Product Description
"In late 2008, my family and I were given an opportunity to spend three months in China. Renmin Park is a reflection of my family's adventure in China. It's a fictional love story about two people whose two worlds will forever keep them apart.

It's a thank-you letter to an obscure city and the people who opened up their lives to five very strange strangers. It's a document about a bewilderingly complex culture that is, once again, experiencing a massive upheaval. It's another chapter in a band's ongoing twenty-five year journey."
--Michael Timmins (March 2010)

Michael became enamored with the original Chinese music to which he was exposed as well as the sounds he encountered in everyday life. Both of these elements led to the creation of the latest Cowboy Junkies album, Remnin Park. Two of the artists that he became attached to were Zuoxiao Zuzhou (ZXZZ) and Xu Wei and the band covers songs by each on Renmin Park (ZXZZ's "I Cannot Sit Sadly By Your Side" and Xu Wei's "My Fall"). In addition, ZXZZ contributes an original lyric and vocal performance to "A Walk In The Park." Field recordings Timmins made of everything from street sounds to badminton games to children in the classroom are incorporated into a number of songs.

For 25 years, Cowboy Junkies have remained true to their unique artistic vision and to the introspective, quiet intensity that is their musical signature, creating a body of original work that has been critically acclaimed and has endeared them to an audience unwavering in its loyalty. Albums like The Trinity Session (1988), The Caution Horses (1990), Black Eyed Man (1992), Pale Sun, Crescent Moon (1993), Lay It Down (1996) and more recently, Open (2001), One Soul Now (2004), Early 21st Century Blues (2005) and At the End of Paths Taken (2007) chronicle their singular creative journey.

1. Intro
2. Renmin Park
3. Sir Francis Bacon At The Net
4. Stranger Here
5. A Few Bags Of Grain
6. I Cannot Sit Sadly By Your Side
7. (You've Got To Get) A Good Heart
8. Cicadas
9. Interlude
10. My Fall
11. Little Dark Heart
12. A Walk In The Park
13. Renmin Park (Revisited)
14. Coda

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003H6Z0O0/?tag=imwan-20

From Billboard online,

Cowboy Junkies Plot New Album, Tour
February 24, 2009 10:58 AM ET
John Benson, Cleveland

Two years after the Cowboy Junkies' last studio effort "At The End of Paths Taken," guitarist Michael Timmins tells Billboard.com the Canadian band is hoping to have a new album out in late 2009 or early 2010.

"Right now we're just touring constantly, as we always do, and working on new songs for a new record," Timmins says. "The songs are there, it's just when we get around to completely finishing it. To us, the pluses of making a record are just mysterious. We sort of build up the songs, play them live quite a bit and then we kind of figure out how we want to approach them in the studio. And we either approach them very slowly or very quickly, depending just on circumstance and how the songs are coming about."

With a nine-date spring tour due to begin March 26 in Rochester, NY (German House Theater), the Cowboy Junkies -- Timmins, Margo Timmins (vocals), Peter Timmins (drums) and Alan Anton (bass) -- are road-testing a few new songs, including "Angels in the Wilderness," "The Confession of Georgie E" and "Fairytale."

"They all sound like the Cowboy Junkies," Timmins laughs. "I don't know, they're changing. With road-testing songs, you push them in a direction and then pull them back and then push them in another direction. Some of these songs I've just been playing me and Margo on acoustic guitar, and then we play them with a full band, so it's hard to know where they're going to end up."

Something else happening in the Cowboy Junkies' not-so-distance future is its new and improved Web site from its own label Latent Recordings. The idea is to turn it into a one-stop shopping site for all things Cowboy Junkies and beyond.

"We're about to launch it hopefully in the next month and it's going to be not only for us but also for a lot of bands in Toronto that we're working with and producing," Timmins says. "It's going to have lots of downloading capabilities, so that's sort of our next phase in trying to figure out how the music business works."

Still undetermined is how the Cowboy Junkies's new CD will be released stateside. But the new buyer-friendly website may be a factor in that decision.

"We're not sure there is any need to get another middle person involved," Timmins says. "We're trying to figure that out right now. For the states, my feeling now at this point, it probably makes more sense to do a straight distribution deal rather than doing a license deal, but we haven't made a decision on that."

Thanks for bringing this article to our attention. I have a keen interest in the band and the directions they go in.

Streaming audio on the Cowboy Junkies website:

http://latentrecordings.com/cowboyjunkies/

Ships May 3 from Latent Recordings.

BONUS: Order this CD and you will receive a link for a free download of the entire album! A link for your free download will be included in your confirmation e-mail. These digital files are encoded at a constant bit rate of 256kbps

got this today.

quite interesting.

inspired by chinese music, and from what i can gather a trip to china. lots more lead guitar than usual from michael timmins.

a very good album.

Renny, my business got a copy of this today. Since you've had it now for a year, would you recommend that I open & keep it (I've never heard it?

My fav CJ albums are Trinity & Cautino Horses. The only CJ album I don't like is White's off Earth Now, though the 2 I mentioned are by far the most played & the last one I heard other than Trinity Revisited was open Road.

it depends on how you like you cowboy junkies.

more guitar than most albums on this one, and i have to be honest when i tell you i've never played after the initial once or twice. the cowboy junkies can be, to say it nicely, sleep inducing at times. if you know what i mean.