|
Husband-wife duo playing the city that 'was magical' in saving his late sibling
Preview
Vicky Peterson and John Cowsill will play the Ironwood Stage an Grill on Friday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m., and Saturday at the SCA Community Cntre at 7:30 p.m.
The first couple of times John Cowsill played drums in a bar as part of his family band, the shows were shut down by police.
This was not due to rowdiness, but because of the age of the band members. John was seven years old at the time and had recently joined his siblings as part of the Cowsills. The act eventually got special permission from the mayor of Cowsill's hometown of Newport, R.I., to play in licensed establishments as long as they followed certain rules. The kids couldn't sit at the bar or at a table with drinks on it in between sets.
"As long as we were in a room backstage, not in the main room, it was OK," says John, in an interview from his home in New York. "So they put us in the liquor-storage room. I would sit on a case of Scotch doing a set list with my brothers."
It's among the many early musical memories John has, involving his older siblings, including brothers, Billy, Barry and Bob. He took over the drums from Barry, who had the role "for about 20 mnutes" before becoming the bass player. The Cowsills would eventually become big stars. They were the inspiration for The Partridge Family TV show in the early 1970s and had a handful of hit songs, including 1967's The Rain, The Park & Other Things and 1969's Hair.
"My first memories are ... when Bill was singing Connie Francis tunes, singing Where the Boys Are and Ricky Nelson songs. I was four then. I was singing songs like My Hillbilly Baby by Ernest Tubb. I was singing Little Jimmie Dicken's songs in the nightclubs when I was seven, and May the Bird of Paradise (Fly Up Your Nose). I always sang country songs growing up," said John. "That's just what I did, and that's what I loved. I ended up doing Johnny Cash songs in the Cowsills show."
Last year, John Cowsill and his wife, The Bangles co-founder Vici Peterson, released Long After the Fire, a 12-song collection made up of six songs penned by Billy and six by Barry.
Both are gone now. Barry died in 2005 during hurricane Katrina. The family was holding a memorial service in 2006 for Barry in Newport on the day they learned that Billy had died in Calgary at the age of 58 after years of poor health.
Long After The Fire begins with the country song The Fool is the Last One To Know, which Billy Cowsill wrote with Calgary singer-songwriter Ralph Boyd Johnson. Johnson was one of many musicians who were part of Billy's musical community in the city. He spent the last decade of his life in Calgary, forming The Co-Dependents with Tim Leacock, Steve Pineo and Ross Watson. He arrived in Calgary permently in the 1990s after years of substance abuse. Members of the Calgary scee, led by the late Neil MacGonigill, held an intervention for the artist, and Billy eventually became a central figure in the scene.
John still gets emotional when talking about his brother's connection to Calgary's music community.
"For him, it was magical," he says. "He was a mess. He got rescued by the Calgary regime. They brought him there and mended him and fixed him. It was great, and he gave back to his communtiy, and they all loved him."
John Cowsill and Vicky Peterson will be playing three Calgary shows this week, including stops on Friday and Sunday at the Ironwood Stage and Grill and a Saturday show in the SCA Community Centre as part of the Bow Valley Music Club. Billy's son Del will be opening the shows. While John is clearly grateful to the city's musiocal community for what it offered his brother in his last years, he has not performed here very often. He admits he find it daunting.
Long After the Fire also features Billy Cowsill favourites such as Vagabond, which is still covered in town by artists such as Tom Phillips; Is Anybody Here and Embers, both co-written by Jeffrey Hatcher for Billy's Vancouver-based band Blue Shadows; and A Thousand Times, a co-write with Mark Irwin.
"That's my brother's land," John says about Calgary. "So it's really sweet that they are having us come there. I mean, playing in the shadows of my brother is tough. He was the best. Now we are going up there and singing his and Jeffrey's songs, and it's very sentimental playing in Calgary, for me particularly. That's where Billy gave a lot of love and got a lot of love."
John has enjoyed a long career in the industry himelf. He played drums with the Beach Boys for 23 years and sang back up vocals on Tommy Tutone's 1980s hit 867-5309/Jenny. He toured with Dwight Twilley and Jan and Dean and is currently one of three performers, including Marshall Crenshaw and the Gin Blossoms' Robin Wilson, who alternates as lead singer for power-pop icons the Smithereens.
When John joined the Beach Boys, he consulted with his older brother for lessons on how to sing with the act and "all the right ways to do it." But his brother's tutelage and influences on his own singing style dates back to John's earliest days.
"He taught us how to sing," John says. "We were all given the tiny gift of singing, but he honed his skills on it. He and my brother Bob were definitely the two leaders. As far as phrasing and sounds, that's DNA, man."
John met Peterson in 1978, before she co-founded the Bangles in the early 1980s. That band would go on to have a number of hits, including Walk Like an Egyptian and Manic Monday. She also played with John's sister, Susan Cowsill, as the Psycho Sisters. John and Peterson married in 2003.
In the early 2000s, the couple helped organize a benefit for Billy Cowsill when he was having health issues.
"That was the first time Vicki and I even sang together," he says. "We never did it again until we decided to do this project, literally. We never worked together because we liked our harmonious domestic family relationship and didn't know if it would work. But it worked out fine. It's so fun to go sing live with her; she is such a good singer. We just have a great time. Basically, that's what we're bringing to Calgary. Our good, fun time."
|
