Anyone heading to The Smithereens show this week at the Music Box will want to get there early for a special opening set from two legendary musicians, Vicki Peterson and John Cowsill. Perhaps best known as members of hitmaking bands, The Bangles and The Cowsills, respectively, the married couple is currently touring in support of their debut album, Long After The Fire. Featuring songs written by John’s late brothers Bill and Barry Cowsill, longtime fans of either artist will find everything in place. Largely Americana based, the album is a treasure trove of harmonies and melodies, with ear worms a plenty. Notably, Cowsill, who also had a several decades long stint as a member of the Beach Boys, will be performing double duty this evening, also singing lead with The Smithereens, taking the place of the late great Pat DiNizio.
Although the couple has been married since 2003 and have collaborated on various projects, Long After the Fire is their debut album together. “This album was born out of a concept that came up years ago,” said Peterson. “And it was just based on the idea that Bill and Barry Cowsill, both fantastic writers, they had both left the planet. More in Barry’s case than Bill’s, some of their music didn’t get, I think, the exposure or sunshine that it deserved. And so, we thought about this concept of like, we should just cover their songs and do a record. Now, that’s a statement that you say in the living room in 2020. Then fast forward years later. And we finally kind of got the ball rolling.”
Cowsill continues the story. “I was on the road, and I have a friend I’ve known since I was 11 years old, Paul Allen, who is a great musician in Nashville and also a producer, arranger and all kind of things. And we had just reconnected when I shared that, I have this “Dead Brothers” project, which we call it affectionately. The Beach Boys were playing in Memphis. And Paul calls me up. He says, hey, man, I see you guys are working in Memphis. You want to go record at Sun Records? And I kind of laughed and I said, why? And then he reminded me that I told him about this project. He said, well, you know, you have that project, do you want to do it? So, we went to Sun Records, and we picked a song that was very Roy Orbison-ish. It’s called “Is Anybody Here?” It’s a perfect song. And That was really the start of the of the project.”
A move to the East Coast and business logistics delayed things a bit. “Vicki had this dream of living in New York City. That’s 3 ,000 miles from our recording studio,” Cowsill said good-naturedly. “Well, the timing was not perfect, but it was perfect for the opportunity to go to New York. And I’d wanted to do that since I was, you know, a teenager. So, I said, I’m taking this opportunity. And yet it also coincided with us really diving in and working on this project.” Every 12 days or so Cowsill was flying across the country to work on Long After The Fire. “It took about three or four years to really get it to where it is today.”
He notes the business end of releasing the album was tricky. “There was a lot of administrative stuff to deal with because the songs were so old, we had to do a deep dive in finding where the publishing was, you know, make sure people get paid. The metadata in the world of today did not exist in the record companies that we both grew up in, you know, and people did the work for you. You had to figure out how to do it. If we didn’t have Paul, none of this would be happening, because he knew how to do all this stuff, and he tutored us through it blindly. And it’s been a lot of work on that side. The recording was the easy part, you know, that was fun.”
Cowsill points out that one of the songs, “Don’t Look back” was originally released on a Cowsills album, 11 X 11, circa 1970. “Info on that was not easy to track down. Bill was in Canada and his publishing was all over the place, and getting licensing was hard. And that was the other thing. I’m thinking, I’m recording my brother’s songs, this will be so easy. Well, there’s nobody to say, yeah, you can use it. So, you’ve got to license them anyway, which we did. Everything is properly done, his children will get whatever is coming to them, you know, from the publishing and all that kind of stuff. So there were a lot of moving parts when putting this album together other than just singing and playing and performing.”
Long After the Fire’s title was inspired by a lyric from the song, “Embers.” “Vicky and I, we’re living in Brooklyn and we’re walking on the sidewalk and we’re toying with names, what are we gonna call this thing, you know? And I had “Embers” going through my head, the song, and the embers keep burning. And the tagline of that is “long after the fire.” And it was so appropriate for the songs continuation in the world and to be known long after the fire. Vicki said that’s the name, it just rolled off the tongue it had meaning for the project, as well as Bill and Barry’s legacy.”
How did John come to be one of The Smithereens rotating cast of singers? “In 1990, The Cowsills were opening for the band Red Kross and the Screaming Trees in LA,” Cowsill recalled. “And we just finished recording an album called Global, we were just doing material from there. And somebody comes down the hallway and says, “Hey, The Smithereens are in the alley, and they want to talk to you.” It’s like, uh oh, should I be armed?” Cowsill laughs. “So we went out, I don’t know which sibling was with me, but I was only focused on The Smithereens, and there was Jim Babjak and Dennis Diken and me against the car, they in their black New York clothes with their trench coats. And they said, “We want you guys to sing on our album.” The Cowsills provide backup vocals on the song “Now and Then,” featured on The Smithereens 1991 album, Blow Up. “It was Jim Babjak’s song. He just heard Cowsill’s vocals in there. I didn’t know they were Cowsills fans, but they were. And we became really great friends.”
That friendship included crossover, with Cowsills later stint with The Beach Boys. “He would come to our shows, when we would play in New Jersey at the Bergen Pack Center. He’d sit in and play a couple of songs with the Beach Boys and I’d go down to the front and sing lead. After my tenure with the Beach Boys ended, Paul Allen was the one who said, you should call Dennis because you always told me you wanted to sing with him didn’t you? So, I called Dennis, and I said, I want to sing “Time and Time Again” with you. I want to sit in. So we went to the Jersey Shore and sang at the Wonder Bar, and I sat in and he had Vicki come up and we sang Beatles songs, and we did that background backgrounds on “Now and Then” with them there on that one.” A later gig in Ojai with Cowsill once more sitting in made the connection permanent.
After the gig their manager says, “Do you want to do some more gigs?” And I said, “Yeah, ’cause Marshall Crenshaw sings with them and Robin Wilson since passed away, you know.” So, about a year later, they really said, “Okay, we really want you to sing with us now.” I learned like 26, 27 songs, all the lyrics. I’d be at the gym, they gave me plenty of time, so I’d be on the treadmill learning all the lyrics and stuff, you know, listening to Pat’s phrasing, ’cause he’s a great phraser, and I was definitely gonna do Pat’s phrasing as close as I could do it. I’m just pinching myself about the collaboration. I didn’t, after leaving the Beach Boys, say, “I guess I’ll go work at, you know, Home Depot.” But I didn’t know I’d get a gig because I never knew how to get a gig, you know? So, this is great, plus they’re letting Vicki and I coat tail and open a few shows. It’s just so fun, just a blast and I can’t believe my good fortune.”
So, what can people expect from Peterson and Cowsills opening set? “It’s just acoustic because then we’re easy “on the stage, off the stage” and people won’t mind is opening for them,” Cowsill said. “It’ll be a very stripped-down performance,” Peterson concurred. “It’ll be just John and me on guitars. And hopefully Paul Allen, our producer, will be joining us and he’s a bit of a freak show because he plays multiple instruments at the same time. He does. God bless him. It’s a very intimate presentation of the songs. We don’t have a full band. And we do give people what they want to hear, like we’ll play a couple of Bangles songs and a couple of Cowsills songs.”
What’s it like working as a married couple? “I’ve always referred to her as my girlfriend / wife, but we’re just pals,” Cowsill said. “I mean, and we’re practically brother and sister, and we can get into that mode easily. Look, I’ve known her since 1978. She’s my sister’s best friend. She warned her, “don’t date my brother.” We just get along so well. We lived in New York, in a studio apartment for two and a half years. We laughed the whole time, and we were under stress, you know, trying to find these songs. If anybody’s the blowhard, it’s me. I’m the hothead and she calms me down, gives me the mom look, and I’m good,” Cowsill said with a smile. “Yeah, we like each other and that’s the bottom line,” Peterson confirmed.
Fans of Peterson and Cowsill will be happy to hear that there are more songs from Bill and Barry Cowsill’s catalogs still left for potential future projects. “Oh, there’s a lot of material, there are definitely songs that did not get past the initial screening process,” Peterson said. “I mean, us sitting at the piano trying to figure out what key, what tempo, who’s gonna sing it and so on. There are several songs that we kind of put aside. So, we joke, there could be a volume two.”
