The Cowboy Junkies

| Amy Matzke-Fawcett

amy.matzke-fawcett@roanoke.com, 381-1674

Canadian band the Cowboy Junkies will play tonight to a sold-out crowd at the Lyric Theatre in Blacksburg.

The tickets have sold faster than any other show at the Lyric this year, said executive director Susan Mattingly.

But who is the band behind the songs like "Sweet Jane" and "Misguided Angel?"

Here is a primer:

n The group is siblings Margo Timmins, guitarist Michael Timmins and drummer Peter Timmins and their longtime friend, bassist Alan Anton.

n The family dynamic has played a part in keeping the group together for so long, Margo Timmins said in a phone interview from her home in Toronto.

"Because my brothers and I share a lot of the same values, I think it's easier for us than it might have been for someone else," she said. "When money comes into it, we have the same values on how to spend that money, so business decisions have been really easy.

"My brothers are my son's uncles and they care about him. If I say I can't go on tour because of him, if I feel I need to be home because his needs come first, it's OK, and they're the same way."

n The band is best known for their quiet, haunting melodies such as those of "Sweet Jane" and "Misguided Angel" from their 1988 album, "The Trinity Sessions."

Since then, the Junkies have recorded 18 albums, the most recent being 2008's "Trinity Revisited," available on both CD and DVD, going back to the songs that first brought them major recognition.

n The Timmins siblings didn't plan for a band to be their life's work, she said.

"Our dad loved music and we all went to shows from a young age, but the expectations weren't there," she said.

n The band's name has no real meaning behind it, Margo Timmins said.

"We had our first gig coming up at a local club in Toronto and the owner wanted to put it in the paper in a club listing or something, so one day before rehearsal we said we've got to come up with the name ... when we were in Europe in one point, people asked what it meant and we told them it was a traditional Canadian dessert, so they asked what's in it and we said maple syrup and a bunch of other things."