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There are certain things about an artist that I take into account when deciding just how real an "artist" the individual or group might be.
The way an act sounds live is a biggie for me.
Almost anyone can put out a great sounding album if they surround themselves with enough studio magic and talented engineers, but once you're out on that stage in front of a crowd, it's all you, and you'd better have your act together. In keeping with that same idea, I give a lot of props to an act that doesn't play the diva card. One year at 96 Wavefest the lead singer of the band Collective Soul got upset at something in the middle of the band's set, and proceeded to complain about it through the next two songs. Even I, a normally passive concertgoer, had to join the crowd in loudly suggesting he shut up and sing. The real heroes are the acts that show up for a gig, find only a few people, or worse yet, nobody there, and yet proceed to play as if the bar, concert hall, or coliseum was sold out. At one of the dates on the first U.S. tour by the Police back in the '70s, three people showed up. Sting claims they played their hearts out to those three potential fans. I've seen it happen in local bars with regional and local performers, and I have seen it happen at the North Charleston Coliseum, where an INXS show back in the '90s drew about a thousand people (about what the Music Farm holds when packed), and yet the late Michael Hutchence and his boys blew the roof off that place.
I tell you this, because you can add Susan Cowsill to that list of performers I admire, simply because despite the fact that only about 20 folks showed up to Home Team BBQ to catch her two sets of music Saturday night, she did her best to give us a show to talk about. For those not familiar with Cowsill's illustrious past, she was the youngest member of the family group The Cowsills, who achieved a large following in the '60s. The TV show "The Partridge Family" was modeled after The Cowsills. Look in this week's issue of Rolling Stone, the one with the Jonas Brothers on the cover, and in the charts from 1968 on the issue's last page, you'll see that Number 10 back in July of 1968 was "Indian Lake," by The Cowsills, sitting just below "Hello, I Love You" by The Doors. Susan was only seven years old when she joined her singing brothers in the group. Later on she sang backup for a number of artists, and was in the Continental Drifters with former husband Peter Holsapple, current husband Russ Broussard, and former Bangle Vicki Peterson.
Cowsill has been doing her own thing as of late, backed by Broussard on drums, Aaron Straup on guitar, and Tad Armstrong on bass. Saturday night's show was a loose and casual affair, but Cowsill and her band were there to please the crowd, even if the term crowd wasn't necessarily the best way to describe the number of attendees. Early into her set Cowsill offered to give the audience a chance to participate, suggesting a few possibilities for the next song. "We could do a Lucinda Williams song called 'Drunken Angel,' offered Cowsill, "Or we could do a song by John Prine via Bonnie Raitt called "Angel from Montgomery." That second suggestion received a hoot of approval from several, and so Cowsill stopped the voting then and there and performed the Prine tune. To be fair, she went back to the Williams song later in the show.
Highlights of the first set included the Continental Drifters tune "The Rain Song" as well as a couple of songs sung by Straup and Armstrong respectively, while Cowsill restrung her guitar.
It was during this impromptu break by Cowsill that a patron apparently made the mistake of looking the wrong way at the girlfriend of another customer, and found himself promptly shoved out the door by the offended (and considerably larger) boyfriend. Cowsill returned, and sang a cappella for a bit while the Home Team BBQ crew settled things down. "Did something just happen?," she joked as things got back to normal.
For the rest of that first set and on through the second, Cowsill and her band charmed the audience with a combination of songs by The Cowsills, The Continental Drifters and selections from Cowsill's excellent solo album, "Just Believe It." Some of the better solo selections included "In the Palm of My Hand," "Christmas Time," and "Nanny's Song" as well as "Crescent City Snow," a tune Cowsill wrote after losing both her house and one of her brothers to the effect of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
I honestly think a few people were at Home Team BBQ just to drink, and even those folks ended up being charmed by Cowsill's music. People came and went during the performance, but there was a core group of about 20 that stayed until the last note was played, and through it all Cowsill performed like a champ.
That's the way it should be with every artist.
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