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Artist Bio

Susan Cowsill first entered the pop-culture consciousness at the age of eight, as the youngest member of the '60s musical family the Cowsills, who graced the AM airwaves with such enduring pop hits as "Hair" and "The Rain, the Park and Other Things," and who were the real-life inspiration for TV's Partridge Family.

In adulthood, she's emerged as a singer-songwriter of singular emotional insight and musical resonance, first as a key member of beloved alt-roots-pop supergroup the Continental Drifters and more recently on her widely acclaimed second solo album Lighthouse.

Rolling Stone's David Fricke described Lighthouse as "the hardy, heartbreaking sound of a woman in the prime of her singing
and songwriting life," while The Huffington Post noted, "Every song is a highlight... This work of art is akin to musical cinema."

Lighthouse's soulful, personally-charged songcraft reflects the artist's experiences during a wrenching period which saw Cowsill dealing with the deaths of her brothers Billy and Barry, and the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, which claimed most of her and her family's material possessions and temporarily displaced them from Susan's adopted hometown of New Orleans. The album reflects the hard-won lessons of Cowsill's experiences, while maintaining the unmistakable sense of optimism and spirituality that's always been at the heart of her work.

Lighthouse also features guest appearances by longtime friend and admirer Jackson Browne, as well as Susan's brothers Bob, Paul and John Cowsill, her sister-in-law (and Bangles/Continental Drifters member) Vicki Peterson, and renowned session guitarist Waddy Wachtel, who began his career playing with the Cowsills in the 1960s.

In addition to being the youngest artist to ever score a Billboard hit single, Susan Cowsill has also lent her voice to albums by Dwight Twilley, Giant Sand, the Smithereens, Carlene Carter, Nanci Griffith, Redd Kross, Jules Shear and Hootie and the Blowfish. She was the first artist to cover a song by future cult legend and current comeback star Sixto Rodriguez, releasing her version of his "Think of You" as a solo single on Warner Bros. Records in 1977. She also recently teamed with fellow troubadours Jon Dee Graham and Freedy Johnston as the Hobart Brothers & Lil' Sis Hobart on the critically lauded album At Least We Have Each Other.

"The songs on Lighthouse portray the loss of a world and a lifetime that no longer exists," Cowsill notes. "It is about the uncertainty of the days, weeks and months that were ahead of us. And at the same time, it is the music of hope and faith and survival. The renewal of our city, our families and our souls.

"Going through Katrina was most certainly like experiencing a death. The time in between the storm and the making of Lighthouse was the grieving period, and the recording of the music was the funeral, laying it all to rest, saying goodbye, and starting over.

"So here we are, in our new world. And this world is filled with beauty and light and excitement, and the new-found knowledge that the present is really all that we have, because everything can change in the blink of an eye... Hey, that sounds like a song comin' on—gotta go!"