Cowboy Junkies remember
Van Zandt through music
UPPER DARBY, Pa. (AP) - Four
lines into the show, the spirit of
Townes Van Zandt is on stage with die
Cowboy Junkies.
“Ghosts in the basement,” sings
Margo Timmins. “Screams from the
kitchen. I tell you, folks, I think I’m
leaving.”
The lines were written by Van
Zandt, a Texas singer and songwriter
who died New Year’s Day 1997 before
putting the words to music. That task
fell to Michael Timmins, the Cowboy
Junkies songwriter and guitarist, who
addedthem to “Blue Guitar,” a song he
had written after hearing of Van
Zandt’s death.
“It’s sort of my lament to him,” he
said
ine memoers oi uowooy jumaes
- Margo and Michael Timmins, their
brother Peter on drums, and bassist
Alan Anton - were fans of Van Zandt
when they started their band in
Toronto in the mid-1980s.
“He was always one of our favorite
road tapes,” Michael Timmins said.
“We’d put it on for late-night drives.
His songwriting somehow touched us
all.”
By 1990, the band was touring
with Van Zandt, and he opened their
‘shows as they promoted their album,
“The Caution Horses.”
“He rode on our bus. We got to
know him quite well,” Michael
Timmins said.
An established musician, with a
. small but fervent following, Van Zandt
became a mentor of sorts to the
Canadian quartet
“I was new to the band and new to
singing and wasn’t sure if this was
something I really wanted to do,”
Maigo Timmins said of her first meet
ing with Van Zandt. “I knew if I could
do-what he did fbrmeforjtjstone per
son.
“He could always just sort of bring
it back to the singing. He always kept
the right perspective.”
On stage in suburban
Philadelphia, Van Zandt’s name was
not mentioned. But the third song,
“Crescent Moon,” kept him in the
show. The band said in album notes
that the song was inspired by his life
and friendship.
Van Zandt’s death, at age 52 of a
heart attack following surgery, was not
entirely unexpected by the band.
“I can’t say I was shocked; he lived
a hard life,” Margo Timmins said.
Her brother suggested a more spir
itual reason.
“I have a feeling that there were no
songs left, so he felt like it was time for
him to go,” Michael Timmins said.
“You sort of think that somewhere out
there, Townes is not singing on this
Earth. I think we’ve all sort of lost
something.”
The flewgst album from Cowboy
Junkies, their seventh, is “Miles From
Our Home," and it marked a creative
change. The songs were written and
recorded in the winter and spring of
1997 at an Ontario farmhouse, several
horns outside of Toronto. Previous
albums had been crafted at the
Timmins’ parents house.
Michael Timmins and his wife
found the farm and had planned to use
it as a retreat following the band’s last
tour.
“I got up there and started to write
and thought I should bring the whole
band together now and then,” he said.
Margo Timmins said the change of
pace made abig difference in how the
album came together. Working at her
parents’house was like a regular work
day, she said, but the farm offered a
slower pace.
“We’d go and be there for a few
days. Sometimes, it’d be all four of us,
sometimes, just Mike and I,” she said.
“It might not sound like that big a deal,
but when you’re writing, it changes
everything.
“I enjoyed being out there, living
and cooking and talking about the
music.”
Though there is more of a pop
sound to some of the songs - notably
“New Dawn Coming” and the title
track - the darkness that pervades
much of the band’s earlier music
remains dominant throughout the
songs.
“They’re about people who are
finding themselves in positions and
they’re wondering how they got there
- how the path they’re on has veered
off,” Michael Timmins said.
The brooding themes of their
music were overcome on stage by
cheery banter from Margo Timmins,
__j_s ____xi__
vyiiu muuuucgu in any ui uiw auugs
with stories. At one point, she admit
ted flubbing her lines in an earlier
show - “It was really embarrassing;
I’m not sure why I am telling you” -
and proceeded to start the next song
with another lyrical slip.
Later in the show, she offered a
peek at the band’s life on die road. The
current tour started in August, includ
ing a few dates with the Lilith Fair
ensemble shows, and the tour contin
ues through the winter.
Sipping from a mug of tea, Maigo
Timmins asked for help in the band’s
weekly combined effort to complete
die crossword puzzle from the Sunday
editions of The New York limes.
“Mike, they think we’re realty stu
pid,” she said after laughter from the
crowd.
She shared the band’s hobbies: she
does needlepoint, “the boys” play
Nintendo games and everyone watch
es a lot of movies. Origami paper-fold
ing is a new diversion.
“You can fold a dollar into a little
shirt,” she said. “Rock ’n’ roll is very
exciting.”
!'Ally McBeaV is bashing
Catholics, protesters say
NEW YORK (AP) - A reli
gious watchdog group says it’s con
cerned about a “clear and inten
tional pattern of Catholic bashing”
on Fox’s hit comedy “Ally
McBeal”
The Catholic League for
Religious and Civil Rights protest
ed to Fox’s chief executive for
broadcasting standards Wednesday
after this week’s episode included
jokes about nuns having sex and a
priest videotaping off-color con
fessions.
Officials of Fox and David E.
Kelley Productions, the company
that produces the program,
wouldn’t comment. Monday’s
show featured a nun who sued the
Catholic Church, after being dis
missed for breaking her vow of
celibacy. At one point, Ally McBeal
jokes that “nuns are not supposed
to have sex except with other nuns.
The nun said at one point: “A
priest has sex with a boy, he gets
transferred.... At least my lover was
of legal age.”
A priest also videotapes con
fessions about sex for a documen
tary, “World’s Naughtiest
Confessions.”
“I can’t imagine anyone getting
away with saying this if it were any
other religious group,” said
Gregory Coiro, a priest with thd
Archdiocese of Lps Angeles who
acted as a script consultant for
ABC last year for “Nothing
Sacred,” a short-lived series about
an inner-city priest.
Coiro called the humor “insult
ing and very demeaning.”
The New York-based Catholic
League also criticized a Sept. 28
episode in which a Protestant min
ister tells a lawyer about his affair
with a parish worker and said, “I
realize that doesn’t make me an
altar boy.” The lawyer responds: “If
you were an altar boy, you’d be with
a priest”
The Catholic League said Fox
had been “inundated” with com- .
plaints about the show. Fox
spokesman Jonathan Hogan said he
wasn’t aware of any phone calls of
complaint
Many Catholics debate whether
to ignore such references in enter
tainment or aggressively point
them out, Coin) said.
“You read these lines from
‘Ally McBeal,’ and you’d really
have to stretch the imagination to
say there’s no anti-Catholicism
here,” he said. “A person who
would think this is not anti
Catholic would probably go to a
minstrel show.”
One Fox executive, who would
n’t talk publicly about the show,
noted that it was broadly satirical
and recently included a story line
about a frog on life support. The
segment about the priest videotap
ing confessions also poked fun at
Fox when “World’s Naughtiest
Confessions” landed a place on the
network’s schedule.
«- .
You read these
lines from ‘Ally
McBeal ’ and you d
really have to
stretch the
imagination to say
.
there s no anti
Catholicism here.”
Gregory Como
priest
American String Quartet
to play Sheldon Art Gallery
Classical.
It’s the only word to describe the
American String Quartet>
The group* composed of four
1974 JuiUiard graduates, plays clas
sical chamber music on instruments
made more than 200 years ago.
Lincoln audiences can hear their
work Saturday evening at 8 during a
concert at the Sheldon Memorial Art
Gallery, 12* and R streets.
Daily
Nebraskan
Online
m
Web-tastic!
_
www.unl.edu/
The Quartet features Laurie
Carney and Peter Winograd on vio
lin, Daniel Avshalomov on viola and
David Gerber on cello.
Each of the musicians plays hn
instrument made in the 16th, 17th or
18th centuries.
The Quartet’s concert consists of
two classical works: Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart’s Quartet in C
Major, K. 465 titled “Dissonance”
and Ludwig van Beethoven’s Quartet
in F Major, Opus 59, No. 1. *
Contemporary chamber music will
be represented in a work by Richard
Danielpour titled Quartet No. 2,
“Shadow Dances.”
The concert is sponsored by the
Lincoln Friends of Chamber Music.
This 33-year-old community organi
zation presents a series of four to five
concerts each year at the Sheldon.
David Neely, associate professor
of violin at the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln, will give a lecture
before Saturday’s concert at 7:30
p.m.
Admission for the event is $25
for adults and $5 for students. Tickets
are available at the door.
' For more information, call the
Lincoln Friends of Chamber Music
at (402) 435-5454.
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