The Blue Shadows: Lucky To Me

During my longest stint in music retail, I worked in the E.T.C. room. E.T.C. (as in et cetera) was a room tucked along the side of a massive music store (Musiplex) and housed what didn’t fit in the Rock/Pop/R + B room or the Classical/Jazz room (which had a separate entrance to keep the riff-raff and the hoity-toity from colliding). E.T.C. had the leftovers - reggae, children's, gospel, folk, soundtracks, easy listening, world, comedy, blues, new age and – gasp! – country. Quite the musical education for a punk purist. First Johnny Cash happened. When American Recording arrived it went on the store stereo every bloody day. The next Boxing Day, I purchased the Essential Johnny Cash box set (a shining light in a dim packaging format) and began looking back. And what I saw (and heard) was the raw power of country music. Yes, sappy Nash-Trash (in its shifting forms) has infected country music for a donkey’s years but when that devious formula (3 Chords + Truth = Country) is followed the aural impact is devastating. (It helps the listener along if a long love affair has reached an explosive conclusion.)


It was in the midst of this musical and personal mix-up that I first heard the Blue Shadows {Billy Cowsill (guitar, vocals) J.B. Johnson (drums) Jeffrey Hatcher (guitar, vocals) Elmar Spanier (bass) Barry Muir (bass)}.“Hank goes to the Cavern Club” was the Blue Shadows M.O. and they built a rock-country hybrid that stands up better than a thousand other rural-urban fusionists. Uniting Winnipeg mainstay Jeffrey Hatcher (who fronted late seventies power-pop band the Fuse) and former sixties teen-pop idol Billy Cowsill of The Cowsills (the model for the Partridge Family) in the early 90’s seemed a strange idea on paper but it played out like fevered dream version of pre-psychedelic rock n’ roll – Everlys, Orbison, Beatles, Buck et al. The harmonies soar, the guitars ring, the lyrics lament; everyone wins whether you’re a power-pop fan, a British Invasion fanatic, a lover of gut-bucket country or just damn broken-hearted. On the debut you can take in Coming on Strong which hits like the Buck Owens freight train sound, then sway along to the old-fashioned hurtin’ tunes like The Embers. The second, less commercially successful (but I believe better) album, Lucky To Me, "rocks harder", as the sophomore cliché goes, so you get to enjoy more driving tunes like the harmony-drenched kiss-off song, Riding Only Down - non-embeddable video here.


So whatever your genre bias, wander into the E.T.C. room for a spell…

Finally, an On The Floor of Heaven re-issue is available!

Doug Updates:
You can order the album directly from Bumstead Records. Payment via PayPal.
Billy Cowsill Discography
Blue Shadows article in No Depression
Billy Cowsill's legendary album "Nervous Breakthrough" (is that not one of the greatest titles of all time?) is over at Red Telephone.