glad I'm the one who gets to howl at the moon. I love the moon. And the stars.


No one in sight for fifty miles
Sleeping fields sigh as I glide across their spines.
If I can just reach the crest of that hill
This whole day will tumble, out the night will spill.

The sky as still as a spinning top
Shooting stars drop like burning words from above
If I could just connect all these dots
The truth would tumble like a Cynic vexed by love.

And yet people keep saying
I'm miles from my home,
Miles from my home.

I met you again in my sleep last night,
These are days of slow boats and false starts.
Hearts remain under lock and key,
You will be the one to set them both free.

And yet people will tell you
You're miles from your home,
Miles from your home.

But that's where I want to be.
Out there searching,
Out here fumbling,
Out here waiting
For you and you for me.

The moon hangs like a question mark,
Pale as milk, bold as promise.
When will you share these sights with us?
When will we hold you in our arms?

And people will tell them
We're miles from our home,
Miles from our home.

Good Friday

Good question. Do we ever reach the point where we know, or one day do we just say, I'm going?

I think I know the answer...

See y'all later...

Eased along with this song last night, just sitting on the edge of the couch. I've seen Michael Timmins play a couple of times now, and I have a DVD of the Junkies, and he just sits and really concentrates on what he's playing. Good Friday is just G-F-C-G over and over and over again, but it's how it's played, real gentle, even when it picks up. I was playing it on Lulu then picked up Alice and funny, the acoustic was too much. There's something about an electric, and Lulu in particular, that gives you so much control over the music. Lulu's the sweetest thing on earth. That was one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me, giving her to me.

There's nothing like really getting into a song when you play it, because the playing adds another dimension that the listener just can't access. You just don't hear the music and the words, you really understand the words, or I do at least--I'm not saying there aren't people who can listen to songs and just get them; I guess maybe I'm just slow--but when your fingers are running over the strings and picking the notes, for me, at least, I end up going, oh, shit, that's what that means.


Sat at my window watched the world
Wake up this morning
Purple sky slowly turning golden,
Distant elms so orange
You'd swear they're burning
All this flowing water
Has got my mind wandering.
Do you ever finally reach
A point of knowing
Or do you just wake up one day
And say, I am going?
What will I tell you
When you ask me why I'm crying
Will I point above
At the Red Tail gracefully soaring
Or down below where it's prey
Is quietly trembling?
Two thousand years ago Jesus is left there hanging.
Purple sky slowly turning golden.
Cowards at his feet loudly laughing.
Loved ones stumbling homeward
Their words reeling.
Red Tail above my head quietly soaring.
Waters turn from ice, creak is roaring.
He says, enough of all this shit I am going.

Today's lyrics

From A Horse in the Country

But lately it just seems to me
that this life has lost its mystery
and these cold fall mornings seem to bite
just a little bit harder


But I've got a horse out in the country
I get to see him every second Sunday
He comes when I call him,
yeah, he knows his name
One day I'll saddle up
and the two of us will ride away

Happy Birthday from Dede

Yesterday was my birthday. I don't do birthdays very well. It's all tied up in feelings of self-worth (actually, no feelings of self-worth is the better way to say it.) I have a hard time being the recipient of love. Long story short, I don't feel I deserve it. And I've put myself in some bad situations and in with some really shitty people because I guess I felt that's the best I deserved. (You know who you are.)

Anyway, still, Dede sent me this link wishing me happy birthday from Margo, Michael, Peter, Alan Anton, Neil Young and Dede.

You're always so on spot, darling. Thank you so much...




There is a town in north Ontario,
With dreams comforts memories to spare,
and in my mind I still need a place to go,
All my changes were there,

Blue, blue windows behind the stars,
Yellow moon on the rise,
Big birds flying across the sky,
Throwing shadows on our eyes.

Helpless, helpless, helpless
Baby can you hear me now?
The chains are locked and tied across the door,
Baby, sing with me somehow.

Blue, blue windows behind the stars,
Yellow moon on the rise,
Big birds flying across the sky,
Throwing shadows on our eyes.

Me, this a.m.

From a Horse in the Country...

This weather I could almost stand
If the sun would shine a little brighter
Or even if the sun would shine at all
But lately it just seems to me
That this life has lost its mystery
And these cold fall mornings seem to bite
Just a little bit harder

A Horse in the Country

Michael Timmins has such a beautiful gift...

The money would be pretty good
If a quart of milk were still a dollar
Or even if a quart of milk were still a quart
And the hours, well, I don't mind
How they creep on by like an old love of mine
It's the years that simply disappear that are doing me in

Guess I married too young,
Yeah, nineteen was just too young,
But sometimes you meet someone
And your guts just burn
It's not that I don't love him anymore
It's just that when I hear him
Coming through that front door
My heart doesn't race like it did once before

But I've got a horse out in the country
I get to see him every second Sunday
He comes when I call him,
Yeah, he knows his name
One day I'll saddle up
And the two of us will ride away

This weather I could almost stand
If the sun would shine a little brighter
Or even if the sun would shine at all
But lately it just seems to me
That this life has lost its mystery
And these cold fall mornings seem to bite
Just a little bit harder

And all my friends have settled down
Become their mothers and their fathers
Without a sound
Except for Cathy,
She bought a one-way subway ticket
And left us all behind

But I've got a horse out in the country
I get to see him every second Sunday
He comes when I call him,
Yeah, he knows his name
One day I'll saddle up
And the two of us will ride away

This town wouldn't be so bad
If a girl could trust her instincts
Or even if a girl could trust a boy
--Cowboy Junkies

The Cowboy Junkies

Going to see The Cowboy Junkies tonight at the Somerville Theater. Third-row seats.

I've turned so many people on to them. I love sharing new music finds with people. Of course to some it's not new...kind of like the New World wasn't so new to the Indians.

Sue and I are going. There's one person who I'm afraid I might see there tonight. I introduced her to them a few years back...she took so much from me, not just music, and I can't think of a single thing she gave me. She's one of those people who just takes in life, and doesn't give back...as selfish as anyone can be. I actually saw her steal a beautiful handmade Christmas ornament at her office Christmas party's Yankee swap one year by pretending not to know that it was in a certain box when she actually did--she recognized the wrapping paper of the woman who made the ornament--then pretended that she didn't when one of the secretaries called her on it. (She's an actress, but not very good one...that's what makes the story sort of funny. Really good actors can get themselves out of scrapes sometimes by acting.) Nothing is safe when she's around...not a Christmas ornament, not a life, not a soul. She's ruined a few people's lives in her time...

The tickets are fairly cheap, the theater is close, and the Junkies don't come around here a lot. I'm hoping...praying...that Sue and I can enjoy this incredible band without any stain on the night. This woman won't see it like that...of course not...this quote from Catcher in the Rye is so apropos: she's as sensitive as a goddamn toilet seat.

Someday, I'd love to tell the world what really happened.

Cowboy Junkies coming out with a new CD

Got Junk Mail today. Read it, if you like, or just scroll to the end for links to find out more about the CD and to pre-order it. Pre-order it and you also get some free downloads, unless you live in the US because we Americans are so uptight about downloading music and actually living in the current century.



Cowboy Junkies – at the end of paths taken

Hello everyone,

These are always the best emails to send out – the announcement of the imminent release of a new album.

The new album, at the end of paths taken, will be released in to stores on April 17, but you can have it delivered to your doorstep by pre-ordering from the Junk Store(our website).
By pre-ordering you will not only get the album delivered to your door, but you also help us to retain a bigger cut of the pie. Also, by ordering the album before April 17th, we will give to you, as an added bonus, by download, a set of songwriting and production demos from the making of the album. These demos will give you a behind-the-scenes peek at the making of the album. They include some of Michael’s songwriting demos, some alternate versions of songs, string sessions and a whole bunch of other recorded insights in to how the songs arrived at their final form. If you pre-order the CD you will receive with your email receipt a website location and password which will allow you to download the demos on April 17th. Very cool. Very 21st century.

Also, for those of you who have forsaken the hard disc and have gone exclusively to downloading your music, we have a treat for you too. We are about to launch a downloading website (latentrecordings.com) that will be run exclusively by the band. It will contain lots of interesting and exclusive Junkie material as well as music from artists who may not be well known, but who we feel should be heard. You will be able to download the new album from the site and anyone who does so between April 17 and May 1 will also be able to download, for free, the album demos. Unfortunately, if you are a resident of the USA you will not be able to download the new album from us due to restrictions placed on us by our US licensee…but check out the site, there will be plenty of good and interesting music available to you.

For more info on the new CD

To preorder the new CD

Small Swift Birds

Can't explain it, and I don't have to, but there are days when a song just resonates.

Of course it's by the Junkies.

Small Swift Birds

I've been told that it's just the way life goes.
Once the wildest river is now a trickle to the sea.
The peak we risk our lives to scale becomes dirt beneath our feet.
The wisdom of a life time always disappears untapped.
Paradise once given will always be taken back.
And the love you hang your life upon will start to slowly crack.

I have seen people suffocate the dream.
Forgetting to turn that one last time while she watches through the door.
Focusing on the garbage that she use to ignore.
Thinking she looks so beautiful but not yelling it out loud.
He should have thought to kiss her before he headed out.
Just forgetting how fucking lucky you are to have found her in such a crowd.

But we've seen a cloud of starlings rising on a crisp autumn day.
We were handed the weight of a child sleeping and bore her away.
We've tasted the tears that fall when saying goodbye forever.
And we've seen the silver from a waxing moon wash upon the shore.

I have heard about the lives of small swift birds.
They dazzle with their colour and their deftness through the air.
Just a simple glimpse will keep you simply standing there.
Legendary journeys made on fragile hollow wings.
The night skies rich with whistling each and every spring.
And then there's the day we look for them and can't find them anywhere.

I've been told that it's just the way life goes.

Taking little itty bitty baby steps

John Mayer one of the top guitarists in the world? Well, yeah, I guess. But I can’t get past what a tweaker he seems to be in person. But…in the Rolling Stone interview, he said, “I’m attracted to what I don’t know. Everyone else I knew said things like, ‘I watched him play, and it made me want to quit.’ I never wanted to put the guitar down. I watched guys who made me want to pick it up. That’s when you have the disease…”

Years ago, before I started acting again, I would sit in the audience of a community theater production and watch the actors and say to myself, I can do better than that. Twelve years later and I’ve found myself so dissatisfied with my acting that I haven’t done anything for over a year, and what I did a year ago was pure crap. I looked back and felt embarrassed for the stage work I’ve done. God, I must have looked like such an idiot up there.

Then a few months back I saw a production of The Pillowman at the New Rep in Watertown, Mass. and thought to myself, I want to do that. I can’t yet, but I want to. I’ve found a really good teacher who is helping me tear a lot of things down. Well, she’s trying, anyway. I’m trying to lay a new foundation so I can build something that I can use to talk to audiences again, if I ever did before.

Last night I was driving home from Sue’s on the Cape, heading back to an empty apartment, knowing I wouldn’t see her for a week because of our work, and sometimes it hurts so much, I can’t explain it. Something real inside hurts. She says it’s because I’m a Libra, and the worst thing you can do to a Libra is leave them. Abandon them. I think it’s more than that.

I drove into the driveway and my truck was the only vehicle there. I knew it was going to be a long night. I just felt it, and on other nights in the past I knew the bottle of Port in the kitchen would have been my best friend. But being all alone in that house, I picked up Lulu, turned the amp up with full reverb, did the same on the guitar, and just hammered. Played Angel Mine by the Junkies in a way I don’t think they meant it played. It’s a sweet song about keeping your promise, but I played it by ripping the scab off the hurt and letting it bleed. But I’ll never betray your trust, Angel Mine. Riiiip. Nice breakthrough. Because I'm just a beginning musician, and really the greatest thrill is just getting through a song and making it sound (sort of) the way it's supposed to sound. But if you can interpret...it means you're feeling, and it means there is a glimmer of hope that you'll win the wrestling match between you and the guitar, or even better, you two can turn into collaborators.

The sole reason I act is so I can learn about this world we live in, this reality we call life. I don't care about being in the spotlight, about the glamour (ha! what glamour?) the attention that so many actors--theater-types--seem to not only desire but need. I couldn't care less if the audience likes me or not. All I want from them is for them to hold up their part of our implicit agreement: That they stay engaged throughout the performance, and I will live as truthfully as I can in the contrived setting we've established. They give me energy, and I give them truth. That's what I'd like to do anyway.

And now I'm learning a new language called music, that is showing me a new way of seeing, of experiencing and understanding this world. It's so exciting to learn something new. To travel to new parts, whether geographically on the globe or throughout the human experience.

Feeling like a baby, taking tiny steps. Wobbly steps. Can’t even talk yet.

The Junkies are comin' to Boston

One of my all-time favorite bands, the Cowboy Junkies, is coming to the Boston area, and I had a yellow post-it note tacked to my monitor to remind me that tickets went on sale today at 10:00. By 10:11 I had third row center seats.

This is an excerpt from an IM I had with my daughter today. Both posts are mine:

(12:47:49 PM): That's right...things are okay when I'm with Sue or I have a guitar in my hand...
(12:48:01 PM): Funny, you discovered that about music before I did

I was talking to her about a personal problem I was dealing with. Funny, I never would have discussed my personal life with my parents, but I talk with my kids about just about everything. Today, it was about the woman who broke up our family, and how I might have to see her at a party.

This woman stole everything from my soul, and she gave nothing in return. She lied about the way she felt about me, so convincingly that I actually left my family for her. It turns out it was just a lark for her. She tried on me and my life the same way she would have tried on a coat at Macy's, looking at herself this way and that in a mirror, and not liking what she saw so she just shrugged me off onto the floor to try on something else. I can't think of one thing she gave me except a ton of grief and bad memories. Every memory starts out good, and just turns rotten. I shared with her everything I was passionate about, including the Junkies. And I know some people think it's just music, what's the big deal? She's like that, too, not understanding the real meaning of the things we hold close to our heart.

This is the sort of thing the Junkies sing about. About broken love and hearts and remorse. And the ironic thing is I know this woman listens to their music, commiserating, not understanding that she is the other side of what they are singing about. Poor thing, she feels so sorry for herself, not realizing or caring she's one who causes the hurt and pain, too selfish to understand and that if she'd just make some changes in her life a lot of pain would stop, both in her life and others. But all she can think about is herself.

Drunken Angel

Why'd you let go of your guitar
Why'd you ever let it go that far
Drunken Angel

How do we get so far from where we’re supposed to be? Maybe only by making wrong turns will we figure out where the right place is.

I’ve been learning to play the guitar for less than a year. But already when things aren’t going right, when things are unsettled, one of the best places for me to be is clinging to the neck of my guitar. Holding the body close.

My good buddy, Baxter, who fights more demons on a daily basis than any of us could imagine, found me drifting, more dead than alive, face down in the water. What he was doing that far from shore is a good question. He handed me a vintage Burns six-string guitar, saying she was meant for me. Keep it, he said. And I clung to her just like I was, a drowning man, a man thrown overboard and left for dead, who clings to a piece of flotsam in the big empty ocean and just prays.

After awhile, I named her Lulu, in honor of the singer/songwriter who wails the words that opens this blog. Lucinda Williams.



As you can see, Lulu is missing some parts. I guess you could say the same thing about me. She’s missing the plate that covers the bridge. And her twang bar. I don’t know what I’m missing, but I can feel their absence. Despite her flaws, I think Lulu is beautiful. Thankfully, there are some people who think the same about me.

There are nights when heaven is sitting trying to figure out the smoothest way for the fingers on my left hand to go from D to A to G and back to D. Now I’m leaving Normal and heading for Who Knows Where. Still haven’t figured it out yet.

What's the big deal about downloading music?

Today's big find:

http://www.wolfgangsvault.com/


This was in today’s Globe’s Sidekick. Great site with lots of archived concerts. Right now I’m listening to a Stevie Ray Vaughan concert from April 15, 1984 in Austin, Texas. I also did some impulse buying this morning when I first logged on to the site. Bought a poster from a concert on June 5, 1989 with the Cowboy Junkies and Lucinda Williams. Now if you scroll down just a bit and glance just to your left, you will see a partial list of some of my favorite music, and while it’s in no particular order, you will notice the first two artists are those very same that played together 17 years ago or so. The poster’s gonna look nice, framed and all, hung here in my cube on the 12th floor overlooking Cosi’s.



It’s the new paradigm for music. Everybody’s downloading and taking it for free, or so people who have been living off the music industry cash cow are complaining. That would be the fat cats in the suits at Sony and BMG and wherever, and the musicians, too, although the musicians still aren't making out like the execs. There’s money to be made, it’s just that the business model changed. Sorry, it changed for all of us. You just gotta deal with it, or die.

I see nothing wrong with downloading music for free. Here’s why. It’s been the way of the world for writers for all time. Say I wrote a book, and let’s say you actually bought the hardback for full price. And you read it and thought it was great. What would you do? You would tell your friends. But they wouldn’t go out and buy my book and read it. They’d borrow yours. Or Xerox it. It’s just like downloading for free, right? Or your friend would go to the library. Either way, I still wouldn’t make any money on sales. Those are my words and my thoughts. My talent and artistic ability is being showcased. But you don’t have any problem not compensating me.

The Internet was a long time coming and music execs should have seen this day sneaking up on them. But they didn’t. They were too busy counting their money instead of keeping their eyes on the business. They were rich, not smart. There’s a difference, although some people don’t get that. They figure if someone is rich that that person is smart, too. Rich and smart don’t necessarily go hand in hand. Greedy and rich do. But rich and smart? No.

So, now all the rich folks are crying foul, instead of figuring out that the way to make money is off the one-offs: ticket sales (if they keep them reasonable, instead of gouging prices to make up for the loss in CD sales), t-shirts, DVDs, posters, and all that.

The world changes. Get over. Change or die.