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One of 2025's biggest surprises is Long After The Fire, the new album by Vicki Peterson and John Cowsill, which pays loving tribute to the songs of John's late brothers, Barry and Bill Cowsill.
Knowing the seasoned pedigree of Vicki from her work with The Bangles, The Continental Drifters and The Psycho Sisters with partner Susan Cowsill and John's work with The Cowsills and The Beach Boys, one never doubted that the record would hit the bullseye on the vocal front. But the album impresses with so much more than a display of vocal prowess, making it an early contender for this writer's "album of the year."
Long After The Fire is a special record filled with a slate of timeless songs that you swear you've known all your life, framed by impassioned heartfelt performances, stellar production and arrangements and gorgeous singing by Vicki and John. Let's turn it over to Vicki and John to tell us more.
Rock Cellar: Was making an album paying tribute to your brothers Barry and Bill always an idea in the back of your head as a way to honor a lot of songs that the public rarely or never heard?
John Cowsill: Well, what it really was was a selfish idea, because I miss them. Bill used to come over and we'd sing the songs and they're really old. They were done in the '80s. I used to room with Barry and I'd watch him write these songs. I thought, "You know, I'm not a real prolific writer but I know these songs. I've sung them for forever."
I asked Vicki, "Hey, I had this idea about 10 years ago or something and always wanted to record my favorite songs of theirs," so we did.
Vicki Peterson: But you're right, it is an effort on our part to not only honor them, but to put this music out in a fresh way so that it might get a little attention and people will hear them and fall in love with them as much as we have.
John Cowsill: Yeah, it's a love letter, basically, and a tribute to my two brothers Barry and Bill.
Rock Cellar: What is the oldest song on this collection and what is the most recent of the songs your brothers wrote?
Vicki Peterson: That's a good question. I would say Barry's songs.
John Cowsill: Barry's songs are probably the oldest. But "Vagabond" has been around forever with Bill. "You, In My Mind" is a song that Bill wrote and recorded as The Cowsills. Bill was not in The Cowsills at this point. My dad kicked him out.
But for some reason he circled around, because The Cowsills around 1971 or '72 didn't have a song for the record company. And my dad and my brother Bill, the arch enemies, came up with this idea. "Well, we'll just put this out and we'll call it The Cowsills." So when The Cowsills put out the song "You, In My Mind," it was just Bill Cowsill, and it really hurt Bob because he had to lip-sync Bill and pretend that this is us on a TV show. So I'll say that's the oldest one, actually.
Vicki Peterson: I'm going to say that "Don't Look Back" predates that because it came out on The Cowsills record.
John Cowsill: Oh yeah. Barry was 14 when he wrote "Don't Look Back." I remember him writing that in because we shared a room. He was writing that and "Down On The Farm," and a couple other things he was writing while I was just goofing around looking in the mirror and making faces. He was a prolific writer already.
Vicki Peterson: So those are our two Cowsills gems on this record that were actually recorded and released by The Cowsills.
Rock Cellar: How did you land upon which songs to choose to record?
John Cowsill: We both had our favorite songs that we loved by them, and really, that's what that is. And like I said, I just know these songs forever because of Bill and Barry. They're my brothers, and I heard them singing them. I'm a fan of their writing and their performances, and so it was easy for me to pick the ones that I'd like to sing, and Vicki picked the one she wanted to sing.
Vicki Peterson: Yeah, we went back and forth on a couple things. I was advocating for "Don't Look Back" because as a fan that was a song that had a lead bass line. The bassist is the lead of the instrument. I always wanted to learn that bass part, which I eventually did. It was sort of a dream come true to play bass on that song.
John Cowsill: That's Vicki playing bass on "Don't Look Back." She practiced. We were in a studio apartment in New York for the last few years. We just moved back to California a few months ago, and every night she would be under the earphones learning that song and then we recorded that.
Rock Cellar: As songsmiths, what were the characteristics that earmarked Barry and Bill as writers?
Vicki Peterson: That's a great question. Bill always had a real handle on craftsmanship as far as songwriting and he found some partners up in Canada like Jeffrey Hatcher and Mark Irwin to write some songs for the Blue Shadows. They have sort of a classic aspect to them in that the songs are just very well formed. They're of the moment.
It was the '80s and '90s when he was writing these songs, but it sounds like it's late '50s or early '60s and he uses vocabulary from that time. In "Vagabond," he's using words like "hobo," and you just don't hear that in the modern vernacular.
John Cowsill: With Bill, during the Cowsills years, there's song like "Heaven Held" and "In Need Of A Friend," and "And The Next Day Too." In the early '60s, we were on JoDa Records, Johnny Nash's label. They were writing songs then with Johnny Nash and they were just natural songwriters, him and Bob.
Bob's a great songwriter as well, but he's still alive so he doesn't get a tribute. [laughs] And Paul, too. Paul wrote with Bob. You know, they wrote one of my favorite songs. I said, "Can you guys write me a country song?" and that was for the On My Side album. They wrote me a song called "Cheatin' On Me" because I like country. I always have.
Vicki Peterson: Barry was a very emotional writer. He wrote mostly from his heart and soul. These were things that he was really feeling, thinking and experiencing. It was less a matter of wanting to craft a song in a certain style. It very much comes from him. And so songs like "Ol' Timeless" and "When Hearts Collide," which, by the way, he sang at our wedding. These are deeply personal songs for him, I think.
John Cowsill: They are, and very stylized too. We wanted to be very delicate with how we interpreted those songs and I hope we did them justice.
Vicki Peterson: Yeah, we can't imitate it.
John Cowsill: Yeah, I hope he likes what we did, wherever he is.
Rock Cellar: When I was listening to the new album, every time one of these songs was finished, my impression was that "this song feels like it's been around forever." There's a timelessness to all of these wonderful songs.
John Cowsill: You've heard them before, but you haven't.
Vicki Peterson: We know exactly what you mean because we feel that way, especially about the songs that Bill recorded with the Blue Shadows that we tribute on this record. Many of his compositions feel like old country classics, and I think he intentionally did that as an homage to artists that he always loved. John was in that company, too, so these songs really resonate with us. But they do sound like songs that you've heard before without being lowest common denominator and simplistic.
John Cowsill: It's not like the Rutles. [laughs] They wrote Beatles songs, but these are timeless, traditional country songs that you thought you've heard before, but you didn't, and you walk away and you can hum them and that's basically how we picked them.
Rock Cellar: "Fool Is The Last One To Know" sounds like a great lost Dave Edmunds song.
John Cowsill: Definitely.
Vicki Peterson: Dave Edmunds, that's cool. I wouldn't have thought of that.
Rock Cellar: With the new album, I'm really impressed with not only the performances and the quality of the songwriting, but the arrangements and the production is just magnificent.
John Cowsill: Well, that's our producer Paul Allen, who had a big hand in all of that. He is the one who got me started on the project. He prodded me personally.
The first song we recorded was called "Is Anybody Here?" Paul called me up. I was playing with The Beach Boys and he was in Nashville, and he said, "Hey, I see you're going to be in Memphis. Hey, you wanna record at Sun Records?" I'm a cocky guy. I said, "Why?" and that kind of set him back. He said, "Well, because we can. We can say we recorded at Sun Records." I said, "Well, what are we going to do?"
I had been telling him about this Dead Brothers project, that's what we called it affectionately in the early days. And he said, "Well, what about that project you want to do?" and I went, "OK," and so we decided on "Is Anybody Here?" because it's such an Orbison tribute from Bill and Jeffrey to Roy Orbison. Roy's picture is on the wall and we're there using the ribbon mics and the slap machine and everything and it was just magical. I think that was the first time I actually sang that song.
Vicki Peterson: You did such a great job on it. It's amazing.
John Cowsill: And so that started the whole project. And then a couple of years after that, we finished it. Well, it took four years to do it because I was with The Beach Boys and I was always gone.
Vicki Peterson: I had moved to New York.
John Cowsill: And the rest of it was recorded here at the house. But without Paul's knowledge of how the studio works - and he made our studio function properly and knew how to make the sounds happen - he's just miraculous. Paul and Vicki arranged "Come To Me." He sent us an arrangement of that song that was the second single that dropped, and it makes the hair stand up on my arm at how beautiful it is.
Rock Cellar: That's my favorite song on the record. There's so much space on this record that's beautiful and adds to the beauty.
John Cowsill: Yes, very much so.
Vicki Peterson: Right. It wasn't a thrash.
John Cowsill: Yeah. It's not one dimensional, definitely. None of it is the way he produced it. He and Mark Lonsway mixed that, and it couldn't be nicer. I mean, we're very proud of it and thankful that it came out like it did.
Rock Cellar: What's the backstory behind Barry writing "Come to Me?"
John Cowsill: The backstory is this Barry floated around and stayed at people's houses. You know, he could charm you with a song and so he'd get room and board for that. We were hanging out at a friend's house in Hancock Park in California.
Barry was down in his basement; he had a little rehearsal thing set up and myself and a guy named Randall Kirsch went there and we were jamming on that song and Barry was playing with this whammy bar on the Gretsch the whole time. Anyway, we decided, "Hey, let's go do a gig at the Troubadour," so we called ourselves Shopping Spree for no reason.
On a Monday night there was probably 10 people there. I think they worked there. We recorded the show on a cassette and "Come to Me" is on there. That's the only version there is of that song recorded by Barry Cowsill, so we worked off this live recording. He wrote that in '79 or '80. I have that tape still, and that's how we knew the song. We had to kind of grab the words off of there and I think we have them correct.
Vicki Peterson: But it is actually a really romantic song. From those beginnings, with the Shopping Spree performance, you can tell they're just kind of figuring out how to play the song and how it's going to go, and Barry's trying to lead them. But the song itself, lyrically and musically, very romantic. It's asking for forgiveness for your own shortcomings, but also promising protection and safe harbor and love to your partner. And, you know, I can and I will shelter you and I'm doing the best I can, basically.
Rock Cellar: Do you think the both of you inhabiting this material helped open up some areas of your artistry, singing and playing-wise, that maybe you hadn't tapped into?
John Cowsill: For me, definitely, because I've always been somebody's drummer or somebody's piano player, even in The Cowsills, or somebody's background singer. Yes, I got a couple of leads here and there but never sang more than one or two songs in any band. And yet I'm a singer and I always sing.
So this was an opportunity to actually be a singer. This was the first time for myself. Vicki, not so much, because she's been in The Psycho Sisters. She's been a focal point and a front person even though she's a serial band member. But she was always writing and being a lead singer.
For me, it's new - not being a singer, but to be the lead singer. And it's funny because when it rains, it pours. Now I'm singing lead with The Smithereens as well, on a lot of dates, in addition to Marshall Crenshaw and Robin Wilson from the Gin Blossoms. And that's fun, too. It's like somebody pinched me. It's like, I can't believe I get to do this now. Finally, I get to be a singer because I was raised as a singer.
Vicki Peterson: For me, the idea of inhabiting these songs, I was thinking about Barry and Bill and hoping they'd like this project and to honor them. Obviously we can't run it by them and say, "hey, what do you think about this one? Is this okay?" We have to just believe and hope and dream that they are pleased with what we've done with their material.
It was something to step inside these songs and to sing them and wonder, "What was Barry thinking right here? What was Bill thinking about? What were they writing about?" I definitely had to go there mentally and emotionally, and John, too. There were a couple times where he just couldn't get through the song.
John Cowsill: Oh God. Trying to sing "When Hearts Collide," I'd just fall apart every time.
Rock Cellar: Besides being life partners, there's something special in terms of your musical chemistry, for example, just the way you sing together on "A Thousand Times." Talk about the musical glue that binds you both together.
John Cowsill: I think you're right. It's so easy to sing with her, and we have the best time doing it. You know, it's like it's finally happening. Because we're such a domestic couple, we walked around each other for the first 19 years of our marriage like gunslingers. "Well, you go first, "No, you go first."
We just cooked food and did house projects unless somebody asked us to do background vocals. It wasn't until the Action Skulls that we actually started working together musically and found our voices in there. So it was a nice segue into just the two of us doing this project, because it's our retirement plan.
We just want to go out on a shits and giggles tour and sing together and have fun. I think people worry that that could ruin a relationship, but it just enforces ours. We just get along so well. But you know, talk to me in five years, maybe I'll be living somewhere else. [laughs] She'll have tired of my control freakness and I'll tire of hers, because we're both control freaks.
Vicki Peterson: But we both acknowledged that pretty early on in the project, which was helpful. "OK, I'm realizing that I'm trying to control what you're doing right now. OK, I'm feeling that. Yes, you're right," so that was important. We got that acknowledged. [laughs]
John Cowsill: But we quickly come back, and there's no grudges between us ever. We just really respect each other because we've been in relationships where we were not respected. We just really appreciate each other's allowance to be ourselves in this world and it's very comforting.
Rock Cellar: Vicki, you were an original Cowsills fan and then in the late '70s you started befriending the band and now you're married to John and you're doing a project and some of them are Cowsills songs. Do you ever stop and think how surreal this is and the kind of incredible kismet of it all?
Vicki Peterson: It's pretty nutty. I mean, if I could time travel and go talk to 14-year-old Vicki, she'd be losing her mind. Absolutely. But on the other hand, like you said, there is a kismet. There is a meant-to-be element to it all.
I always felt a connection to this family from the first time I heard their music, and I'm not alone in that. I think a lot of people feel that way, to be honest. When you were asking about the way we work together, although John and I did not obviously grow up together, we grew up in a very similar musical environment and we pulled from similar resources.
We were all obsessed with The Beatles and The Beach Boys and The Mamas & the Papas and vocal harmony bands specifically. So that kind of training is a part of both of our backgrounds and something that I love. In recent years I have been enjoying the position of singing lead more than I have in my past career and stretching as a singer and a vocalist and it's been really fun.
But the bottom line and the easiest thing for both John and me to do is to sing harmonies. We make the joke. We're quoting his older brother Bob, but if you want us to overproduce background harmonies, we're your guys. [laughs]
John Cowsill: We both are vocal arrangers and it's fun because we take turns like, "Well, you do this one," because we know what they're going to do and sometimes not. You go, "Whoa. I wouldn't have done that," But it's cool.
Vicki Peterson: John doesn't like when I veer off. [laughs]
John Cowsill: Vicki is a crooked line and I am perfectly straight. So I'm a Pisces. I align my pencils according to size and shape and Vicki's is abstract.
Rock Cellar: Are you thinking toward the future of doing a record of Vicki and John material?
Vicki Peterson: It's not impossible. We'll see.
John Cowsill: Yeah, we'll see. I'm not a great writer. I've written some things with the Action Skulls. I'm a person who hunts for material. I'm an interpreter of songs. I understand lyrics. I can feel what people are saying, and I know how to interpret that. But we are trying to do that. We've only written together within the Action Skulls, and that's with Bill Mumy, who's a prolific writer, so he eggs it on. But I still hunt for material, and we'll just see what happens. I don't know what a Vicki and John handwritten album might sound like.
Vicki Peterson: We've been toying with the idea, but we have been focusing so much on getting this record the respect and audience that we think it deserves, and that's really our focus right now. And it's a daily job, we're finding it's a lot of work.
John Cowsill: Can I just say the word metadata and having to file so much stuff and trying to get all these ducks in order. I've almost wanted to throw the towel saying, "This is not what I thought we had to do. I just thought we were just going to sing." But it's not that. It is a do-it-yourself world now in the administration part of things.
We did hire a PR team and a social media team. Because I just turned 69, I think I had 12 friends on a Facebook page I hardly use, and now I'm posting stuff and I realized I've reached my limit on a personal page with 5,000 people, I thought people can have as many as they want.
There's just so much stuff that we're trying to do. We have to make videos for our songs that Vicki and I do ourselves. We go and film with our iPhone and Vicki edits everything. So the two videos you've seen, those are homemade.
Rock Cellar: The latest book I finished was Eternal Flame, the authorized story of the Bangles. What was the experience of revisiting your past and reading the accounts of your sister Debbi or Susanna? What were the biggest surprises of how they perceived and navigated the experience?
Vicki Peterson: Well, the overall reality of it is that the truth about memory is that we all have one, and they often do not align. That is just the truth of human beings and the human experience. We all have our individual perception of a moment and what happened.
The beauty of this was that in some cases, you know, I would remember something that Susanna didn't remember, Debbi would remember something that I didn't remember, or in a completely different way. It helped the story to expand. As for a specific memory, I'd bet a million dollars that this is what had happened and the person next to me experienced it totally differently or even slightly differently.
But it is a Rashomon story, and that's just the truth of human memory and history. And you have to remember that every time you read a history that you are looking at one person's perspective or an amalgamation of perspectives, and that's what this story is. That's kind of the beauty of this book is that Jennifer, our co-author, had access to both Susanna and Debbi and I, and we just told our stories as honestly as we could and to the best of our memory.
And then you would get somebody who was from the label or somebody who was slightly outside the very inner of inner circles, and they saw it completely differently. I found that fascinating, actually, because I was like, "That's not how it happened, but OK, never mind."
You know, you have to let a lot of stuff go.
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