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Last night I saw Cowboy Junkies at Humphrey's in San Diego, California. Humphrey's is a picturesque outdoor venue at a hotel by San Diego Bay. Cowboy Junkies are a Canadian band who I first saw about a year ago in Austin, Texas and was blown away. I've since bought the majority of their albums. Their music is hard to classify - there's a bit of everything. The feeling is generally mellow, but sometimes builds up to a heavier sound.

Cowboy Junkies recently released a new album called Early 21st Century Blues, which contains mostly covers and just two of songwriter Michael Timmins' originals. Quite a few of the songs they played last night were from this album. Interestingly, they didn't play any songs from their previous album One Soul Now, which is my favourite Cowboy Junkies album so far. Nevertheless, it was an excellent show. The band were in fine form. The regular 4 piece band (Margo Timmins - vocals, Michael Timmins - guitar, Alan Anton - bass, Peter Timmins - drums) were joined by regular guest Jeff Bird, who played electric mandolin, harmonica and percussion, and older brother John Timmins, who played guitar through most of the show.

The band opened with an inspired version of Bob Dylan's License To Kill. They also performed the 2 above-mentioned Michael Timmins originals December Skies and This World Dreams Of and Bruce Springsteen's Brothers Under The Bridge and You're Missing - the last is apparently a favourite of singer Margo Timmins and the performance showed this. They also dug into their back-catalogue, performing other originals like 'Cause Cheap Is How I Feel, Townes' Blues, A Common Disaster and Angel Mine - an incomplete and unordered list. The final song was a beautiful acoustic version of U2's One, which also closes the new album.

There were many standout moments but, like the band, they're difficult to categorise - everything just fits together, in kind of a Zen way. Margo Timmins' excellent moody vocals were well complemented by many short solos and extended instrumental interludes. The whole band simply built the mood all night, with Michael Timmins playing some wonderful lead guitar.

Time to stop gushing - I obviously love this band... and I loved last night's performance.