BY JUD COST

When Margo Timmins strolled up to the microphone in her low-cut black cocktail dress, wrapped in a scarlet shawl, with a rusty shock of hair draped over one eye like Veronica Lake, there was no doubt who the star of the show was going to be tonight.

Fronting the Cowboy Junkies, Timmins and her electric aura helped light the relatively cozy Garden Theatre, the outdoor hillside venue of the lavishly appointed Montalvo estate. This gorgeous Mediterranean-style villa, tucked in the heavily wooded hills above Saratoga, Calif., was once the home of U.S. senator (and San Francisco mayor) James Phelan.

With upscale wine and food served in the patio, tonight almost felt like a return to the halcyon days of William Randolph Hearst's extravagant west coast showplace at San Simeon, the frequent playground of a bevy of movie stars that included Clark Gable, Charlie Chaplin and Gary Cooper. "Usually when we unload to do a show we have to park next to a dumpster," explained Timmins to a rapt audience. "And that's where we spend most of our afternoon, next to a dumpster. But having a full day at this fabulous place, I can pretend I live here. That's the dream world I live in."

The dead accurate house PA serenaded customers climbing the crooked brick walkway to their seats with an eclectic play-list that veered from vintage George Jones to the hip indie-rock of Neutral Milk Hotel's "King of Carrot Flowers." It was a nice table-setter for the wiry alt-country rock of tonight's opener, Son Volt, who managed to easily break the world's record for elapsed time between their appearance onstage and striking the first note of their opening tune: 25 seconds flat.

"I have no pretensions of immortality/I've been told I have six months to live/But I've outlasted them all," sang frontman (and former bandmate of Wilco's Jeff Tweedy in Uncle Tupelo) Jay Farrar on "Cocaine And Ashes," one of the highlights of Son Volt's invigorating new longplayer, American Central Dust, on Rounder. "Big Sur," cut for a recent documentary on Jack Kerouac evoked the fog-shrouded majesty of the California coastline, just over the hill.

As always, Farrar's boys made good use of pedal steel, played by Mark Spencer who doubled on keyboards, and Chris Masterson's jagged electric and lap steel guitars on a no-nonsense set of down and out tunes for the New Depression. All business, Farrar thanked the folks for coming out and braving the occasional attack of buzzing gnats, the evening's only drawback.

One of the world's great overlooked and under-rated rock bands, Toronto's Cowboy Junkies consists of Timmins and bassist Alan Anton, along with her two brothers: exciting electric guitarist/chief songwriter Michael and rock-solid drummer Peter, encased for some reason in see-through studio baffling.

Neil Young's "Don't Let It Bring You Down" is a perfect Junkies intro tune: very quiet, kind of a bummer and real slow, a recipe the Canadian quartet has perfected like no one else over its 24-year run. Many of the originals tonight came from an album in progress and followed the usual pattern: quiet, slow and mildly depressing (in a very good way, of course).

In between songs, the almost chatty Timmins is anything but the moody, monosyllabic person you might expect. She told the story of her young son, on tour with the band last year when they played the nearby Mountain Winery, running head-first into a large piece of Junkies luggage. She carried the kid, his head bleeding profusely, into the backstage area and nursed his wounds. When the boy calmed down, he looked up at his mother and said, "Mommy, you've got blood all over your face. You look like a vampire!" Maybe so, but tonight she sang like a honk-tonk angel.