Most often, famous artists hire bands to help them sound good, but then there are bands that happen to include famous artists - bands more interested in that all-for-one energy. That’s what I felt as Nashville’s newest high-level collaborative project, a six-piece called the HercuLeons took the stage at 3rd & Lindsley on a recent Tuesday night.
The founders and leaders of this project, John Cowan on the bass and Andrea Zonn on the fiddle aren’t stadium headliners, but in Music City, they’re among the elite for reasons I’ll get into. On stage that night they were consummate team players, syncing up brain waves with their fellow musicians at the start of a show. The band rumbled and riffed on a drawn out major chord, feeling its way into a sound, brushing the air with phrases and motifs. The keyboard waded into jazz waters, the fiddle pulsed, and the drums explored until they all locked into one of Cowan’s older songs. Now connected, they were off and into a joyful couple of hours.
The HercuLeons are a band without an album, though that is supposed to change this year. For now, it’s a live project with two more weeks of performing to come as they round out their shakedown residency at 3rd & Lindsley. Each of their Tuesday shows has included a second set with special guests. On January 24, they’ll be joined by beloved roots pop duo Bill Lloyd and Radney Foster. On the 31st, it’ll be Americana all-position all-star Darrell Scott.
But as I said, this is a band thing, so let’s meet them formally. Cowan was the bass player and mighty lead voice in the New Grass Revival and a festival-touring bandleader on the bluegrass/Americana circuit in the decades since. For the past 14 years, his steady gig has been playing bass and singing on tour with The Doobie Brothers (now with the full golden era lineup by the way). Zonn is a fiddler and singer who’s loved and respected across the Nashville industry and a songwriter with two albums on Compass Records. Her long road tenures include Lyle Lovett, Vince Gill, and for more than 18 years the exclusive and superb James Taylor band.
Here’s who they called on for this vision. Pianist Jody Nardone is a distinguished jazz musician who’s been performing, recording and teaching in Nashville for decades. Drummer Andy Peake came to town in 1987 to play for Nicolette Larson and has been a top call cat ever since, with history that includes folks like Delbert McClinton and Lee Roy Parnell. Veteran John Mock plays acoustic guitar, bouzouki and mandolin, while Zonn calls him “a fabulous producer, arranger and recording engineer” to boot. Rounding out the half dozen is lead guitarist Tom Britt, one of Cowan’s oldest friends and a Nashville road and studio maestro whose history includes Leon Russell, Patty Loveless and Vince Gill.
“One of the things that makes it such a joy to play on stage with (these) people is where that spontaneity can occur and where it is about the communication between the players as much as it is presenting it to the audience,” Zonn told me a few days after the show. We reflected on the solos and the stretching out and the embrace of the songs as they unfold, which is something that can happen she says “when you have that sort of electricity, and that sort of trust to experiment on stage. You know, can we get out to this edge? And can we bring it back? And there's such an excitement” in that.
Zonn and Cowan go back a couple of decades as friends and musical collaborators. “We're kindred souls. And she's one of my favorite singers, period, ever, anywhere,” Cowan says. “And we'd happened to do a session right during the middle of the pandemic. And it's funny because on the way home, I picked up my phone and I called her, and she said ‘I was just getting ready to call you!’” The mutual sentiment they needed to express was that they loved singing together and that they needed to pursue some kind of project. Version 1.0 was an acoustic/bluegrass configuration with banjo player Matt Menefee, Ashby Frank on mandolin and Seth Taylor on guitar. They brought that band to several 2020 livestream shows and then to the stage of the Station Inn. A remark from Cowan about the “herculean” abilities of their young supergroup inspired the band name, as did Cowan’s love for and working history with the late Leon Russell. But then the whole thing changed.
“John and I got sort of deeper into our creative process,” says Zonn. “We started talking to Wendy Waldman (the busy west coast songwriter and producer) and we started sending tracks back and forth” in pursuit of an album. “Then the bluegrass guys had their other projects and didn't really want to jump into a new thing. And John and I said, well, let's just do this. Let's look at it with fresh eyes. And we added drums, piano, and electric instruments and kind of widened the pendulum swing a little bit.”
Repertoire started with their respective histories of writing and recording. At the 3rd & Lindsley show they kicked off with “Six Red Birds (In A Joshua Tree),” a staple from Cowan’s sets since he released it on a 2006 album. He also sang lead on Bill Monroe’s “A Good Woman’s Love,” which he sang with New Grass Revival back in the day. Zonn stepped forward with “Rise,” a song she wrote with Luke Bulla and made a title track on her 2015 album for Compass Records. They’ve pulled in songs unique to this project as well, notably “Take Me To The Alley,” a show stopper from the repertoire of jazz singer and songwriter Gregory Porter. And they’re not the only powerful voices in the band. Jody Nardone took his time with a smoldering and roof-raising performance of Billy Joel’s “New York State Of Mind.”
Both principals are working the HercuLeons in around their much valued touring gigs, but they see stretches of time ahead where they can make it their focus and hit the road a bit.
“We are finding our way, because it seemed like an inevitability, like something we must do to make this record and to make this music and to express these ideas,” Zonn says. “And, you know, because John works with the Doobie Brothers and I work with James, both of those are legacy artists that are extraordinary experiences for both of us and not ones that we want to put an end to. So we're going to try to find the sweet spots. The lucky thing is that we usually have an idea about our touring schedule well in advance. And we're going to see if we can get some roots to grow on the HercuLeons project and then see what we can do with it.”
For Cowan, it’s about the same relentless forward motion he’s pursued since he left Louisville, KY with New Grass in 1972. He told me at any given time, while he remains committed to the Doobie Brothers, he has to have his own muse in operation. “I'm very much like my mother who lived to be 104 and a half,” he says. “She and I don't know how to sit still.”