Defying expectations

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Friday, May 9th.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: Musical sequels you may not have seen coming.

Too many stories emerging from the music world predictably reinforce progressive mainstream-media tropes. And, well, those that don’t, you don’t hear about.

BROWN: WORLD’s music critic Arsenio Orteza insists, it’s the unpredictable that’s always more interesting.

ARSENIO ORTEZA: Music fans did a double take last year when an album called So Far, So Good showed up bearing the name Lance Cowan: Why? Because for more than 30 years Cowan has been a music publicist. And music publicists don’t become recording artists any more than Hollywood agents become actors. Music publicists especially don’t become recording artists capable of making a country-inflected, singer-songwriter album that’s as good as any that they promote. Cowan, however, did just that.

MUSIC: [Excerpt from “So Far, So Good” by Lance Cowan, So Far, So Good]

That’s So Far, So Good’s opening track. Musicians often lead with their strongest song, so skeptics might’ve expected the rest to trail off. But if they did, they found their expectations dashed. The succeeding sharply etched character sketches and vignettes packed subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) emotional wallops. And while some of Cowan’s subjects were sad, none were dark or haunted—not with Sam Bush’s mandolin and Dan Dugmore’s pedal steel on the tracks. And just when you thought that you’d settled on the one song that would perfect your next singer-songwriter playlist, another would come along to make you reconsider.

MUSIC: [Excerpt from “Lost and Found” by Lance Cowan, So Far, So Good]

Cowan’s past clients read like a “who’s who” list, from the Prairie Home Companion host Garrison Keillor to the Elvis Presley alumni Scotty Moore and D.J. Fontana. Cowan’s current clients include all three of the Flatlanders, individually and collectively.

MUSIC: [Excerpt from chorus of “Wildfire"]

Cowen’s clients also include the folk-country artist Michael Martin Murphey, whose 1975 crossover hit Wildfire—a fantasy epic about a ghost horse—charted number one on the adult contemporary chart and made Murphey a household name.

Now Cowan is making a name for himself. If he’d never made another album, he’d already be something like the Shohei Ohtani of music—a two-way player in a game in which being a one-way player is hard enough. Besides, the phenomenon known as the “sophomore slump” is real. Or as an old saying goes, “You’ve got your whole life to make your first album but only a year to make your second.” It’s a way to explain why albums that come right after successful debuts are rarely as potent. But just one year after So Far, So Good, Cowan has made another album. It’s called Against the Grain. And not only does it avoid the sophomore slump, but it’s even better than what came before. The mid-’70s country-rock instrumentation and vocal harmonies remain. And now they’re put at the service of hooks that would’ve embedded themselves in the top 40 back when millions were checking into the Hotel California.

MUSIC: [Excerpt from “One More Chance” by Lance Cowan, Against the Grain]

The warm critical reception greeting his first album buoyed Cowan’s confidence as an artist on Against the Grain. Before, he thought that he had the singer-songwriter goods; now he knows he does. His music is still on the mellow side, but on “The Ragged Edge of Nothing” he’s not afraid to rock a little harder. It’s a song of plain-spoken regret about a once strong relationship that’s entering its final stages of dissolution. And if Neil Young hears it, he’ll probably wish he’d written it first.

MUSIC: [Excerpt from “The Ragged Edge of Nothing” by Lance Cowan, Against the Grain]

Another fascinating story that’s getting a sequel is that of the German singer Nina Hagen and her album Personal Jesus.

MUSIC: [Excerpt from “Personal Jesus” by Nina Hagen]

First released in 2010, the album has just been re-released in a 15th-anniversary edition with one extra track. Normally, such a minor occasion and one extra song wouldn’t be worth discussing. But the original story behind the album is so good that any excuse to revisit it will do. Hagen, you see, had for years been one of music’s most extreme eccentrics. Part punk, part performance artist, and thoroughly histrionic, she seemed to have polarization as her main goal. But in 2009, she was baptized in a Protestant Reformed church. While still eccentric, the music she made in the aftermath sounded surprisingly sincere. She even added lyrics to the title cut, a Depeche Mode cover, undercutting the irony of the original.

As for that new bonus cut …

MUSIC: [Excerpt from “I Am Born to Preach the Gospel” by Nina Hagen]

… it’s a cover of a song that Washington Phillips recorded in 1928 called “I Am Born to Preach the Gospel.”

MUSIC: [Excerpt continues from “I Am Born to Preach the Gospel” by Nina Hagen]

As you can tell, it’s cut from the same cloth.

I’m Arsenio Orteza.

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