Their sound, again with Peter Moore using the ambisonic microphone, and their mix of blues, country, folk, rock and jazz earned them both critical attention and a strong fan base.

In 1979, influenced by post-punk bands such as Siouxsie and the Banshees and Joy Division, they recruited drummer Geoff Railton and vocalist Liza Dawson-Whisker, and formed Hunger Project in Toronto.

After that, Hunger Project moved to the United Kingdom, where they toured for three months and released the single "The Same Inside/Assembly" on their independent label, Latent Recordings.

[2] When Hunger Project disbanded, Alan Anton and Michael Timmins remained in London and started an improvisational band named Germinal.

The members – Michael Timmins on guitar, Alan Anton on bass, a drummer, and saxophonist, played whatever they wished on their instruments at the same time.

"[7] In London, they developed journeyman skills as musicians, and expanded their knowledge of music history — Michael Timmins worked in a record store for a year to make ends meet while with Germinal.

The group would perform a rhythmic groove while Margo sang improvised vocal melodies and portions of old blues songs.

Michael Timmins described the experience: "While touring Whites we had spent a lot of time in the Southern states, especially Virginia, Georgia and the Carolinas.

For some reason the club owners down there took a liking to what we were doing so we spent a lot of time crossing the kudzu choked highways that ran through the heart of the old Confederacy.

To better persuade the officials of the historic church, Moore claimed "The Timmins Family Singers" were recording a Christmas special.

To better balance Margo's vocals against the electric guitars and drums, she was recorded through a PA system left behind by a previous group.

By making subtle changes in volume and placement relative to the microphone over six hours, Moore and the band finally reached the distinctive sound of the album.

The mood in this instance is hypnotic and introspective – an intense, melancholic longing that blends the elemental emotions of country music and the blues with the poetic world-weariness of the Velvet Underground.

[...] Having good songs, the skill to convey what they have to say and, most important, a vision, the Cowboy Junkies dispensed with high-tech trumpery and made their record simply and seriously.

Yet despite the problems with the making of it, the band considers it a very exciting and turbulent time in their career and state that The Caution Horses (1990) remains one of their favourite albums.

The session went badly because the group had just come off the road after a gruelling tour and were tired, particularly Margo Timmins who had a terrible head cold.

We went there for a week at a time and between chopping wood, cooking, boating, whittling, hiking and staring into the fire, worked up some songs that were as laid back and sparse as the setting.

While they were on a tour to support their live album Waltz Across America, which lasted nine months and had many breaks in the schedule, they began working on new material.

When the band returned home after their Open Tour, they decided to turn their rehearsal area into a recording studio which they dubbed The Clubhouse.

[37] The Cowboy Junkies next project was Early 21st Century Blues, which was recorded February through March 2005, and released in August of that year.

The theme for the album was war, violence, fear, greed, ignorance, or loss, and everybody had to bring two or three songs written by other people.

Michael Timmins wrote songs that "reflect the complex, frustrating, edifying, and conflict-ridden web of relationships that constitute the family, from nuclear to extended to global.

Each does lead vocal on one of the album's songs (Merchant on "To Love Is to Bury", Chesnutt on "Postcard Blues", and Adams on "200 More Miles").

[44] The Junkies had no recording contract when they created the Nomad Series, which freed them up to be experimental with their music, to avoid categorizing the planned releases.

[45] The first album in the series is Renmin Park (2010), which is based on ideas the band's principal songwriter, Michael Timmins, got while living in China for three months with his wife and three children.

[46] The music that inspired Timmins most during the visit was found at Renmin Park, where a variety of musicians would gather throughout the day, bringing their erhus, pipas, shangxians, various percussion instruments; and a mix of singers performed.

Michael Timmins stated, "One of the hopes of this album is that it inspires people to seek out the originals and keep his music alive.

You sort of expect things to be there and realize, 'My God, what I thought was a standard, whether it be an institution or a way of dealing with people in our society, is disappearing.

The tour was a tremendous success on all levels and thankfully the BBC was there to record one of the shows at The Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester.

Since their second studio album the band has performed and recorded with multi-instrumentalist Jeff Bird, whose current role includes acoustic and electric mandolins, harmonica, percussion, and samples.