At first, diminutive Louisville singer-songwriter Heidi Howe didn’t even want to record her new album, a campy spiritual twang-quest called Holy Cowgirl. She was tired of putting up her own cash and losing in the end, as prior experience continued to inform. Three albums under her belt was enough for now, she would tell friends trying to persuade her to hit the studio. Howe had had enough of debt.
Meanwhile, her outlook on life was changing. She was finding a spiritual side that had been incommunicado. She and husband-cum-lead-guitarist Neal Cox decided to adopt a baby. She found a purpose in children’s music and a job in performing it before youngsters in local schools. It had been seven years since the recovering alcoholic had taken a drink. She was staring age 30 in the face.
When Madame fortune struck, it was — as many things in Howe’s life have been — classically strange. Months ago, she was invited to perform at a concert in Jeffersonville, with singer-songwriter Tim Krekel among a host of other prominent area artists. She felt good about her set, and in the middle said, half-jokingly, that if there were any “executive producers” in the crowd interested in her, she was looking for a new one. Howe laughed and thought nothing more of it, finished the set and left the stage pleased.
Shortly thereafter, Jim Boling engaged her. Impressed by the performance, Boling and his wife took Howe to lunch at Fourth Street Live a few days later, and promptly asked her what she needed from an “executive producer.” Ideally, Howe replied, she needed about $700 to record a new album, for which the songs were already written. Boling made it an even $1,000 cash. Most strikingly, he doesn’t want it back.
“I just didn’t want to be in debt to anybody,” Howe says. “(This) is wonderful and amazing.”
The album came together pretty quickly thereafter. She brought a few friends together — among them Steve Cooley, Nate Thumas and Brigid Kaelin — and laid down the songs, many of which are baldly spiritual. The album is not overtly religious — that is, it doesn’t ask a listener to subscribe to a particular religion. Howe seems acutely aware of how it looks, as this is one of the first directions she nudges me when handing over a copy of Cowgirl last week. It’s easy to immediately pass it off as standard religious fare: The cover features Howe clad in glowing white angel wings, apparently suspended amid a backdrop of clouds, hands folded as if in prayer and, of course, the halo.
Pleasingly, the album is more a general discussion of some large and sweeping themes, discussions that include perceptions of beauty, making good life decisions, love and hard times, and God. (A choice line, from “Who Do You Think You Are?”: You may be a hottie/but you are not your body.) And all of it, of course, is delivered in Howe’s high-and-dry tenor.
“It’s very forward,” she says. “It doesn’t pret/files/storyimages/to be something it’s not, hopefully.”
Howe’s a pretty forward person in general, which is why the premise of this Sunday’s fundraiser at Phoenix Hill Tavern seems nothing if not obvious: raise money for her baby.
Since May, Howe and Cox have worked through the red tape to adopt a child. They received their referral — in other words, learned the identity of their child — in August. Just two months before, Howe’s dear friend, the Rev. Lancing “Lance” Livesay, was killed while bicycling in the Highlands.
Livesay is one of the dedications on Cowgirl. The other is Drew Won Lancing Cox, her adopted child. They expect Drew to arrive within the next couple of months, and they want to be ready for everything. And babies, as she says, are expensive. Again, it’s only obvious.
“We were like, ‘We don’t have any money!’” Howe says. If you’re not Raffi, the cash flow produced by playing children’s songs is more like a drip. Her husband teaches art at Bullitt Central High School. “It’s really, really super expensive, as all babies are, and we don’t want to have to have a bunch of debt.”
The “Baby Phest!” is ripe with fine family fun. From 6-8 p.m. magicians will entertain the kids, and folks will be painting faces. Also expect balloon sculptures and tunes from John Gage and a few others. At 8 p.m. the adults have their fun. That’s when, for two hours, the songwriters’ portion of the evening runs (see schedule below).
Heidi Howe’s Baby Phest! feat. Heidi Howe, Digby, Tim Krekel, Johnny Berry, Brigid Kaelin, danny flanigan & the Rain Chorus, Hog Operation, John Mann, The Betweeners, and John Gage
Sunday, Sept. 25
Phoenix Hill Tavern
644 Baxter Ave.
589-4957
$10 suggested donation/$5 for kids; 5:30 p.m.
All ages (until 10 p.m.)
www.lewoweekly.com
