Lance Cowan has finally found the perfect way to tell his own storytelling
Americana’s most compelling late-blooming voices
Peter Schavemaker - journalist
Jul 22, 2026
For decades, Lance Cowan helped some of America’s finest songwriters tell their stories. Now, with his third CD The Air That You Breathe, he is finally telling his own.
For most of his professional life, Lance Cowan stood just outside the spotlight, helping some of America’s finest singer-songwriters tell their stories. One of Nashville’s most respected publicists, journalist and communications professional, he spent decades promoting the careers of artists including Guy Clark, Joe Ely and a dozen more. Few could have predicted that, at the age of 65, Cowan would finally step onto the stage himself: not as a publicist, but as a songwriter and recording artist.
With the current release of The Air That You Breathe, his third album in three years, Cowan has firmly established himself as one of Americana’s most compelling late-blooming voices. Yet he rejects the idea of reinvention. Instead, he sees songwriting as the natural continuation of a lifetime spent telling stories. Whether working as a newspaper reporter, shaping artists’ careers or writing songs, the common thread has always been the same: finding the human story behind the headlines.
A new conversation about the journey so far and the new album.
When I first spoke to Lance Cowan in 2023, he had just released So Far So Good, a debut album that surprised almost everyone who heard it. Not because the songs lacked maturity, but because they possessed so much of it. Here was a songwriter who seemingly appeared out of nowhere, writing with the quiet confidence of someone who understood that a great lyric rarely needs to shout.
When we spoke again around the release of Against the Grain, his second album (2024). It became clear that his first album had not been a nostalgic one-off. The songs kept coming. So did the audiences. Festivals started invited him. Listening rooms opened their doors. Radio stations started paying attention. Somewhere along the way, Lance Cowan stopped being the publicist who made a record and became a songwriter whose previous career simply happened to be in public relations.
Now, with The Air That You Breathe, Cowan has completed his third album.
“I released the first record when I was 65,” Lance says. “The truth is I don’t have a lot of time to dawdle. If I’m going to put this stuff out, I can’t wait two or three years between projects.”
It is a wonderfully honest answer. Many artists speak about urgency as though it were part of a carefully constructed mythology. Cowan speaks about it because it is simply the truth. He understands time differently now. There is no sense in pretending otherwise.
“I don’t know when the next record will come,” he says. “Maybe it will take longer. I don’t know. But these songs wanted to be recorded now.”
Lance adds currently he is writing for a possible fourth record.
That willingness to embrace the present rather than mourn the past runs through every conversation with Cowan. It also runs through The Air That You Breathe, an album that feels deeply reflective without ever becoming nostalgic.
For many listeners, it is tempting to see his recording career as a late-life reinvention. Cowan disagrees. The songs, after all, have always been there. Long before he ever stood behind a microphone, he was writing. Some of those early compositions eventually found their way onto So Far So Good, but even then the record had never been intended as the launch of a recording career.
“I put that first record together strictly as a calling card,” he recalls. “I wanted something that would help me find places to play besides the Bluebird Café.”
Cowan describes the songs on his first So Far So Good ‘a bunch of old songs’ he recorded. Now with the new album he worked with his longtime music friends and wrote new songs.
“When you get out there and you’re playing and people like it, its spurs a creative energy. I don’t want people to think I’m pulling from a well of old songs that took me years to write. It was important to me to bring new songs to this new project because I like to feel I can create new songs still.”
The Bluebird Café had become Lance Cowan’s musical home. Like countless Nashville writers before him, Cowan played the legendary listening room because songwriting itself mattered more than commercial ambition. The album was simply meant to open a few more doors. Instead, it opened almost every door.
His current manager John Porter heard the record and offered to manage him. Distribution followed. Reviews were overwhelmingly positive. The phone started ringing.
“The press really seemed to like it,” Cowan remembers, still sounding faintly surprised by the reaction.
Success, however, brought another challenge. Could he do it again?
It is one thing to spend decades polishing songs that have lived in notebooks. It is another to prove that the well has not run dry. That question lingered in Cowan’s mind as he began writing what would become The Air That You Breathe. Unlike his debut, most of the new album consists of recently written material.
“When you’re playing songs and people respond, it creates new creative energy,” he says. “It was important to me not to keep pulling from old songs. I didn’t want people to think I had this well of songs that took years to write. I wanted to know, for myself, that I could still create.”
That distinction is important. Artists often talk about proving themselves to audiences, critics or the music industry. Cowan never frames it that way. His greatest challenge has always been internal. Every new song is a conversation with himself as much as anyone else.
Knowing Lance Cowan’s career after three extensive talks and sideways of contact it is clear to see recently his shows went far beyond The Bluebird Café. Lance was invited to play from Boston to Florida, and songwriters festivals in Arkansas, Kentucky, Alabama.
What did those places bring Lance playing there?
“The songwriter festivals has been really wonderful to be invited to those. To me that’s a such a compliment, because there’s so many other songwriters that are trying to get on those.”
Lance adds the travels and festivals raised his musical bar.
Perhaps that explains why The Air That You Breathe sounds so confident. There is no attempt to imitate current Americana trends. No calculated effort to chase streaming playlists or algorithmic success. Instead, Cowan writes exactly the music he grew up loving.
"My measure is to write songs that somebody like Jackson Brown would like. You know, if I had had a song that showed up on Bruce Springsteen’s desk that he said was a good song.
Lance remembers as a teenager hearing John Denver.
“John Denver was the first artist I ever tried to learn frankly. If it hadn’t been for John Denver I don’t know that I’d have ever picked up a guitar because his songs were so simple you could play them and not even be perfect, but you could play them and make friends with it.”
“The people who come to hear me are the same people who grew up listening to Jackson Browne, the Eagles and Dan Fogelberg,” he says. “I mean I know Jackson Brown still gets out and plays and the Eagles are still getting out. You don’t hear many younger artists trying to recreate that West Coast sound anymore. But when I play, there’s always an audience that appreciates it. My measure is to write songs that somebody like Jackson Brown would like. You know, if I had had a song that showed up on Bruce Springsteen’s desk that he said was a good song, that’s my measure of where I want my songs to be.”
Did Lance Cowan tried to get his records on Jackson Brown’s desk?
“No, no, no. I don’t even know how to do it. And I have no intention of pitching him. I want my songs to stand next to his or any number of guys. Frankly, I want my songs to stand up next to the songs of Joe Ely and Nancy Griffith and Guy Clark. I mentioned three of them. They’re all deceased, aren’t they?”
Joe Ely passed away in December 15th, 2025. Is there lyric-wise or music-wise kind of a homage to him on this album?
“Not really. You know, I loved him and consider Joe one of the most remarkable humas I’ve ever met in my life.” Lance Cowan worked about 38 years as PR for Ely. “Joe gave me some of the greatest advice I ever got.”
Would Joe Ely be emotional about your new album?
“I don’t know if he would be emotional about it, but I think he would like it. Joe was such an amazing supporter, but Joe didn’t know I had written a song until we had worked together for over 25 years. And once he heard my first record, he and his wife Sharon were unbelievably supportive of me. And that means so much because I admire them so much.”
In today’s music industry, visibility often seems more important than craftsmanship. Cowan approaches songwriting from precisely the opposite direction. Recognition, if it comes, should arrive because the songs deserve it, not because they have been strategically placed in the right hands.
That philosophy perhaps explains why he speaks so warmly about the musicians who surround him on The Air That You Breathe. Rather than listing impressive résumés, he talks about generosity, friendship and trust.
Before discussing producer Scott Paschall or the remarkable Nashville players who appear throughout the album, however, Cowan keeps returning to another name: Terry Egan.
Without Terry Egan, he admits, The Air That You Breathe might never have existed.
At the beginning of this year, Cowan was still trying to secure the funding needed to make another record. Recording in Nashville with musicians of this calibre is expensive, and although the songs were ready, the finances were not.
Then the telephone rang.
“I was talking to a friend in Boston,” Cowan recalls. “He asked me what I was doing, and I said I was trying to raise the money for my next project. There was a pause, and then he said, ‘I’ll take care of that for you.’”
The friend was Terry Egan, founder of Boston-based Patio Records.
Egan’s motivation extends far beyond music. Through his label and the Terry Egan Project, he has helped fund healing gardens at hospitals, providing peaceful outdoor spaces for cancer patients and their families. It is philanthropy rooted in personal tragedy after losing his wife Mary decades earlier, and Cowan clearly admires both the mission and the man.
“Honestly, the reason I wanted to work with Terry is because I like Terry so much,” he says. “He’s one of the most good-hearted people I’ve ever met. There’s no pretension about him. He is exactly who he appears to be.”
The more Lance Cowan talks about The Air That You Breathe, the clearer it becomes that this is not an album driven by commercial ambition. It is the product of relationships that have matured over decades—friendships built on mutual respect, shared values and a love of songs that place storytelling ahead of fashion. In an era where records are often assembled through file-sharing and Zoom sessions, Cowan’s third album feels almost old-fashioned. It is an album made by people who genuinely enjoy making music together.
Whether he is speaking about Terry Egan, Scott Paschall, Karen Leipziger, Joe Ely or Sam Bush, he almost never begins by describing their talent.
He talks about their character.
Perhaps that is no coincidence.
Because the longer our conversation continues, the clearer it becomes that The Air That You Breathe is not simply an album about songs.
It is an album about those people, the writers and musicians.
“It was really remarkable to see them in the studio together. That’s why that we were able to do the album in just a couple of days, we were able to track 11 songs. It’s because these guys are such pros, worldclass players. It’s really humbling to think that they’re playing on this record of mine.”
Cowan recalls fiddler Sam Bush came in and play on four tracks. Since 1988 the musician and publicist Cowan share a history.
Throughout our conversation, Cowan returns again and again to the idea that authenticity matters more than perfection. Audiences respond to honesty because they recognise themselves in it.
No song illustrates that belief more clearly than the album’s title track.
Karen Leipziger has been part of Cowan’s life for more than three decades. Both spent much of their professional careers in public relations before returning seriously to songwriting. Last summer they decided to meet every Wednesday, turning a long friendship into a regular creative partnership.
“Karen came up with the idea,” Cowan explains. “We both dedicated our lives to public relations, and we were seeing so many people our age who still had dreams of writing, creating and telling stories.”
Those weekly writing sessions quickly became one of the highlights of Cowan’s year.
Rather than forcing songs into existence, the pair simply allowed conversations to become lyrics.
“The Air That You Breathe” emerged almost naturally.
Listen to this interview as a podcast too. Lance Cowan Interview: The Story Behind The Air That You Breathe
On the surface, it speaks about postponed dreams—creative ambitions pushed aside while careers were built, children were raised and mortgages were paid. Beneath that, however, lies something more universal. It asks a simple question: when does someone become too old to begin again?
Cowan has already answered that question through his own life.
The remarkable thing is how many listeners immediately recognised themselves in the song.
“Every time I play it,” he says, “somebody comes up afterwards and tells me that’s their story.”
He remembers one evening in particular.
“I called Karen afterwards because five or six people came up after the show. One man started crying. He said that song was exactly his life.”
Those are the moments every songwriter hopes for—not applause, but recognition.
Listening to Cowan describe the reaction, I ask whether the song has become a kind of summary of his own journey. After all, he has completed three albums in three years after waiting most of his life before releasing the first. He nods.
I have incredible admiration for anybody who’s trying to create something.
“I think Karen saw what was happening to me,” he says. “She’d watched the progress I’d made and she’d been incredibly supportive. She understood exactly what that song was about because she’d watched me finally get the chance to do this.”
There is another line from the song that keeps returning during our conversation.
“It’s never too late and it’s never too soon.”
For Cowan, it has become something more than a lyric. It is a philosophy.
“I have incredible admiration for anybody who’s trying to create something,” he says. “Sometimes what they’re creating isn’t remarkable, but that doesn’t matter. The important thing is that they’re trying to share what’s in their head and in their heart. I celebrate that.”
Perhaps because he spent so many years helping other artists build careers, Cowan seems genuinely excited by other people’s successes.
There is no bitterness in his voice about arriving late.
Only gratitude.
That gratitude extends beyond songwriting itself.
Looking back over his own career, he recently realised that every job he has ever loved has revolved around exactly the same thing.
“Somebody pointed out last year that all my careers centre around storytelling,” he says. “I’d honestly never thought about it before. From newspaper reporter to publicist to songwriter—they’re all storytelling.”
It is an observation that explains almost everything.
As a young newspaper reporter, Cowan learned to observe rather than judge. As a publicist, he learned how to communicate an artist’s truth without overshadowing it. As a songwriter, those same instincts simply found another medium.
That journalistic background continues to shape the way he writes songs today.
Unlike many contemporary songwriters, Cowan rarely begins with abstract ideas. He starts with people. With conversations. With details that might easily go unnoticed by everyone else.
His songs don’t lecture. They observe.
They unfold patiently, allowing listeners to draw their own conclusions.
“I remember seeing an interview with Paul Simon,” Cowan tells me. “He said that songwriters are reporters as much as anything else. As somebody who used to be a reporter, that meant a great deal to me.”
He smiles.
“You’re just trying to tell the story truthfully.”
That simple sentence may be the key to understanding not only The Air That You Breathe, but Lance Cowan himself.
Because before he became a singer-songwriter... he was, and perhaps still is, a storyteller first.
The lead single, “Where’d They Go.” Cowan co-wrote the song with Terry Clayton about the Trump administration’s immigration policy (ICE).
For all the warmth and optimism that runs through The Air That You Breathe, Lance Cowan has no interest in writing songs that merely comfort. He believes a songwriter has a responsibility to pay attention to the world around him, even when that world is uncomfortable. The challenge, he says, is to avoid preaching.
That balance is one of the defining characteristics of his writing.
His songs rarely tell listeners what they should think. Instead, they invite reflection. They present ordinary people wrestling with extraordinary circumstances and allow the audience to finish the story themselves. It is a skill that undoubtedly comes from decades spent interviewing people and helping artists communicate their own truths.
“I’ve always believed that songs should start conversations rather than end them,” he tells me. “If somebody hears one of my songs and it makes them think a little differently, or even just think more deeply, then I’ve done my job.”
That philosophy comes into sharp focus in one of the album’s most affecting songs, “Where’d They Go.”
The lead single, “Where’d They Go.” Cowan co-wrote the song with Terry Clayton about the Trump administration’s immigration policy (ICE).
“That’s really painful to see,” says Lance Cowan. “I have friends in the Latino community here in Nashville. This administration has terrorized an entire population group. People don’t even know if they can safely go to the grocery store without being snatched off the street by masked individuals, thrown into a car, and then cut off from their families.”
An article in The New York Times provided the basis for the song, which he co-wrote with one of his regular songwriting partners, Terry Clayton. “We read that during deportations, people are sometimes picked up off the street, while their pets are left behind at home without care. To me, that’s such a striking illustration of the cruelty of this policy. I’m not saying that people residing in the country illegally shouldn’t have legal status. I believe in following legal procedures. But I know people who have been trying to go through those procedures for years. It’s incredibly complicated and expensive. By the time you’ve paid all the legal fees, you’re tens of thousands of dollars in debt. And in the meantime, agents are waiting outside immigration offices—where people are trying to take the right steps—only to round them up off the street. It’s yet another example of a government that seems to lack compassion. It breaks my heart. That’s what this song is about.”
At the heart of Where’d They Go is the story of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran migrant who became a symbol of the Trump administration’s strict immigration policies. Abrego Garcia fled El Salvador for the U.S. in 2011.
Although he was never officially granted asylum, he built a life there, married an American woman, and had a son. The U.S. government accuses him of being a member of the MS-13 gang, but he denies any involvement. His case has become a major symbol in the debate over immigration and deportation in the United States. In March 2025, Garcia was wrongfully deported to El Salvador, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, much to the anger of the Trump administration.
According to Lance Cowan, some listeners sometimes miss the point of the song.
“If people miss one word, they sometimes miss the whole meaning. If they don’t hear the name Garcia, they might not understand what it’s about. Fortunately, I usually play for people who listen closely to lyrics. But every now and then, someone asks, ‘So where did they go?’ Then I say, ‘Call Homeland Security and ask them.’ Nobody knows where they are. That’s exactly what makes it so heartbreaking.”
Cowan emphasizes that he does not consider his album to be a political record.
“I wouldn’t call this a political song. It’s a report on what’s happening. In the album’s liner notes, I mention that years ago I saw an interview with Paul Simon. He spoke about the importance of a songwriter as a reporter. That meant a lot to me, because I used to be a journalist myself. As a reporter, you try to tell a story truthfully. You simply describe what’s happening. Some people might not have a problem with the deportation of the Garcia family. I don’t explicitly take a stance on that in the song. I’m just describing a situation in which someone was taken off the street and couldn’t even be at home to take care of their pets. That’s reporting. I’m not preaching. I think you can probably guess my opinion, but I’m not trying to impose anything on anyone. I’m just describing what’s happening.”
So that explains why you wanted to write this song?
“Exactly. My friend Terry Clayton, with whom I wrote the song, had wanted to write a song about immigration for a long time. When he came to me last fall, it turned out that topic was on both of our minds.”
Do you hope that your music and stories can help change the situation?
“I think music can certainly contribute to that. Music can influence the direction in which a society is moving. I don’t know if my music will make such a big difference. Of course, I hope it can make a difference on some level. But ultimately, I’m mainly trying to express what I think and feel.”
Again, the journalist in him becomes visible. Good reporters ask questions. Good songwriters often do the same. The story comes first. That is perhaps why his records feel timeless. Not because Cowan has copied his heroes. But because he has absorbed the lesson they all understood.
Perhaps that is why, nearly four decades after beginning a career devoted to helping other artists tell theirs, Lance Cowan has finally found the perfect way to tell his own.
Interview © 2026 Peter Schavemaker Tekst, Audio en Podcast Producties.