This evening, for the second time this year, it was off to see the Cowboy Junkies. This time, it was at the Royal Albert Hall, and like some of my fellow concert goers, I was at first worried about the paltry turnout. As it happened, by the time the Cowboy Junkies took to the stage, there was a pretty good audience. Mind you, the ticket clerk did offer me an upgrade of my arena standing ticket for a seat for £1.50 which I politely declined. By standing in the arena and arriving early, I was able to get right to the front.

The concert was to be a performance of their groundbreaking first album, The Trinity Session. As Margo Timmins, lead singer told us, it was recorded in the Church of the Holy Trinity in Toronto on a single day in 1987 and was a launchpad for the Cowboy Junkies.

I first came across them when they appeared on The Late Show on BBC2 on 21 March 1990 (got to love that BBC catalogue, even if it took a bit of additional Googling to find it). A friend and I immediately got standing tickets for their show at the Dominion Theatre a few days later on March 25 – we must have been home for Easter from our respective universities.
Since then, I’ve seen them many times, ensuring that I see them at least once on every trip they make to London.
Tonight they had two special guests – Ryan Adams, the prolific singer/songwriter, and Thea Gilmore who I’m determined to learn more about (Neil Gaiman mentioned her the other day).

The concert was wonderful and followed the tracklisting before we had a couple of encores including Margo singing a Ryan Adams song. I picked up the new CD and DVD pack of Trinity Revisited and went off happily into the night.