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Little sister Susan grew up to be a singer-songwriter
Susan Cowsill. Now that’s a familiar name.
Cowsill is a singer/songwriter who leads her own band.
But more likely you remember her name because of the family singing group from Newport, R.I., that gained family in the 1960s with a string of hits including “The Rain, the Park & Other things “ (also known as “I Love the Flower Girl”), “Indian Lake” and “Hair.”
Susan was the little girl who joined her brothers in the group at age 7. She hasn’t stopped singing since.
She spent a decade with roots music group The Continental Drifters, creating new fans with her poignant, expressive singing and songwriting. Her “Rain Song” was recorded by The Bangles and Hootie & the Blowfish.
She and her band have been reeling in crowds at her New Orleans “Covered in Vinyl” series, monthly events during which Cowsill covers an entire classic rock or folk classic album.
Now she’s touring after completing her first solo CD, “Just Believe It,” releasing earlier this year. In a van on the way to a show in New York state, Cowsill laughs when asked why it took so long to put a CD out under her own name.
“There wasn’t time to make it before now. I had to learn to write songs and get some life under my belt to have something to write about,” she says. “I’ve been in a band since I was a little girl, but being a leader is something to get used to. Being second or third fiddle, you don’t have a lot of responsibility.”
The CD, which she self-produced, blends a ‘60s pop feel with the organic honesty of rural folk, occasionally delving into a Lousiana groove.
Cowsill describes her music as “singer/songwriter, pop alt-country rock. My songs are an overview of my life and who I am on account of it.”
Her musicians are Russ Broussard, to whom she has been married since 2003, on drums; Chris Knotts on lead guitar; Rob Savoy on bass; and Jumpin’ Johnny Sansome on harmonica and accordion. The band has been opening for Hootie on dates across Pennsylvania and New York.
Cowsill still plays with her brothers in The Cowsills. The group, the first of the rock family groups, officially disbanded in the early 1970s. But most members stayed in the music business, working with a who’s who of music legends, including The Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash and Ike Turner. And various members regrouped over the years.
“You can’t break up a family band,” she says. “We’ll be together until we shuffle off our mortal coils.”
In fact, The Cowsills performed last fall for the Red Sox at a game of the American league Championship Series singing “Hair” and the national anthem.
“They were growing their hair long because they thought it made them win,” says Cowsill. “They had been playing a recording of ‘Hair’ before their games.”
A group of fans is working to get The Cowsills into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Cowsill notes that Shirley Jones hosted a benefit for the Cowsills’ oldest brother Billy, who suffers from health problems. It was a somewhat unreal experience for Cowsill, since Jones played the mother in televisions’ “The Partridge Family,” based on the real-life Cowsills.
Although The Cowsills made many network television appearances in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, they were never on “The Partridge Family.” “It took them a couple years to develop the show, and by then we were much older and bigger,” Susan says.
It’s a personal connection between local blues musician Todd Wolfe and Cowsill’s manager Brand Hunt that brings her to the Raubsville on Sunday. Cowsill says she’ll play all the songs from “Just Believe It” and songs she wrote with the group the Continental Drifters. They also do covers of artists like Lucinda Williams, who Cowsill will open for at the House of Blues/New Orleans in September; Gillian Welch, and Vicki Peterson, a former member of The Bangles with whom Cowsill has performed as a duo.
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