Deadbeat and Fatima Camara have joined forces for Trinity Thirty, a reinterpretation of the Cowboy Junkies’ The Trinity Session to celebrate the album’s 30th anniversary. 

The idea was spawned when Deadbeat (real name Scott Monteith) heard the Junkies’ Trinity version of “Sweet Jane” playing in an airport a few years back. Reminded of how much he loved the album, Monteith reached out to the band to ask if they had anything planned to mark its 30th birthday. Before Monteith had even touched down back in Berlin, the band had replied saying they had no such plans but would enthusiastically support whatever angle Deadbeat might want to run with. 

Monteith then recalled conversations with musician and fellow Canadian-in-Berlin Fatima Camara (whose debut solo album, Before We Sleep, came out on Parachute Records in 2016) about their shared love of The Trinity Session, feeling she’d be the perfect partner to involve in a reinterpretation. Camara was thrilled by the idea, and the two began to explore how to approach things conceptually and aesthetically. This became their first collaboration, and the first time either artist had placed their own vocals at the forefront of a project, with guest vocalist Caoimhe McAlister adding harmonies on certain tracks. 

For Trinity Thirty, Deadbeat and Camara re-recorded everything with ambient mics in a big open space at Berlin’s Chez Cherie studio, relying on natural room acoustics, committed to raw first takes, guided by an overriding strategy of slowing down all the tempos as far as they could while continuing to channel the warm asceticism of the original album. They had initially imagined that they would run a fair amount of electronic treatments during the mix, but instead found themselves absorbed by the spaces, silences, and atmospherics, guided by a spirit of preservation and restraint in homage to the original. 

The result is “a less electronic album than we imagined making,” we’re told—a collection of “covers of covers,” where the reference point is always the Cowboy Junkies’ original approach. 

Tracklisting

01. Mining For Gold 

02. Misguided Angel 

03. Blue Moon 

04. I Don’t Get It After Midnight (Medley) 

05. I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry 

06. To Love Is To Bury 

07. Dreaming My Dreams With You 

08. 200 More Miles 

09. Working On A Building 

10. Postcard Blues 

11. Sweet Jane 

Trinity Thirty LP is available now via Montreal’s CST Records, with a full stream below.