After a back and forth battle with the front desk at the Holiday Inn, I finally got guitarist/songwriter Michael Timmins from Cowboy Junkies on the phone.  We had a lot to talk about, as the band, recently free of recording obligations, has been cranking out the music in the name of a highly anticipated project otherwise known as The Nomad Series.  The project consists of four albums to be released over the next 18 months, along with a future book to coincide with the series.  The first of the series, Renmin Park, made its debut on June 15 and features a collection of songs inspired by a small town Chinese village called Jingjiang.  I don’t know if the band is trying to ignite themselves into a state of exhaustion or take over the world, but this is surely a project that needs a little recognition.

What was the inspiration behind The Nomad Series and you guys taking on such a big project?

Michael: It’s really just a matter of trying to figure out what to do next.  We had so many different ideas we wanted to approach.  One of them being the album called Renmin Park.  The next record is called Demons, which is an album of Vic Chestnut songs and there are a few other ideas we want to do.  We have a whole bunch of new songs that we haven’t released yet so we’re just trying to figure out how to approach all this material.  We started to realize that in some ways we were putting ourselves into this box that you kind of get yourselves locked into when your signed to a record label and you are only supposed to release one record every two to three years and we realized we can do whatever we want now.  We’re really just trying to release 4 records over the next 18 months.  That’s how that all came about.

I hear that the current album is influenced by some time you spent in China?

Michael: Two of my three kids are adopted from China and we always wanted to get back there with the whole family to give them a glimpse of where they are from and their home country.  And this opportunity came for us to be there for three months and we were put up and given room and board at a school so we took advantage of it and that’s why we were there.  We travelled to their hometown where they were born and their orphanage.  The idea was just to get into China and to immerse them to get a feel for the place and for ourselves and the experience was great.  It’s a pretty fascinating country.

You guys still have the original lineup for the band, which is very rare in this day and age.  What’s your secret to success behind that?

Michael: Well, three of us are brothers and sisters and the 4th one, Alan is a friend of mine.  I became friends with him back in grade four or something like that, so you know might as well be a brother.  We’re very close on a personal level.  We understand each other’s moods and need for space.  We love the music we make together and we each appreciate what each other brings to the project. We realize that without one of the four we wouldn’t be the same band.  So, we respect that and we try not to destroy that.

Being in a band with 3 siblings, did you guys come from a musical family?

Michael: My dad was a huge music fan growing up and when we were young we had his music in the house, which was sort of big band jazz stuff.  We all have very distinct memories of him coming home from work and blasting the music and us dancing all over the house.  There were six kids in the family and none of us were given music lessons partly because my mom had no time in the day.  She couldn’t handle homework, and sports, and music lessons.  But I think what happened is we all became very big music fans and my older brother especially was a big fan and he brought a lot of music from the late 50’s ad 70’s into the house.  That was obviously a big part of the culture and growing up at the time and we all got very hooked into music.  That is where we all sort of approach it from – being big music fans.  We wanted to create something that we’d listened to when we were a certain age and be inspired and we want to sort have that effect on someone else.

Where is the strangest place your music has ever taken you?

Michael: In our early days with BMG we were flown to south of Spain to perform at a conference.  We played in a bullfighting ring.  It was truly a bull fighting ring and it was full of flies and it was pretty bizarre.  It was at the end of a long day for everybody and all the execs were there and half of them fell asleep during our show.  It was pretty disastrous.

Words by Nicole Pajer