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Rock-band theme songs went out with the Monkees, but you wouldn’t know that when Susan Cowsill of the Continental Drifters steps to the microphone for “Someday.” It sounds like she’s singing about the very reasons for her band and its work.
“I’m gonna pay my bills and stand where I stand,” she sings, “and maybe even start a little rock ‘n’ roll band. And maybe my friends will give me a hand. And if that doesn’t take away my sorrow, I’m gonna get up again and do it tomorrow.”
Eyes close, she holds the last note – bathed in the supportive harmonies of Peter Holsapple and Vicki Peterson.
The New Orleans-based Drifters are a hidden treasure, a rock band for adults, with three gifted singers and songwriters who have persevered, despite music-business indifference and personal trauma.
The group pushes on, it seems, because its six members need music more than music needs them.
“You often call this band your reward,” Holsapple said during a recent visit to New York, looking over at colleague Mark Walton, “and I see it in the same way. We’ve got nothing to retire to, frankly, and this is the kind of job you do until you die, because it does all the right things for your internal organs.”
“The downside,’ drawled guitarist Robert Mache, “is we’re not going to draw Social Security from this.”
Holsapple played with the dBs, a critical favorite in the 1980s and toured as a side player for R.E.M. Peterson was – and is – a Bangle. Cowsill grew up in an eponymous family ace (remember “The Rain, the Park and Other Things”?). Walton was in the Dream Syndicate and Mache played in the Steve Wynn Band. Drummer Russ Broussard completes the lineup.
Because of the past (and future; Peterson is recording a new album with the Bangles) the continental Drifters still are nagged by the perception that the band is a place to bid time while waiting for something else.
Their music fits into the loosely defined Americana genre, but they’re essentially the sort of mainstream rock band that was commonplace a couple of decades ago but rarer today.
Having three distinct voices and viewpoints set them apart. So does the sound when those voices blend.
“You would think that any fundamentally tasteful person would understand the concept of the Continental Drifters,” Holsapple said.
The band drifted together a decade ago in Los Angeles informally, as a group of friends who gathered once a week to play each other’s songs.
In an industry that prizes youth and total dedication the Drifters have lives. The band members’ careers have undoubtedly been hurt by an unwillingness to spend most of the year on the road.
A younger band may not have survived the divorce of two of its members – Holsapple 45, and Cowsill, 41, who have an 8-year-old daughter.
“It’s tough,” Holsapple admitted. “It’s not the easiest row to hoe. But it’s a good thing for us. We love this band, we love everybody in the band, we love the music that we do and we are hopefully proceeding in the world as mature people able to separate the personal stuff from the band.”
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