Twenty years after they arrived on the alternative music scene with “The Trinity Sessions,” the Cowboy Junkies are still a hot ticket.
Especially in Blacksburg. The group’s Oct. 15 show at the Lyric Theatre is expected to be a sellout — the tickets are the fastest-selling ticket this year for the venue, said Susan Mattingly, the theater’s executive director.

The group — siblings Margo Timmins, guitarist Michael Timmins and drummer Peter Timmins and their longtime friend, bassist Alan Anton — is known for creating quiet, haunting melodies such as those found on “Sweet Jane” and “Misguided Angel” from the 1988 album.

But the band hasn’t stuck to just one style throughout the years, vocalist Margo Timmins said in a phone interview. The Junkies have recorded 18
albums, the most recent being 2008’s “Trinity Revisited,” available on both CD and DVD.

As band members have grown up, so has their sound. It’s still intimate, but it’s more confident, too, Timmins said.

Q: For people who might not be familiar with the band, how do you describe the music?

We’re a four-piece band, but we travel as a five-piece with Jeff Byrd, who’s a multi-instrumentalist on the mandolin and harmonica. We’ve been
around for 25-ish years, I guess, and if I have to describe the sound, I guess, basically, it’s based on being very quiet — not that the music’s always
quiet. I always have a sense a calm and meditation and space [in our music].

Q: When you listen back to “The Trinity Sessions,” what stands out to you?  

A: I think that “The Trinity Sessions” had a strong impact. I’m not going to say huge, because it wasn’t like it sold millions of records since day one. I
think the reason it had the impact it did was because it was so different from what was going on then [in 1988].

Music was highly overproduced then, with all these layers and sounds. Everything was filled, there was no space in the music and it was all done in
studios and cost a fortune, and along comes this album done live with tons of space that could not be more simple or more innocent, and the players
on album were totally innocent. By innocent I meant that we were not recording an album we thought world would hear. We were recording an album
we were hoping could get us on an independent label.

It sold about 3,000 copies, and we had hoped to sell as many if not more. In those days, indie labels were small — not like now — and we were a
Canadian band. We had no idea we would get signed to RCA. So I think the innocence was there and that’s what people heard. … I wish I could say it
was totally a genius thought and we planned it, but it was not in any way. It was a total creation of who we were, of what we were at the time.

Pete was a new drummer, I was a fairly new singer and my personality was very quiet. I was not a front person of a band by nature, and I didn’t sing
loud, so they had to turn down instruments and they liked the tone they were hearing. So it just kind of came together and it was the type of music we
liked. 

Q: How has your music, and outlook on music, changed since then?

A: It’s changed a lot, but I think it changed very organically. We’ve grown as a band, but not dramatically. You’ll never pick up the Cowboy Junkies and
say, “Those were the hip-hop days.”

We have a lot of genres coming together. If we’re working on a song and a country-based lick would work, we use it. If my brother Pete wants to do
waltz drumming and Michael wants to [do] screechy noises on his guitar and I want to sing it like a love ballad, it will work because we’ll make it work.

As we’ve grown older, we’ve hopefully gotten better and we can bring more to the song — and bring more choices with more confidence. In the old
days we wouldn’t even try anything new because it was too intimidating do so. So if we have an idea and it works, great. If it doesn’t, walk away. Most
bands start off really loud, but we’re getting louder as we get older.

Q: What are the plans for the Cowboy Junkies in the future?

The future is the same as the past. You put out an album, you’re working on the Web site and your material. Whether it’s an album or a journal on
[the] Web site, it’s [a] very weird time in [the] music industry. You have to keep your name out there and keep it going. We all have children school-age
now, so our time as not as free as [it] used to be. We tour 10 days of every month, and then come back to make sure everything is OK at home, and
that’s what we just keep doing.