ENTERTAINMENT

Cowboy Junkies play New Jersey dates

BILL NUTT
CORRESPONDENT

If any word characterizes the music of the mid to late 1980s, it is “big.” Big drums, big synthesizers, big guitars — in general, big production values.

And then there were acts like Cowboy Junkies.

In 1987, the band went to a church in Toronto to record its sophomore album. They had, in the words of vocalist Margo Timmins, “zero production. We couldn’t have afforded anything big even if we wanted to.”

But what the recordings lacked was more than compensated by a sense of atmosphere. The band mixed haunting originals, such as “Misguided Angel,” with low-key versions of songs like “Sweet Jane” and “Walking After Midnight.”

“That sound was so pure,” Timmins says. “People hadn’t heard a sound like that for a long time. It blew people away.”

The album, “The Trinity Session,” drew a cult following and critical praise. The band — named after “Cowboy Junkies Lament” by maverick singer-songwriter Townes Van Zant — found itself in the center of the burgeoning alternative-country movement.

Cowboy Junkies — Timmins, her siblings Michael and Peter, and their friend Alan Anton — continue to make haunting music. Their new box set, “Notes Falling Slow,” includes unreleased tracks with remastered versions of three CDs from the 2000s.

The band’s current tour will take them to the Pollak Theatre at Monmouth University in West Long Branch tonight and the Newton Theatre on Saturday.

The first set of their performance will consist of songs from “Notes Falling Slow,” while the second set will feature songs from the past 30 years.

The passage of time has made an impact even on the performances of their own songs, according to Margo Timmins. “You reach a certain age, and you bring that to the songs,” she says. “It’s almost like you’re covering yourself.”

“I’m 54 years old,” she adds. “I look at things a lot differently that I did in my 20s or 30s.”

Timmins says that she has tried to infuse that personal approach to all the songs she sings. The band’s first album, “Whites Off Earth Now,” featured a subdued version of Bruce Springsteen’s “State Trooper.”

“I didn’t live his life,” she says. “So I bring myself to the song. In a ways, it’s the same as what listeners bring to a song.”

Since the beginning, Timmins’ ethereal voice has been one of the trademarks of Cowboy Junkies. “I listen to my voice (on ‘The Trinity Session’), and I think that girl was really naïve. I didn’t know what I was doing.”

She and her brothers came to music in part through their father, John Timmins, who played drums. “He would come home and play music, and the importance of his music was instilled in us,” she says.

“He didn’t like the music that we listened to, but he recognized how important it was to us,” she adds.

After playing in other bands, the three siblings joined with Anton (who had been in a group called Hunger Project with Michael Timmins) to form Cowboy Junkies in 1985. (Jeff Bird, a multi-instrumental, has recorded and toured with them since 1987.)

The fact that the band is intact after three decades may surprise some people. “Sibling bands don’t always survive that long,” Timmins says. “It can be harder. What makes it easier for us is that we have the same values, the same goals.

“Sometimes it feels like a long time,” she continues. “But we have always put the music first. That’s not to say that we haven’t had difficult times, we we’ve always loved playing. It was never about ego.”

Though “Notes Falling Slow” is only now arriving in the stores, the band members are working at songs for a new CD.

“We hope that people like the box set,” Timmins says. “But if not, there’ll always be a new gig or a new album.”

COWBOY JUNKIES

WHEN: 8 p.m. Saturday

WHERE: Newton Theatre, 234 Spring St., Newton

TICKETS: $34 to $54

INFO: 973-383-3700 or www.thenewtontheatre.com