200 More Miles

SONG: 200 More Miles

BY: Michael Timmins

PERFORMED BY: Cowboy Junkies

APPEARS ON: The Trinity Session (RCA)

I don’t remember all the details of how I came to learn about & for a time, become obsessed with, the music of the Cowboy Junkies. It was well over 20 years ago now, & a very eventful time in my life—a time I’ve yet to really resolve, a time that focused many of the creative tensions I still work from & at times resist.

This is all to say that things I knew in that time, & that defined it for me, continue to resonate when I encounter them. This is true, for instance, of Big Star’s music, which I wrote about earlier on Just a Song; Big Star, & especially Big Star’s 3rd, was a major portion of my life’s soundtrack at that time. The Cowboy Junkies were another significant strain.

For those of you who don’t know, the Cowboy Junkies hail from Toronto, & like another Canadian group, the Band, they’ve always impressed me with their ability to both inhabit & re-shape a U.S. Americana sound; when they perform songs by Patsy Cline or Hank Williams—or Lou Reed for that matter—the music becomes at once familiar & also rich & strange.

The core of the Cowboy Junkies is the Timmins family—brothers Michael (guitar), Peter (drums), & Margo (vocals). Their sound can only be described as haunting—particularly Margo Timmins’ singing, which only can be described as a contradiction in terms: a sort of laid-back intensity. On their second album, The Trinity Session, the sound is enhanced by some beautiful pedal steel courtesy of Kim Deschamps & some fine harmonica work by Steve Shearer. The album was recorded in Toronto’s Church of the Holy Trinity using a single mic!

Michael Timmins’s song “200 More Miles,” as interpreted by Margo, is a night-sea journey by car across a quintessential American landscape. The melody & harmonies & lyrics all conjure up a road trip that is ultimately transformative—& what larger 20th century American myth is there? The poetry of Timmins’ lyrics stands by itself—the truth of the road, which fades into the distance & also appears, distant & strange on the forward horizon, the promise—as yet (or ever?) unattained of reaching the point that will transmute everything & redeem the past….

There are a couple of obscure references in the verse about Nashville: the “lighter in a case for all to see” & “in the corner stands a guitar/& lonesome words scrawled in a drunken hand.” This refers to the Country Music Hall of Fame, where Patsy Cline’s cigarette lighter is on display, as well as Hank Williams’ guitar & some of this handwritten songs.

I remember a trip of my own in 1988 from Charlottesville, VA to Davis, CA (almost, but not quite, with a detour to Los Angeles), setting out in the late afternoon & driving past Knoxville in the night, this song in my head & on the tape player, the words echoing with my thoughts. When I hear them now, I hear those same echoes…. hope you enjoy this beautiful & evocative piece of music.


200 More Miles

Atlanta's a distant memory
Montgomery a recent blur
And Tulsa burns on the desert floor
Like a signal fire
I got Willie on the radio
A dozen things on my mind
And number one is fleshing out
These dreams of mine

I've got 200 more miles of rain asphalt and light
Before I sleep
But there'll be no warm sheets or welcoming arms
To fall into tonight

In Nashville there is a lighter in a case for all to see
It speaks of dreams and heartaches left unsung
And in the corner stands a guitar
And lonesome words scrawled in a drunken hand
I'm travelling paths travelled hard before
And I'm beginning to understand

I've got 200 more miles of rain asphalt and light
Before I sleep
But there'll be no warm sheets or welcoming arms
To fall into tonight

They say that I am crazy
My life wasting on this road
That time will find my dreams
Scattered dead and cold
But I heard there is a light
Drawing me to reach an end
And when I reach there, I'll turn back
And you and I can begin again

I've got 200 more miles of rain asphalt and light
Before I sleep
But there'll be no warm sheets or welcoming arms
To fall into tonight

I've got 200 more miles of rain asphalt and light
Before I sleep
But there'll be no warm sheets or welcoming arms
To fall into tonight

Atlanta's a distant memory
Montgomery a recent blur
Tulsa burns on the desert floor
like a signal fire.