Lance Cowan has a career in music promotion, having worked with several well-known artists over the years. But, like many people in the PR business, he is a musician and songwriter too. He co-wrote “When He Was Here” with Janis Ian, and last year released his first full-length album of music. Titled So Far, So Good, this disc contains all original compositions, either written or co-written by Lance Cowan, who also plays guitar and does the vocal work on these tracks. Joining him are some pretty stellar musicians, including Pat Flynn on guitar, Sam Bush on mandolin, Pat McInerney on drums, Jay Turner on bass, Dan Dugmore on pedal steel and piano, Jim Hoke on accordion, Andrea Zonn on fiddle, Dave Pomeroy on bass, and Mark Elliott on guitar and vocals.
So Far, So Good opens with its title track, which has a sweet folk vibe. It was written by Lance Cowan and David Mallett. Mallett is best known for writing “Garden Song,” which has been covered by Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie and John Denver, among others. He died approximately a month ago. This song is about the often lonesome life of a traveling musician. “You’d think by now I’d have the knack/Of traveling alone/But it’s just me in this old car/On a thousand miles of broken tar/I just saw a falling star/So far, so good, so far from home.” This song has such a wonderful, pleasant sound, and features some really nice work on guitar and mandolin. I appreciate the great, positive vibes to begin the album. That’s followed by “This Heart Of Mine.” “Everybody tells me to just rest easy,” Lance Cowan sings at the beginning of this song, and right away all of us can relate. This song is about how others are willing and eager to offer advice and sympathy. Sure, their hearts are probably in the right place, but the advice must go unheeded, for, as he sings here, “Oh, everybody tells me they know what I’m feeling/They’ve all felt worse pain sometime in their lives/Funny but that don’t bring no healing/Because they don’t know this heart of mine/This heart of mine is forever.” And so he is probably even more alone. This song was released as the first single from the album.
“Little Johnny Pierce” is a character song, telling of one young man that was going along a different path from his parents, presumably in the time of the Vietnam War. “All the neighbors wondered what the hell was going on/When he mowed the peace sign right into his parents’ front lawn.” Many of us have been told, at one point or another, especially during our teen years, “get your head out of the clouds,” as Johnny is told here. But perhaps the song’s most important lines are these: “Is it all just a passing fad/This talk of love and brotherhood.” I appreciate the passionate vocal performance. This track also contains some good work on harmonica, and after a good instrumental section the song takes us ahead in time. “The neighbors sometimes hear those old Dylan songs/And his dad still mows a peace sign in the front lawn.” This song was written by Lance Cowan and Terry Clayton.
“For You” has a softer, more intimate sound, and features some excellent and moving vocal work. “It’s the sigh of a fire that’s softly dying/It’s the stillness of pools underground.” Those lines stand out, especially now for those of us in Los Angeles who want to hear that sigh, which will be followed by a great sigh of relief from all this city’s residents. “It’s the spirit of tender hearts broken/It’s the wish on a falling star/It’s the thunder of a new generation/And it’s the promise in the breath of a baby asleep in your arms.” At that point, this song’s beauty is striking. This one was written by Lance Cowan and Mark Elliott. That’s followed by “Lost & Found,” with Lance Cowan singing, “There’s a little house on the skirts of town/I remember it well, I can see it now/White frame on hallowed ground/Where most of my soul was lost and found.” Those are good opening lines, don’t you agree? We get a clear picture of his childhood, and how he feels about it. And the track features good work on fiddle. The song then builds, soon kicking in with more power. As with “Little Johnny Pierce,” time passes in this song too. “New lines on a young man’s face/Where the miles of time are so clearly traced/Too soon the years unwound/And left so much of me in the lost and found.” I also like the different uses of the phrase “lost and found” in the lyrics. This song was written by Lance Cowan and Sam Gay.
I immediately love the feel of “Currently Red,” the way it welcomes us. Part of it is the sweet work on accordion. This is another character song, and we get a pretty clear idea of this woman, even before the main line, “And her hair is currently red,” which makes me smile each time I hear it. After the second or third time, that line from Dylan’s “Tangled Up In Blue” popped in my noggin, “Wondering if she’d changed at all/If her hair was still red.” This song is delightful, and it’s one of my favorites. Julie Lee then joins Lance Cowan on “The Letter,” singing lead on it. She did not co-write it, however. It was written by Lance Cowan and Terry Clayton. “The letter that you wrote me said that you were doing well/But the more I read between the lines, the sadder that I felt/Though you told me that you missed me/It was easy to tell that you were fine.” The song’s main line, “More and more, you need me less and less,” is wonderfully heartbreaking. And yet there is a good energy to this song. It is like she is driving her thoughts to this other person through the music, as she probably wants to rush into his arms. There is some nice percussion, and I love that mandolin work.
The energy becomes brighter on “A Place For Everything,” that energy being in the vocal performance, as well as the rhythm. And that increases in the section near the end where he lists various items: “He’s got buckets full of rusted bolts and two drawers packed with old remotes/From TVs that died long ago, and ashes from an old wood stove/His work bench is piled with wires and screws and things he’s not sure what they do/He’s got stack of shingles, he’s got a perfect roof.” This is a fun one, and it reminds me of the basement of my parents’ home. My dad wasn’t a pack rat, but he did save a lot of stuff down there, and it was all organized in old coffee cans and plastic drawers. There was a place for everything. This song mentions the comforting aspect of having all that stuff, and this song itself is actually comforting, as it allows me to drift through memory. It was written by Lance Cowan and Sam Gay, as was the song that follows it, “Blue Highway.” This song has a rather cheerful sound from its start. I remember reading Blue Highways when I was a teenager and digging it. It was that book that let me know what a blue highway was, and I realized that the road going through my home town, Route 12, was a blue highway. “You might get lost before you find your way/Though it winds and winds/It always winds up someplace/That blue highway.”
“Fields Of Freedom” has a pretty folk sound as it starts. “She sits down on the edge of the field/Where the deep black forest hesitated.” I love that sort of personification of the forest, and how she too hesitates. There are other lines that stand out, such as “Running from a hate that she hated” and “The numbers on her wrist were her new name.” Yes, as you can guess from that last line, this is a rather somber song. Or, at least, touching upon a serious subject. But the song has an uplifting effect. That’s followed by “Sound Of My Home,” a song delivered from a perspective of a railroad man. “I first took the throttle at 21/Hauling soldiers back from war/Sometimes I have wondered why I stayed so long/In the saddle of this old iron horse.” And it turns out that the train is home for this man. And there are moments in this song when he and the train almost seem like one entity, that certain lines could be from the perspective of the train itself. This song was written by Lance Cowan and Jerry Vandiver. Lance Cowan wraps up the album with “Ben McGhee,” a song about an elderly man who was a farmer. “He farmed all his life/Outlived his daughter, sons and wife/And rarely spoke about his younger days.” But it’s about him also being a musician, and we get the sense that this part of him was more important. And so it presents the idea that there is music within each of us, regardless of what our jobs are. This song was written by Lance Cowan and Sam Gay.
CD Track List
- So Far, So Good
- This Heart Of Mine
- Little Johnny Pierce
- For You
- Lost & Found
- Currently Red
- The Letter
- A Place For Everything
- Blue Highway
- Fields Of Freedom
- Sound Of My Home
- Ben McGhee
So Far, So Good was released on February 23, 2024.
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