At Parnassus Books in Nashville, the literary and musical worlds often intersect. On Tuesday, May 20, John Cowan, known best as a vocalist and bass player, appeared in conversation with his collaborator Jimmy Schwartz and local journalist Ron Wynn to discuss his new book Hold to a Dream: A Newgrass Odyssey. At the core of the book were a series of interviews Cowan conducted when offered a radio show on WSM AM Radio. What he called “peer to peer” interviews encompassed a wide range of individuals from the music industry willing to sit down and talk with Cowan, including Kris Kristofferson, Loretta Lynn, Rodney Crowell, and Sam Moore.
One coup was his first interview with the famously reticent Leon Russell. After Chicago-based writer Schwartz befriended Cowan and learned of the existence of recordings of the fifteen interviews from around 2012, he convinced Cowan to share them. When they arrived on a thumb drive, Schwartz sat down and began listening. Blown away by what he found there in those recordings, he started transcribing what became a large chunk of the book that evolved.
To Schwartz’s amazement, the fifteen interviews that form the core of the book fell into sets of three: three former bandmates, three songwriters and three singers Cowan admired, three Californians, and three “progeny” of influence. When at least three published turned down the book in its original form, claiming that no one would want to read these interviews, Schwartz convinced Cowan to add content to provide context.
What resulted is the not only Cowan’s own story, but the only book account of the Newgrass Revival, the band Cowan joined in the 70s, playing with Sam Bush, Bela Fleck, Courtney Johnson, Curtis Burch, and Pat Flynn. Through the evening, Cowan and Schwartz engaged in banter back and forth, building on one another’s stories–sometimes with differing accounts and responding to questions from Wynn. When the audience was given the opportunity to ask questions, some had their own stories of encounters with Cowan and his musical collaborators.
Cowan is unblinkingly transparent about his own life–including the rough spots–but as he described the course of his career–still very much alive, he said, “My life has been nothing but ‘pinch me moments.’” Playing with the Doobie Brothers on tour with the Eagles, joining Andrea Zonn as the HercuLeons, and looking forward to the release a new album Fiction, Cowan may need to write another book to capture more of those moments.