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Happy Together, the touring oldies show visiting Ruth Eckerd Hall Wednesday, features '60s acts the Association, the Turtles, Gary Puckett & the Union Gap, the Buckinghams, the Vogues and the Cowsills. Each with an original member or two.
Susan Cowsill was 12 years old when her family's career as a pop singing group ended in 1971, after four big hit singles and a handful of albums - and she has never stopped looking forward, creating new music as a solo artist and with new bands.
But Happy Together is all about looking back. And she's fine with that.
"What's so uniquely fun about this is, the audience comes because they want to hear those hits," Cowsill told the Catalyst. "It's kind of like a ride - we're a big '60s music amusement ride. You're going up the thing . . . then we hit the button and go. It's the songs that carry our show. People are singing along - I don't even know if they're hearing us lots of times!"
With her brothers Bob and Paul, and a backup band that includes her husband Russ Broussard on drums, Cowsill will perform "The Rain, the Park and Other Things," "Indian Lake," "Hair," "We Can Fly" and others from the years 1967 to 71, when the Cowsills were on the pop charts alongside the likes of Three Dog Night, Creedence Clearwater Revival and the Jackson Five.
"It's a love-fest, it's an amazing vibe of a show," she enthuses. "And I for one can't believe we get to do it again. I'm so grateful. I truly am."
The Cowsills were never cool. Consisting of brothers Bill, Bob, Barry, Paul and John, plus little sister Susan and - gasp - their mother Barbara, they were a clean-cut, TV-friendly pop group, managed with an iron fist by their image-conscious father Bud.
And TV's The Partridge Family series was actually conceived as a vehicle for the Cowsills. They pulled out when it was explained to them that Barbara was to be "played" by Shirley Jones. Deal-breaker.
They appeared on all the variety shows of the era; the brothers dressed alike, with the same sort of wholesome post-Beatles mop top. Mom generally stood at a microphone in the back, adding harmonies - and out front, always, was Susan. Pageboy haircut, frilly clothes, adding oohs and aahs while she banged a tambourine, and doing groovy dance steps. At 10, she sang a medley of love songs with a creepily leering Dean Martin.
So not cool.
Yet the Cowsills' harmonies were intricate, the musicianship solid, the melodies engaging. Eldest brother Bill, the group's lead singer, had a knack for vocal arrangements. He was a good songwriter and an innovative record producer, too.
Bill, Barry, Mom and Dad are gone now. Brother John isn't on this tour - he has a full-time gig with the Beach Boys. The surviving members of the family have stayed close.
Susan Cowsill can look at the old videos now - well, most of them - and remember fondly. "Embarrassed," she said, is not a word in her vocabulary.
"I'm an authentic person, at any age you're going to find me," Cowsill explained. "I was so into it, I was so happy to be performing. I didn't have a psyche about who I was; I wasn't some deep-hearted artist at that point, I was just a kid, in a family that happened to do this thing.
"And it was fun. And I was having fun. If I'm goofy, I'm goofy. If I'm good at it for that one minute, I'm good at it. I was in it for all the right reasons."
She even has kind words for the group's 1968 TV special, A Family Thing, which featured, among other horrors, duets with Buddy Ebsen.
"Look at us on that show - we are so goofy," she laughed. "If you were talking to one of the boys, you'd get a different answer - 'we wanted to shoot ourselves the day after that aired.' Look at those yellow pants in one of those dance scenes! This was not the rock 'n' roll plan.
"But I couldn't have cared less. I was having a good time. I thought we were actors - 'I'm acting right now!' I thought it was hilariously fun, and it beat the heck out of what I saw everybody else doing."
There is a new Cowsills album in the works, for this fall. Until then, there's Happy Together. And they are.
"The most beautiful appropriate place to be is exactly where we are, on a Classic Rock oldies tour," she said. "Because we were a 60s band.
"And whether we make new music or not, I think there's a certain point where that doesn't matter any more. You're mature enough to understand that this doesn't disqualify you from making current music.
"It's a really beautiful payday, it's a great camaraderie with all of the people we've known all of our lives. I don't know, man - it's a love fest! Everyone who goes to Happy Together is there to feel amazing."
A little extra
From a Carl Reiner special, March 1969. The Cowsills' biggest-ever hit was this Bill Cowsill-arranged version of the title song from the Broadway musical Hair. It lodged at No. 2 on the Billboard chart - ironically upstaged by the 5th Dimension's recording of "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In," also from Hair. The Cowsills never had another successful record after this one.
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