Cowboy Junkies – Rarities, B Sides and Slow Sad Waltzes

Cowboy Junkies – Rarities, B Sides and Slow Sad Waltzes

We came off the road from the Miles From Our Home tour charged with a new energy and determination to make some changes. We had just watched the album that we had been working on for a year and a half stomped on and squished by a big record industry muckety-muck merger. We were determined to never let that happen again and so set about making a lot of changes in the way we do business and in our approach to the industry. The first order of business was to develop and set up this web site, the second was to get Latent Recordings back up on its feet and the third was to gather up some of our "orphaned" songs and send them out into the world. The result was Rarities, B Sides and Slow, Sad Waltzes, a collection of rare and never before heard tracks that we had in our vaults but had never been widely available or even available at all: it was also our first release on Latent Recordings since The Trinity Session.

Each song on Rarities has a different history. Ultimately they were chosen for their quality and how they hung together as a complete unit, but behind each song is a story... I Saw Your Shoes was written during the Lay It Down sessions. It was one of those songs that was tossed off in a half hour and we fooled around with it in rehearsal for a session and then let it drop. It was pretty obvious that it would have no place on Lay It Down. When we were gathering the material for Rarities we dusted it off and since we didn't have a good demo of it we decided to record it for the disc. We love the way it turned out. It's one of those really basic 12 bar rave-ups that is a blast to perform live.

Five Room Love Story was written and recorded during the Black Eyed Man sessions. It was a favourite of ours at the time but never made the cut for some unexplained reason. The song was inspired by a newspaper clipping that my wife had given me. It is one of those true stories that you usually only find in song or maybe it's one of those stories that explains why song exists: to celebrate life.

Sad To See The Season Go was written for the Miles From Our Home record. It's lyrics are based on a poem that I had written years earlier although the refrain "Sad to see the season go/ I'll miss the crackling of the air/the loss of all we know" is pure Maidens Mill. This is the demo that we recorded up at the Mill. We never captured a version in the studio that had the same winsome feel so it didn't make the cut. The song has always struck a chord with us: I think because the seasons were so pure and distinct at Maidens Mill. It also contains one of my favourite guitar solos, very Willie Nelson.

I Saw Your Shoes was written during the Lay It Down sessions. It was one of those songs that was tossed off in a half hour and we fooled around with it in rehearsal for a session and then let it drop. It was pretty obvious that it would have no place on Lay It Down. When we were gathering the material for Rarities we dusted it off and since we didn't have a good demo of it we decided to record it for the disc. We love the way it turned out. It's one of those really basic 12 bar rave-ups that is a blast to perform live.

Five Room Love Story was written and recorded during the Black Eyed Man sessions. It was a favourite of ours at the time but never made the cut for some unexplained reason. The song was inspired by a newspaper clipping that my wife had given me. It is one of those true stories that you usually only find in song or maybe it's one of those stories that explains why song exists: to celebrate life.

Sad To See The Season Go was written for the Miles From Our Home record. It's lyrics are based on a poem that I had written years earlier although the refrain "Sad to see the season go/ I'll miss the crackling of the air/the loss of all we know" is pure Maidens Mill. This is the demo that we recorded up at the Mill. We never captured a version in the studio that had the same winsome feel so it didn't make the cut. The song has always struck a chord with us: I think because the seasons were so pure and distinct at Maidens Mill. It also contains one of my favourite guitar solos, very Willie Nelson.

If You Got To Go, Go Now was once a hard to find Dylan track, before he unearthed his own rarities. I've always liked the song so we took a stab at recording it when we had a few spare moments in the studio. This is the Black Eyed Man touring band going at it. I've always loved its swagger.

Loves Still There was written and recorded during the Pale Sun, Crescent Moon sessions. It is mostly a Margo lyric with my music. I was shocked by how tight it sounded when I was going through the archive for this collection. It's got a great, pendulous waltz feel to it - next stop Nashville. I love Ken Myhr's guitar playing on it.

To Lay Me Down was recorded for a Grateful Dead tribute album. None of us have ever been big Dead fans but it seemed like a fun project to be involved with and this song seemed to be right up our alley. This was the last time that the Trinity/Caution Horses touring band was together. That was a very good unit and this is a very fitting and beautiful epitaph.

A Few Simple Words was another song written during the Lay it Down sessions. Margo brought the chorus to me which I liked so I fleshed it out. It's kind of a traditional country arrangement but there's nothing wrong with a little tradition every now and then. This was recorded at a funky little eight track studio in Toronto called The Gas Station. The Gas Station is no more, victim to the condo craze.

River Waltz (River Song Trilogy: Part I): While writing the Lay It Down album I came up with this concept for a song trilogy based on "river" imagery. We were originally going to put the complete trilogy on the album but at the last moment the albums theme took a left turn and we only included Bea's Song, which is the second part of the trilogy. Part three which is entitled Dragging Hooks, should be making it's appearance soon.

Leaving Normal was written in the Black Eyed Man era, which you can tell by its narrative structure. We were approach by the music supervisor of a film entitled Leaving Normal and asked if we were interested in writing a song for the movie. They sent me the script and I dashed off the song in a couple of hours (which is unusual for me): we demoed it and they rejected it. It wasn't all bad though, at least we got another song for our catalogue. For this collection we decided to re-recorded it.

Our second brush with Hollywood almost had the same result as the first. We were approached by the director of the film The River Wild to record a version of the standard The Water Is Wide. We recorded it and then got a call back telling us that it was too sad. We couldn't disagree with him so we did another, more uplifting version that was used in the film. We've always preferred the "sad" version so here it is.

The hidden track on the album is an a capella rendition of Bruce Springsteen's My Father's House. Margo use to occasionally perform this live. This recording is taken from the Sharon Temple recording sessions. Margo was singing to help Peter Moore find his mic placement. The rest of us had obviously been sitting around too long and were getting bored so we spontaneously joined in. Just one of those weird, beautiful moments...and the tape was running.

In an odd way Rarities has become a rather special CD to us. Probably because we did it all ourselves for the first time in a long time, but there is also something special and revealing about collecting lost moments scattered throughout ones career and making those moments...found.

1. I Saw Your Shoes
2. Five Room Love Story
3. Sad To See The Season Go
4. If You Gotta Go, Go Now
5. Love's Still There
6. To Lay Me Down
7. A Few Simple Words
8. River Waltz
9. Leaving Normal
10. The Water Is Wide

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