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* "perhaps the best alt-country band you never got a chance to hear."

Summertime, 1993. A couple of friends and I decided to take a road-trip from Seattle to Calgary, ostensibly to visit some friends of ours who had a surf-instrumental trio in Calgary called Huevos Rancheros, but probably just as much for the fun of driving across the upper Pacific Northwest and Canadian Rockies.

One night -- Friday August 13, to be precise (the old show-logs come through again) -- Richie, the Rancheros' drummer, took us out to a kinda funky but cool western-styled joint called the Old Scotch, mostly just to see the place and to hang out. As we walked in, a band was playing. They sounded pretty good at first blush; as I got a beer at the bar, I watched and listened a little closer. No, these guys weren't good, they were great. In fact, as they continued to roll off song after song that were so good they just had to be classic Everly Brothers covers -- except that they weren't -- it began to dawn on me that this was probably one of the best bands I'd ever seen. And, far as I knew, nobody outside this little bar in Calgary had even heard of them.

They called themselves the Blue Shadows, and, as it turned out, they were somewhat renowned in Canada by then. They'd just released their debut record, on the Canadian arm of Columbia Records, a few days earlier. I was reminded about all this a couple of days ago, when our longtime Canadian contributing editor Paul Cantin passed along a link to a YouTube video. It was the Blue Shadows, six days before the show I stumbled upon in Calgary, performing live on a makeshift stage outside the A&B Sound record store in downtown Vancouver (where the band lived), celebrating the release of On The Floor Of Heaven:

I'd bought the album at the show in Calgary; five days later (according to the file-date on my computer), I'd submitted a review of it to The Rocket, the biweekly Seattle publication for which I frequently reviewed records back then. The liner notes to the disc revealed that there was in fact a considerable back-story here: One of the group's two guitarist/vocalists was Billy Cowsill, lead singer for late '60s family-band the Cowsills (the real-life inspiration for the Partridge Family TV series).

I won't attempt to tell Cowsill's whole story here because, frankly, that's more likely a novel (or at least a screenplay) rather than a blog-entry. The sad ending is that he's no longer with us; he passed away in early 2006, just a few weeks after the body of his brother Barry had been identified in New Orleans many months after Barry had apparently died during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Billy had led a stormy life, with frequent bouts of alcohol and drug addiction, though he'd gotten clean toward the end; his death came not long after he'd been diagnosed with Cushing's Syndrome, and in the wake of back surgery, as well as broken hips resulting from osteoporosis. Over the decades he'd apparently burned bridges with various allies and friends, though he reconciled with some of them before his passing.

As for the Blue Shadows -- the Vancouver footage reminded just how much of a shame it was that this band hardly even got noticed beyond Canadian borders. I can't imagine, for example, any fan of the early Jayhawks records not being immediately drawn to their music. Perhaps at some point, their two mid-'90s albums will be reissued. Till then, check out the videos, and discover perhaps the best alt-country band you never got a chance to hear. Or if, like me, you were fortunate enough to catch the Blue Shadows back then, take a trip back to those days when you knew you'd found something really special.

Posted by peter on July 29, 2008 8:30 AM | Permalink