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The Cowsills will perform at Jazz Fest on the Gentilly Stage on Friday, May 6, at 12:45 p.m.
So you still associate the Cowsills with sunshine, flowers and the '60s? Well, you're right . . . but you're also missing a lot. The family band has lived out its share of pop history, but they're also a modern group with a triple CD of largely new material, Rhythm of the World, debuting this year. At Jazz Fest they'll do some of everything - new songs, their old hits, and a few borrowed numbers that show off the band's harmonies. And if that means bringing some old-fashioned good vibes along, that's fine with the Cowsills.
Their Jazz Fest debut and the album are both long overdue; both were originally set for 2020. Playing the Fest is a big deal for all concerned, capping their journey over the past few decades. "To go from pop stars to the stage of Jazz Fest - that's pretty unbelievable," says Paul Cowsill in a Zoom interview with his siblings.
"The legitimacy of this is amazing," adds Susan Cowsill. "I feel like a daughter of New Orleans, since I've lived here since 1993. And to have the family band play here is pretty much the feather in my cap for this town. I still get little weird shivers just thinking about it - I've played Jazz Fest with other groups, but playing it with these guys is a whole new tah-dah."
The Cowsills revival started back in the '90s when four of the original members - Bob, Paul, John and Susan - began playing shows around Los Angeles, at the time doing strictly new material in a classic power-pop vein. People coming to shows for nostalgic reasons got knocked out by the new stuff, though getting the message through to major labels proved a bigger challenge. Those songs ultimately appeared in 1998 on the self-released album Global.
A whole lot happened after that: Susan joined the Continental Drifters and moved to New Orleans, becoming a valued part of the local scene. John Cowsill left to become a full-time Beach Boy, drumming in the current Mike Love lineup and in the reunion tour with Brian Wilson. There were a couple of major losses, with brother Barry drowning in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and oldest brother Bill dying from disease soon after. (Both were in the '60s version of the group). The documentary film Family Band, which premiered on Showtime ten years ago, told the stories of loss in unflinching detail.
But the group stuck together as families do. The lineup is still the core of Susan, Paul and Bob joined by Susan's partner Russ Broussard on drums. Two next-generation Cowsills - Paul's son Brendon on guitar, Bob's son Ryan on keys - have joined the band along with longtime friend Mary Lasseigne (formerly of Cowboy Mouth) on bass.
Along the way the Cowsills also re-embraced their history. During the '90s they largely avoided playing any oldies - an encore of their biggest hit, "Hair," was usually it. When Dick Clark came calling for a lucrative nostalgia tour, they turned it down. But the band said yes to the Happy Together Tour in 2015 and have been performing together ever since - and for them it's been nothing but fun.
"Part of it is meeting legacy artists that I always wanted to meet," says Bob of the Happy Together Tour, which has included such '60s-era bands as The Turtles, The Association and The Vogues. "And playing in front of 12,000 people—great, how many songs do you want? Just the hits? Sure! The audience comes in ready to love you and to accept you. All those years when Happy Together went out without us were painful - 'Oh, there it goes again. One of these years we might crack it.' " Adds Paul, "For whatever reason, that tour was always on my bucket list. I wanted to go back to living on the tour bus again, the whole romantic thing about that. Just like what we grew up doing."
And ironically enough, the oldies tour made the new album happen. The idea of new recordings has been kicking around for decades, initially with Susan pushing her brothers to get on with it. There just weren't any new songs around, until they wound up on a tour bus together. "One day we just decided to write a song together - it took us 10 minutes and we went to a movie," says Susan. "Next thing you know, we're this mean machine - it became like a game, let's see if we can do it again." Adds Bob, "We used to come up with 16 songs every ten years. But this time it was all full and ready to spill out."
Recording happened at Dockside Studios in Maurice, Louisiana, and spontaneity reigned. "We'd get up in the morning, start at eleven, and by seven that evening, we'd learned what we were going to do that day," says Bob.
The sound is a bit lusher this time around, since it is a seven-piece group. But it's still driven by hooks and harmonies, same as it ever was. And to some extent, they're still about peace and love: The title track imagines a world in harmony while "Nuclear Winter" makes a fairly tough protest song, and the opener, "You Gotta Get Up," is about as uplifting as a pop song can get. So in that sense, it still is the same band that sang "I love the flower girl" in 1967.
"We never thought of a message, but when I listened again I realized it was all about love in one way or another," says Paul. Adds Susan, "The reason why we do what we're doing . . . First, because it's all we've ever done. But we do it because we love each other and it's our way to hang out, then we exchange it with the world. A human doesn't always get to experience this larger level of love communication - we get to go out there and carry it to others. So this record had no other way to go."
The most dramatic track is the closer, "Katrina," which imagines Barry's final moments on earth. Though it's meant to be somewhat upbeat, with the final part sending him off to heaven, it's still lump-in-throat material. "The hardest part for me was doing the lead vocal," says Bob. "I was going to tell this story in the first person, and you had to really be careful what you're thinking. If it's something too intimate, your voice is going to squiggle and you've blown it. The lyric basically came in one piece, and we accepted that as a kind of cosmic experience."
Of the three CDs in Rhythm of the World, one is the new album and another is archival tracks. And on the third disc, the Cowsills dust off their oldies in new, completely a cappella form - a technical feat in itself, with all of them singing numerous overdubbed parts. "It's Glee meets perfect pitch," says Bob.
So the Cowsills are now in the fairly unique position of being a vintage band and a new band at once. "We're looking to achieve Tony Bennett's career span," says Paul. Adds Susan, "We're not under any pretense that Kanye and I are going to be giving awards together next year, but what we do know is that for a group of people who are exactly what we are, we are lined up in a beautiful way with a team behind us, people in a position to make the most of this piece of work we did. In 2022, that's a miracle."
Bob gets the last word: "We're here to re-establish ourselves as a viable force, even today, so everyone in the music business can get over it. We're here to be a part of it again, and we're still younger than all of you. Don't fight us, we're coming in and we're ready to have a good time. If you can keep up with us, great. And if not, don't worry and we'll lead the way."
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