“I didn’t mean to write a theme record, it wasn’t intentional,” Susan Cowsill’s voice bubbled from New Orleans. “During the last four years, I wrote but I couldn’t finish. As I collected my bits and pieces and scraps of paper, I said to myself, ‘Oh, great. You have a Katrina record.’It wasn’t something I meant to do but there it was.”
Cowsill has been gearing up for her show at the Continental Club tonight, a process that included having the New Orleans house she shares with husband and drummer Russ Broussard tented for termites and making her groan.
“Obviously, it was a cathartic event, and when I went to the studio to record with my brothers, I had a couple of major meltdowns, putting music to words and spitting them out of my mouth. It was frighteningly moving, singing about the world we’d been living in the last four years since the hurricane.”
Lighthouse, Cowsill’s summer release and second CD, shone across the landscape of her life, one shaped by early success with her family’s 1960s band the Cowsills and the personal tragedies that befell them, particularly after Hurricane Katrina. In 2006, her brother Bill died after long illness; months before, brother Barry’s body was recovered after the storm’s destruction. Lighthouse served to illuminate the family loss by giving strength to where it had always come from: music.
From deep in its fine, heart-strong tracks rises “River of Love,” a song of such joy and heartfelt jubilation, its provenance is bittersweet. Barry Cowsill wrote it some years before, and in the aftermath of his death, it has become anthemic for Cowsill and her remaining brothers, who joined her in the studio for its emotional recording.
Here are the lyrics. Take them with you to the Continental tonight, and whip them out when the time comes. James McMurtry follows, so you know this will be one memorable evening.
“We all write to save our souls,” Cowsill concluded. “If someone else gets something out of it as well, it’s all the sweeter. That’s a good day’s work done.”
This article appears in November 12 • 2010.