He’s tried his hand at three different careers now, but all three have cast Lance Cowan in the role of storyteller. We in the Nashville music journalism business have known Lance for decades as a trusted publicist representing some of the most interesting artists in roots and Americana music. Before that, he was a news man himself, including reporting for the late afternoon newspaper the Nashville Banner. Then in 2024, on his 65th birthday no less, Cowan returned to his life-long passion for songwriting with the release of his first solo album. This year, he followed up with a second.
“I put that first record out last year because I needed a calling card,” Lance says in the conversation above. “I wanted to play some newer venues.” He’d been playing the Bluebird Cafe every so often since its early days as pretty much his only outlet. Later on in our talk he says he feels called to travel and perform more widely. “I'm not smart enough to write these things, so I view these songs as a gift that's been given to me,” he says. “If I just share those things in one or two rooms a year, I'm not being a very good steward to those songs. I hate getting into that idea of, you know The Muse and all that, because it's not me. But I do believe that when you're given something, you should share it.”
Cowan is from a small town near Paducah, KY and his early musical influences included John Denver and John Prine. During his college years at Murray State he got serious about writing and performing, but when he moved to Nashville, it was journalism that took him here.
“I came to Nashville and became the editor of a newspaper in Mount Juliet. And Tony Kessler at the Nashville Banner hired me to be the correspondent for Williamson County about a year after I got here,” he says. “It's one thing to work for a little weekly in Kentucky (he did that too), but to come to sit on the city desk. They were such pros. And to sit there and work in that environment, you learned so much about writing, and it was like a second college education. I loved it.”
The pay however, not so much. So before long, through relationships he made hanging out and playing at the Bluebird, Cowan was coaxed into public relations by the late great Nashville publicist Liz Thiels. Cowan worked for her, signing on New Grass Revival as his first client, and then later for Vector Management before starting his own PR shop in 1998. In the decades I’ve known him, Lance has represented Joe Ely and the Flatlanders, Nanci Griffith, Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, even Elvis band-mates Scotty Moore and DJ Fontana. He entertained the idea of going into songwriting full time, but seeing the realities of touring musicians, and the sacrifices they make around their families, convinced him to keep his art in the hobby lane. Until last year.
Cowan’s first release, 2024’s So Far, So Good is a compilation of recordings he’s made through the years, including time with a Music Row publishing deal. Songs like the title cut, a gentle meditation on the freedom of the road, sound in tune with 1990s country radio. Against The Grain, Cowan’s follow-up released in March, also has a mix of old and new compositions, but it was recorded in more of a cohesive effort. Produced by old Cowan friends Jason Stelluto and Scott Paschall, it has a California country vibe, executed by studio cats including New Grass Revival guitarist Pat Flynn and pedal steel vet Dan Dugmore.
The songs come more from imagination than a spirit of personal journaling. “Old King Coal” paints a picture of a fellow dwelling on “the years that were stripped from my life” by the necessity of the mines. Cowan admits the closest he’s come to the mining life was loving “Paradise” by John Prine, but that the song is “not about coal mining as much as it is being stuck in a place you don't want to be in. You know just feeling tied down and you can't get away. The coal mining is just the vehicle.”
Similarly, my favorite song “Will Belinda” about a bank robber trying to find a way to settle down with his lover is effectively and tunefully told fiction set to a memorable melody. And the gently bluegrass feeling “Against The Grain,” the album’s title song, imagines a Field of Dreams scenario with an eccentric dreamer who builds a wooden ship far from the sea. And the album ends with “Love Anyway,” an earnest plea for national and social healing in a broken time.
“That song's taken me five years to write, because I didn't want it to come off preachy. I just, I just wanted to make a statement,” Cowan says. “And I do believe that that loving other people is the solution to where we are right now in this country.”
Our audio conversation here is more like two friends talking than an interview, because that’s the way that felt right. Lance is an easy-going conversationalist, so I hope you feel like you’re in the room.
