When I first covered the HercuLeons in the winter of 2023, they were a new, all-local supergroup fronted by Andrea Zonn and John Cowan playing a residency at the historic 3rd & Lindsley. They couldn’t tour because everybody in the band had pressing, long-standing commitments. But they were proposing, if not promising, to deliver a debut album later that year. Well, the best laid plans of singers, songwriters, pickers and producers don’t always move along quickly, but the band has continued to cook, including a superb set at last fall’s Americanafest. And at last, this past March, they brought their herculean strengths to a self-titled album. So we can now spend time with this band whenever we like.
Zonn and Cowan are roots music veterans with amazing individual stories to tell, so I had the great idea of taping an hour of conversation with each of them and then releasing them in consecutive episodes. Thus we get this week’s double helping of Nashville talent and stories from a couple of quintuple-threat instrumentalist/singer/
songwriter/sideman/leaders who have been making Music City a more exciting and historic place for decades.
“All I ever wanted to do is be a musician,” says John Cowan in Episode 325, as he reflects on the years of grinding the road required to put New Grass Revival on the map in the 1970s. “We're traveling. I didn't really care if I made 100 bucks a week. I had enough to buy pot and pay for my rent. And other than that, I'm driving all over the US, and we're up there, playing our music to people. So it was a dream come true for me. I didn't really know any better.”
“We did a record!’ Andrea Zonn says at the outset of Episode 326, celebrating the HercuLeons’ 11-song release. “You know, it feels great because it was an idea that was sort of born during the time of the pandemic, and we were working on it in bits and pieces. John works with the Doobie Brothers, and I'm out with James Taylor. And both of those are wonderful legacy gigs that we like very much. And so we're trying to figure out how to thread a project and a future into everything. We don't want to take anything away. So it was a real labor of love.”
These make great companion episodes because they describe two very different paths to the same space as working professionals in Nashville. They’d have been worthy guests even without this new collaboration, yet there’s so much to remark on in this new album. But let’s catch up with both of them.
Andrea’s journey started in a highly musical household including a composer father in Champagne, IL, a town with a serious university music program. She begged to play violin and found her way to a twin identity on her instrument - classical recitals playing Bach and Ravel and regional contests where she played bluegrass and fiddle tunes, and where she met and befriended an eight-year-old Alison Krauss. Andrea was almost lab-born to come to Nashville with its broad musical base, and she did so to study violin at Vanderbilt, while going deeper into the fiddle at the Station Inn at night. She played in a hot bluegrass band led by banjo innovator Tony Trischka (we hear a song of hers from that outfit) and then cold-called her way into a touring job, fiddling and singing with Vince Gill. That savvy move set her course, and she followed that stretch with time with Lyle Lovett and James Taylor, among other projects.
“Trischka and I were in the car driving somewhere, and he says, ‘I just want to tell you something.’” Zonn says in the interview. “Because here I was, green. I was 18 or 19 years old. And he said, ‘Don't feel like you have to be a purist. If you want to stretch out beyond bluegrass, by all means, especially if you want to make a living. Things don't change very much around here. And you know, just don't be afraid to set your sights wherever you want them.’ And I took that advice to heart.”
Cowan talked in this prior New Grass Revival interview about his audition with that band and their early days. But in this new conversation we get into his life after NGR’s breakup in 1990. “I wanted to sing,” he says, without belaboring the obvious. “Some of my favorite bands were Bad Company, or Free. Paul Rodgers (of Free) is basically a gospel, bluegrass, black singer in a white man's body from England, over three-chord heavy rock. And I thought that's what I want to do, because I could sing like that. So I pursued that. I got a record deal on ATCO, part of Atlantic.”
Sounds great, except that the deal foundered when John’s label rep and champion left his job. Cowan had some struggles on the progressive bluegrass circuit too, surprisingly. After a couple of years of touring in a duo-fronted group with NGR’s founding father Sam Bush, he had to find his own way. Yet the emerging jamgrass fan base was focused more on dancing and a good time than on Cowan’s god-given gift.
“The thing that surprised me was (that) vocals were of no appeal whatsoever to the jam scene,” he says. “What I do really well, it kind of fell on flat ears. What I thought, naively, was well, I was in the original jam grass band. I'm gonna do what I did with that band. But not so much.” That said, I saw the John Cowan band - with killer players like Luke Bulla, Jeff Autry, and Shad Cobb - rock my world at events like Merlefest and our show Music City Roots. He’s made more than a half dozen releases under his own name, ranging from old-school soul to his own brand of progressive string band music. The Doobie Brothers job, which he’s had since the early 90s, has given him the stability to chase his passions and write songs.
The HercuLeons came about when Zonn and Cowan spent a day together on a work-for-hire harmony vocal studio session. That day, which took place as the pandemic was finally fading, reconnected the old friends. They’d sung together before (I spin the title cut to Zonn’s 2015 solo album “Rise” with Cowan singing harmony), but this session sparked conversations about a living, breathing band. The first iteration was acoustic, with some string band ringers playing Covid-era streaming sets. By the time the 3rd & Lindsley shows began, they’d scaled up, with electric guitarists Tom Britt or Will McFarlane, drummer Andy Peake, and piano/keys man Jody Nardone. They’re a true collective that listens, adapts, jams, and comps beautifully. Cowan’s bass grounds it all. Zonn’s fiddling is a special touch in this soul/rock ensemble.
The album was recorded in parts in Nashville and assembled and mixed by acclaimed producer and songwriter Wendy Waldman out in LA. Yet I hear its eleven songs as pure band craft, indistinguishable from a live performance. “Resurrection Road” sets the tone with Zonn’s fiddle chopping livening up a hearty groove. John takes the lead vocals on this one, a song about finding a path out of hard times. Then the album’s crown jewel in my opinion, the yearning and prayerful half-bluegrass, half-rock “Face Of Appalachia,” an old song written by the surprising team of John Sebastian and Lowell George. Here, Cowan and Zonn’s harmony vocals open up some kind of portal. It’s moving and amazing.
Cowan takes a masterful lead on Gregory Porter’s sublime “Take Me To The Alley,” a modern gospel ballad that both John and Andrea talk about in some detail. In Zonn’s episode, we listen to her original song “Still I Sing,” composed with the thoughtful bluegrass pair Thomm Jutz and Tim Stafford, about a tree that becomes an instrument. And in John’s show we play “Barbed Wire Boys,” a Susan Werner song that in some ways set the tone for the HercuLeons as a band and their debut album.
Will there be more? Yes. How fast and with what performing ambitions depends on the remainders of two very important careers - James Taylor and the Doobie Brothers. If Zonn, Cowan and company sound this good while moonlighting, imagine the results if and when they can give it their full attention.
