When the fallout from the Universal merger left Toronto's Cowboy Junkies without a record deal, the rootsy rock band resurrected its independent label, Latent Recordings, and decided to use the Internet for a direct marketing. Its new album, a live recording entitled Waltz Across America, is available exclusively online.

"After leaving Geffen, we were fed up with the whole major label scene. We had done it for ten years," explains lead singer Margo Timmins. "Having made that decision, obviously we figured the Internet was a great tool to be able to get your informaton out there and have that one-on-one contact with your audience."

The Junkies first sold 1999's Rarities, B-Sides and Slow, Sad Waltzes on the Internet and off the stage during the summer, but by October set up a one-off distribution deal with Toronto's True North Records to put the album in Canadian brick and mortar stores.

Timmins says she mentions the web site (www.cowboyjunkies.com) at least twice onstage at every concert and reminds people to sign up for the Cowboy Junkies' mailing list, which now contains over 20,000 names. The band sends out mass e-mailings to alert their fans about everything from gigs to Webcasts.

"It isn't easy," admits Timmins of driving traffic to the site and encouraging people to buy online. "But when we decided to go independent, which was, of course, a huge decision for us and a big leap of faith in ourselves, one thing that we realized we did have is name recognition." Cowboy Junkies rose to international notoriety with The Trinity Session (1988), their second independent album, on their own Latent Recordings, that was recorded for a mere $250 (Canadian) live off the floor in fourteen hours using one microphone. The tranquilizing release, went on to sell over a million copies worldwide once RCA picked it up.

Timmins says the band resurrected Latent in order to create small projects of interest to its dedicated fans and has no intention of selling its next studio album exclusively through the Internet.

"We will do it through Internet, but we'll also use retail," says Timmins, whose new online distributor is Maplemusic.ca. "There are limitations to the Internet and certainly what we have sold through the Internet has not been huge numbers. We couldn't rely only on that. There's so much talk about buying e-commerce, but if you were to sit at a table tonight and ask everybody there how often they've bought something off the Net, I would bet most of them haven't bought anything," she adds.

For the Cowboy Junkies forthcoming studio album, due in the spring, Timmins says the band will license the recording to various multi-nationals and independent distributors throughout the world, via Latent. Timmins calls the new material "darker than it's ever been." It was produced by her brother, guitarist Michael Timmins at various local studios as well as the band's rehearsal space and also features longtime touring members multi-instrumentalist Jeff Bird and backing vocalist Karin Bergquist.

"We've been (recording) it for a year and a half," says Timmins. "We would write a couple of songs and work those songs in our live performance. And then once we came home off the road, we'd go straight into the studio. It was great for me, because you were so familiar with those songs that when you got into the studio, it was easy. You didn't even have to think about it. So it's really relaxed. The songs are necessarily all relaxed but just the playing was easy. It just sounds like a band playing, as opposed to putting together a record."

"I find being in the studio not very inspiring," she admits. "So I'd rather get in and get out. And on this album, I've been able to do that because all the work was done in front of an audience. I hardly did any overdubs on it, just left it as it was 'cause I like it a little be rawer than more perfect."

The Cowboy Junkies will continue to play sporadic dates in America up until Christmas, and in the spring and summer hope to touring full force behind the new album.

KAREN BLISS
(December 14, 2000)