Hearing the first song on his third album in two years made me feel so ecstatic I had to pull over and text my congratulations to the artist Lance Cowan.
I’m sentimental about Lance, sentimental about anyone who ignores the dream squashers to claw his or her way into the winner’s circle.
Spoiler Alert: By most accounts he’s been a winner far longer than the dream squashers will ever know.
So I’m sitting there being the kind of driver we urge our children to be and then I find I’ve become immobilized by the second song. Then the third. Then the fourth.
It was on-first listen becoming one of those rare albums were cynics eager to find flaws become disappointed — and is disappointing a cynic playing right into his or her hands?
I should confess I have a rooting interest in seeing Lance succeed. We were roommates in Nashville from 1985-88. We met as reporters at the Nashville Banner.
He had dreams of becoming a singer songwriter.
I was doing exactly what I’d dreamed of doing, that is becoming a swashbuckling news reporter in a Big City because like even base idiots knew the great American newspaper would never leave us.
It’s a dream I pursue still.
Lance had other motivations. If overnight fame was elusive, as it persistently is, he would engage fickle fortunes in a staring contest, one that would endure for three decades.
It was the Country music era best described by Tom Petty as “Bad rock with a fiddle.”
And throughout this span of dubious commercial accommodation, Cowan stayed true to both his family and his instincts.
He began a one-man publicity shop that earned the respect — not to mention to the client fees — of authentic Americana artists Joe Ely and Guy Clark and more than a dozen quality musicians.
Behind the scene, he never stopped writing, playing or believing his time would come.
The result of this manifest itself in 2024 when fame didn’t just blink. It wiped both eyes with balled up fists as if it was beholding a reality it couldn’t comprehend.
A 60-old unknown released “So Far, So Good,” a “new” album and it was beginning to appear on numerous “Best of…” lists.
Lance Cowan was through holding out, or so it seemed. Scant months later he released another album and another satisfying release, “Against The Grain.”
But as I sat there listening to “The Air That You Breath” play out, it dawned on me that he was still holding out.
Again.
Because “Breath” is his best album. It’s a better album than many veteran acts have pulled off over decade’s long careers.
It’s like watching a dependable and beloved family horse be invited to run in the Derby, writing off the long shot and then being dumbfounded when the horse emerges from the pack down the home stretch.
At a time when much of the nation is at the throats of the rest of the nation and vice versa, Lance Cowan is an antidote to all the bitter vitriol.
He’s flesh and blood evidence that staying true to your values can overcome the life obstacles we all long to bitch slap into submission.
He’s not just one of the best stories in Country Music. He’s one of the best stories in the whole Country.
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