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The Blue Shadows
On the Floor of Heaven
Bumstead - 1993
Mike Milner
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On the Floor of Heaven was the debut album from the Blue Shadows, a quartet that hailed from Vancouver. All of the tracks were recorded there during March of 1993, except for two that were recorded earlier in July of 1992. The future for the group seemed promising; they had support from their label Bumstead Records and a distribution deal with Sony/Columbia, one of the biggest players in the game. Upon its release, On the Floor of Heaven received great reviews and was certified gold in Canada for sales in excess of 50,000 copies. The Blue Shadows were also nominated for a Juno in the category of Best Country Group or Duo in 1994. They toured to much critical acclaim, and in 1995 recorded their follow-up disc, Lucky to Me, again to positive reviews. However, shortly after the release of their second album, they broke up. That has not been the end of the group, though. There continues to be considerable interest in their music, and their debut release is still very highly regarded and much sought after.
While the music was uniformly excellent, the personal dynamics within the band were challenging for some of the members. The Blue Shadows had a fascinating pedigree. The founding member of the Blue Shadows was Bill Cowsill, part of the 1960s band, the Cowsills, whose hit single 'The Rain, the Park and Other Things' went to #2 on the Billboard charts and became a certified gold record, selling over a million copies. In the mid-1970s, Cowsill relocated to Western Canada and continued his music career, mainly based in Calgary. In the early 1990s, he found himself in Vancouver, performing with stand-up bass player Elmar Spanier. It was at this time that the genesis of what would become the Blue Shadows began to take shape.
At the time, Cowsill was being managed by a gentleman named Larry Wanagas of Bumstead Productions. An old friend of Wanagas', singer, guitarist and songwriter Jeffrey Hatcher arrived in Vancouver. Wanagas knew that Cowsill was looking to add another guitarist and thought that he and Hatcher might hit it off. It was an inspired choice. Whether it was deserved or not, Cowsill had developed a reputation as a somewhat irascible character, and allegedly Hatcher had some initial trepidation about performing with him. However, the two musicians seemed to really connect musically and after a few gigs the decision was made that they would continue to work together. Drummer J.B. Johnson was added to the group, making it a quartet. Hatcher's partner came up with the band's name, and they were off and running. Within a few months, the band was ready to enter a recording studio and lay down some tracks
The album the group recorded contained twelve songs. There were no covers on the record. Seven of the songs were co-written by Cowsill and Hatcher, and the rest were either written by Hatcher or by Cowsill in conjunction with another songwriter. The style of music performed by the Blue Shadows undoubtedly had a strong country influence, but other musical genres can also be heard. What is without dispute, however, is the excellence of both the songs and the group's performance. While every song is good, there are a couple that still sound amazing almost 25 years after they were originally laid down. As indicated earlier, there continues to be a significant amount of interest in the group and this album. The band has maintained a strong following (specifically online), with On the Floor of Heaven having a revered status with fans, and with no shortage of superlatives to describe the music.
(Twenty-odd years before the release of On the Floor of Heaven, another musical innovator named Gram Parsons was creating a form of popular music he referred to as Cosmic American Music. If you have to affix a tag on what the Blue Shadows did, that probably works as well as anything...or call it Cosmic Canadian Music if you want to be nationalistic).
The music on the recording has a beautiful open feel to it. The instrumentation is sparse and nobody overplays. Where it benefits the song, the band introduces some fiddle or some pedal steel, but these extra instruments are used sparingly to add colour and don't overwhelm the listener. The over-production and cliche 'rock music' techniques predominant in the 'new country' musical genre of the early 1990s are thankfully nowhere to be found on On the Floor of Heaven. What the listener gets to hear are excellent harmony vocals, crisp guitar (with some nice 12-string thrown in here and there) and a solid understated rhythm section. The music has a timeless feel, and could have come from any of the five decades between 1960 and 2010.
There is hardly a duff track on the album. If I had to pick one that exemplifies what a treasure this recording is, I'd go with the title track. The song is a ballad and opens with electric and acoustic guitar, followed by Cowsill and Hatcher singing the opening lines of the first verse together. The rhythm section subsequently joins in, along with some tasteful pedal steel. The arrangement is superb. We get to listen to the beautiful blend Cowsill and Hatcher had with their vocals throughout the song, singing in unison and harmonizing. In addition to the great verse/chorus progression, the song features a gorgeous bridge leading to the last verse and the band taking the song out with three-part harmony.
As I alluded to earlier, while there weren't any issues with the music, the internal dynamics in the band were a different story. Cowsill was quite a bit older, and more world-weary than the other members. He was wrestling with some demons, and his lifestyle was not one that the other members agreed with. As with many other similar situations in the musical universe, the band broke up after everybody simply had had enough.
(On the Floor of Heaven was only released on compact disc. The cover featured a stylized picture of the centre of a vinyl record with the group's name and the album's title featured. A simple graphic design, but very effective, subliminally suggesting the timeless quality of the music the recording contained. In 2010 Bumstead Records released a deluxe two-disc remastered reissue of the original recording, plus some bonus tracks and out-takes, in response to the continued demand for the music.)
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