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Susan Cowsill can trace the origin of her debut solo album to an unlikely source: Bourbon Street.
Over the course of a 37-year career ranging from her childhood family band, the Cowsills, through a decade-long stint in the acclaimed Continental Drifters, she had never led her own group. Then three years ago, in need of a low-maintenance gig after leaving the Drifters, Cowsill joined her friend Janson Lohmeyer's zydeco band, the Bonoffs, on Bourbon Street.
It was easy work and good money. And it taught her how to step up and front a band.
"That wasn't my position in the Drifters," Cowsill said this week. "With the Bonoffs, I got over any fears or discomfort about being the main guy, which is really working for me now."
Bolstered by her newfound confidence, Cowsill finally recorded her first CD under her own name, "Just Believe It." She and her band -- husband Russ Broussard on drums, Chris Knotts on electric and acoustic guitars and Rob Savoy, formerly of the Bluerunners and Cowboy Mouth, on bass -- will celebrate the release with a show Wednesday at Carrollton Station.
Blue Rose Records, the label that was the Continental Drifters' European home, has released "Just Believe It" overseas. Cowsill is also selling the disc via her Web site, at shows and in local stores. This weekend, her band will showcase for record labels in New York, hoping to land a deal to distribute "Just Believe It" nationally.
"We've generated quite a bit of interest, which is incredibly heartwarming to me," Cowsill said. "Any number of scenarios can come out of it. It's pretty exciting, because we worked very hard to get ourselves here."
Cowsill's music industry initiation came early, singing alongside her mother and older siblings as the Cowsills. They moved from Newport, R.I., to Los Angeles to pursue a career, issuing several popular singles -- "The Rain, the Park & Other Things" hit No. 2 in 1968 -- and providing the model for TV's Partridge Family.
By the time Cowsill was a teenager, the family act was finished and she was living on her own. She knocked around the L.A. music scene, singing on albums by Nancy Griffith, John Hiatt and others. She formed the Psycho Sisters with Bangles guitarist Vicki Peterson in the late 1980s. They also joined a group of New Orleans expatriates called the Continental Drifters.
Twelve years ago, Cowsill and her fellow Drifters moved to New Orleans. She eventually married Drifters frontman Peter Holsapple. The band released three albums of literate roots rock, rich with harmonies and smart instrumentation.
But by 2001, personal and professional difficulties had taken a toll; Cowsill's marriage to Holsapple had dissolved. They attempted to continue as a band, an effort that became more strained once Cowsill and Broussard, the Drifters' drummer, realized their 11 years of friendship had blossomed into a romance.
"After 'Better Day' (the final Continental Drifters album) came out and Peter and I broke up, there was a valiant attempt by all to remain in the band and see if we could just keep cruising, but it was a lot to ask," Cowsill said. "The Drifters being one of the most wonderful musical experiences of my life. . . I think it had run its course, and I was feeling that."
After quitting the Continental Drifters, Cowsill and Broussard joined the Bonoffs on Bourbon Street. "It was the most benign music experience anybody could have," she said, "with no baggage attached and an incredible paycheck."
For two years at the Old Opera House, they alternated zydeco standards with "Brown Eyed Girl," "Me and Bobby McGee" and other crowd favorites. Cowsill gleefully hawked Bonoffs CDs to tourists.
"I became quite the barker," she said. "I would tell these people that this record was the soundtrack of their vacation, that when they went home and were wishing they were back in New Orleans, they could put us on and be right back there. It was really fun."
But after two years, the Bourbon Street grind wore her down. "It really starts to zap your soul," she said. "You can only sing 'Jambalaya' and 'Brown Eyed Girl' so many times before you're ready to explode."
The Bonoffs started to slip original material and Whiskeytown and Lucinda Williams covers into their sets, which, Cowsill said, did not sit well with the club's management. Just before Christmas 2003, Cowsill and Broussard, now married, were fired.
With credit card debt mounting, they considered their options. They could try to make ends meet by waiting tables and repairing bicycles -- previous stop-gap occupations for Cowsill and Broussard, respectively -- or plunge into another music project.
"It would be the long-awaited solo thing that I hadn't had interest in over the years, or I didn't think I had everything it took to honestly step up there," Cowsill said. "I had just started writing songs and playing guitar with the Drifters. If (a solo album) had happened before that, it wouldn't have been valid, in my eyes."
In January, she and Broussard resolved to "go a little deeper in debt and put everything emotionally, musically, mentally and spiritually that we had" into making a record.
With a modest budget from Blue Rose, Cowsill and her band convened in April at Dockside Studio near Lafayette. To save money, they produced the record themselves and called in favors far and wide, bribing guest musicians with home-cooked meals.
Jumpin' Johnny Sansone, the Bluerunners' Mark Meaux, Cajun-pop fiddler Amanda Shaw and Vicki Peterson, now married to Cowsill's brother John, all contributed, along with Counting Crows frontman Adam Duritz and Lucinda Williams.
"Everybody chipped in," she said. "I figured that if I'm ever going to call people in, now is the time."
"Just Believe It" resonates with the warmth, common purpose and sense of musical community that marked the Continental Drifters' best work. The 14 new songs include bittersweet ballads and mid-tempo rockers, most of which Cowsill wrote alone or with Broussard.
The disc's four "Wawona" songs are named for the region of Yosemite National Forest where Cowsill and Broussard honeymooned in July 2003. "I Know You Now" came to her fully formed, the first time she'd ever concocted an entire song at once. "Gazebo" dates to the Continental Drifters era. "Sometimes I would write songs that weren't 'Drifter-able,' " she said.
She started "Christmas Time" during a difficult stretch in the Drifters' final act.
"Russ was gently trying to convince me that perhaps some therapy would be in order for me," Cowsill said. "He knows my issues inside and out. That song was an answer to that prompt -- it was Christmas, I was having a good time, and I didn't want to think about all that."
The title track, "Just Believe It," distills the album's theme.
"I'm dusting myself off," Cowsill said. "I needed a new attitude and a new point of view. I've spent a lot of time looking at my glass half-empty, and it was dragging me down. Nobody's perfect and your life is going to take some bad turns. We make our mistakes, and we make really great moves. It's all good.
"Russ and I put our hearts and souls into this. You only make one first solo album, and I waited a long time. I wanted to do it splendidly."
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