Cowboy Junkies To Play The PAC

Members of the alternative country/blues/folk/jazz/rock band Cowboy Junkies have been in the limelight since they released their second album, “The Trinity Session,” back in 1987. But early success hasn’t spoiled the band members, who, after more than 25 years as a group, lots of critical praise, and a rabid cult following, still just want to write and play good music together.

“We’re a pretty tight unit that way, we don’t fight, we keep each other grounded,” said bassist Alan Anton during a telephone interview from Long Branch, New Jersey last week.

In support of the just completed “Nomad Series”—a four-CD collection written over an 18-month period—and their newest album, the fourth in the series, “The Wilderness,” the group kicked off a 15-city tour in Ithaca, New York, in late February. The band will play at the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center on Saturday, March 10. A full U.S. tour will follow later this year.

Now available separately, the four-CD series, which includes “Renmin Park,” “Demons,” “Sing In My Meadow” and “The Wilderness,” will be sold as a box set in April. Additionally, a book collaboration with artist Enrique Martinez Celaya, whose “Nomad” paintings helped inspire the series and are pictured on each of the four album covers, will be put together later this year.

The coffee-table book will contain writings by band members—Mr. Anton, songwriter and guitarist Michael Timmins, singer Margo Timmins and drummer Peter Timmins—artwork by Mr. Celaya, and “the usual band photos and scratchings,” Mr. Anton laughed.

The massive project—four new albums in a year and a half, a national tour and the book, complete with a bonus disc—is all about teamwork, stamina and passion, according to Michael Timmins.

“The main reason for wanting to do it is that, as we steam through our 25th year, we feel that we have the energy and inspiration to pull it off,” he said in a release issued by the band.

Mr. Anton shrugged off the prolific nature of the band’s accomplishments.

“A lot of people do it,” he said. “It came about because we had a lot of material going into our next record. Mike went to China with his family and came back with a batch of new songs, which was on the first album. Then Vic Chesnutt [a songwriter and friend of the band] passed. That second record is all his songs—it was a great sonic thing for us, really sad, but it became a tribute ...”

The critically acclaimed first album in the “Nomad Series” collection, “Renmin Park,” inspired by that trip to China taken by Mr. Timmins and his family, was hailed as the group’s most ambitious yet by The Boston Herald. “Demons,” the second album, was called “a loving tribute” by NPR. The third album, “Sing In My Meadow,” was quoted as “showing yet another side of one of the most versatile, underrated bands in the last 25 years” by Metromix.

“The Wilderness” will be the 15th album put out by the group perhaps best known in America for their cover of The Velvet Underground’s live version of “Sweet Jane.” This final album in the “Nomad Series” touches on subjects such as fragility, emptiness, beauty, loss and the balancing act of life, according to Mr. Timmins.

“They are about being lost in the wilderness of age, the wilderness of parenthood, in the wilderness of just trying to find meaning and substance, happiness and truth in one’s day-to-day life,” he said.

Other notable albums by the Cowboy Junkies include “The Caution Horses,” “Black Eyed Man,” “Pale Sun,” “Crescent Moon,” “Lay It Down,” “Open,” “One Soul Now,” “Early 21st Century Blues” and “At the End of Paths Taken.”

Playing together as a group for such a long time has its advantages, Mr. Anton said.

“We become sort of better musicians I guess,” he mused modestly. “We’re still not really great but that has enhanced our sound. Being able to play better has given us the opportunity to experiment in different directions that we couldn’t before. We’ve been expanding our song themes and structures.”

The Cowboy Junkies will give a concert at the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center on Saturday, March 10, at 8 p.m. Tickets are $40, $45 and $50. For reservations or additional information, call 288-1500, visit whbpac.org or stop by the box office on Main Street in Westhampton Beach.