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Was it Barry Cowsill, or wasn't it?
In the case of the missing ex-teen idol, even a potential lead only seems to deepen the mystery.
The latest could-be breakthrough came in the form of a phone message left Oct. 31 at a Newport, Rhode Island, recording studio where Cowsill, a member of the family singing group the Cowsills, and one of the thousands still unaccounted for in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, had spent the last few years working on an album.
"You're never there--never, never!" a man is heard saying.
Frank Dwyer, owner of Stagecraft Audio, says the elliptical message is of the type that Cowsill would leave "all the time" at his studio.
"He's just very eccentric, very creative," Dwyer says, "and you had to be on the same wave length."
To Dwyer, the mystery message, first noted in the Newport Daily News, doesn't require too much interpretation--that is, if the caller is assumed to be Cowsill.
Prior to Katrina devastating New Orleans, where the Cowsill lived as of last summer, the troubled troubadour had tried contacting Dwyer back at the Newport studio, but Dwyer was, as the unidentified caller might say, never there.
Still, as to whether the voice on the tape definitely belongs to Cowsill, Dwyer says he's "on the fence." Mike Warner, a Newport-based musician, is a little less so.
"We don't know for sure this was him, but it sounds an awful lot like him," Warner says. "When I first heard it, I thought it was Barry."
Warner, who played drums on Cowsill's latest, as-yet unfinished project, says he's played the tape for other friends, and not having told them in advance what it was or who might be on it, they, too, have guessed the missing singer. Among the believers, according to Warner: Richard Cowsill, one of Barry Cowsill's older brothers (and, as trivia would have it, the only Cowsill sibling who didn't perform with the hit-making "Hair" group in the 1960s.)
A couple of weeks ago, Warner filed a report with the local police in order, he says, to allow authorities to check phone records. Calls to Newport police seeking comment on the case were not returned Wednesday.
Back in California, Vicky Sedgwick, Webmaster of the Cowsills' official Website, says nothing has come of the potential phone lead: Barry Cowsill, 51, is missing. Still.
The last official word from Cowsill were voice mail messages retrieved from his sister Susan's cell phone just days after Katrina hit on Aug. 29. Since then, nothing. Just a reputed CNN sighting here, a reputed phone message here.
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