Cow Island is the kind of label that proudly offers, as the old saw goes, both kinds of music: country and Western. The label’s albums have a distinctively retro look, chock full of bowling alley fonts and vintage-look photos, complete with assurances of high fidelity and stereo sound. Similarly, the label’s artists have names that make them sound like emissaries from the past—the roster so far includes The Stone River Boys, The Starline Rhythm Boys, Li’l Mo and the Monicats, The Twilight Ranchers, and several more.
The Valley has seen more than its share of bands calling themselves roots or Americana, but newcomer Cow Island brings a whole new sheen of rootsy authenticity to town. The music seldom strays from the kind of tried-and-true instrumentation and approach that country (and its cousins like Western swing and rockabilly) possessed long before it turned into pop with big hats, and, to a large extent, before it even went Nashville. When it does depart, as with the Stone River Boys’ “country funk,” it provides new thrills from players who still demonstrate a clear grasp of the tradition from which they’ve emerged.
Thanks to Cow Island’s recent move from Boston, the Valley now boasts yet another label with national reach, alongside players like, among others, Signature Sounds, Ecstatic Peace and new kids’ label Spare the Rock.
Cow Island’s founder is Bill Hunt, a Bostonian for whom a New England accent rides comfortably alongside duds—square-frame glasses, vintage straw hat—that would fit right into a cowboy motion picture a la 1955. Early in his life, Hunt’s musical proclivities took a turn away from mainstream pop.
“Back when I was in high school, I can really attribute [discovering non-mainstream music] to a friend whose older brother was into blues.” That led him to clubs like Cambridge’s Speakeasy, where he saw the real deal and came to love the music of giants like Willie Dixon and Howlin’ Wolf. “From there I detoured into the punk thing,” says Hunt. “I ultimately got to bands like Wayne Hancock and Big Sandy. I was always going back to the history of whatever kind of music I was into. I eventually got to Western swing—that felt like the end.” That led him to form The Twilight Ranchers, with whom Hunt performed Western swing and ” hillbilly bop.” The Twilight Ranchers disc Who Stole That Train? was Cow Island release 001, but the idea of a label as a bigger business led to many more.
“[The label] really launched in the fall of 2006. I started to talk to bands. When I met the Starline Rhythm Boys, they had two CDs they’d sold out of. They had a third ready to go, but they were losing steam. We worked out a deal where we reissued the first two, then the third. When the Starline Boys’ Red’s Place got voted 2007’s Freeform American Roots chart album of the year, Hunt says, it got the new label some notoriety.
More releases followed, from Boston’s Preacher Jack, Baltimore’s Artie Hill, and Brooklyn’s The Dixons (one of the standouts in the catalogue). Despite Hunt’s love for the music, he says, “It wasn’t totally by design, drilling into the country genre. In hindsight, that was pretty good. It kept the focus and helped us get a reputation.”
The label’s success is due in no small part, it seems, to Hunt’s business acumen—he was, he explains, working in commercial real estate for 30 years before turning to music as a business. “Four years into [Cow Island], I’m understanding what success is at my level,” he says. “It’s paramount for the bands to be out there touring on more than a regional level. The first ones who are really doing that wholeheartedly are the Stone River Boys. They’ve probably played 50 or 60 shows. It has a direct correlation to the sales of CDs and downloads. I’m looking for bands who are capable of getting out there and touring. My threshold is that there has to be somebody in the band, or a manager, who has a grasp on the business of the band.”
Hunt and his wife, Marci Kearney, moved to the Valley in January of this year, in part to pursue their shared passion for motorcycle riding. The pair had kept their bikes here for several years, and made trips from Boston to ride, to check out shows, and for Hunt to pursue guitar lessons with Community Guitar’s Andrew Lawrence.
Hunt is very clear on his wife’s importance in pushing him to go for his goal of making Cow Island a viable label and a viable business: “If it wasn’t for Marci, Cow Island would not be.”
Hunt is indeed now making a viable business of his label, but a recent tragedy has meant that his wife is no longer here to share that success. Kearney died in July, from injuries sustained in an accident that happened while she was riding her Vespa scooter in Newton.
In the wake of that event, which he says was “overwhelming,” Hunt is moving ahead with Cow Island, planning to expand his roster with bands who bring new energy and new sounds to the established tradition he loves.
“Now we’re looking to expand in terms of genre,” he says. “Like the Stone River Boys—their music is kind of half-country, half-funk. I feel like the Stone River Boys have the ability to reach much further than where they are right now. They’re a strong focus right now, helping them out.
“There are some other bands that are further afield from straight-up country… I’ve got three or four new bands who are in their 20s,” says Hunt.
Hunt’s agenda also includes making more of a local splash—on Oct. 20, two of Cow Island’s biggest artists visit the Iron Horse for a Valley showcase of the label’s talent: the Stone River Boys and the Starline Rhythm Boys.
Country, it’s true, is mostly Southern music. But when Hunt talks about his inspiration for the name “Cow Island,” it echoes the comfortable co-existence of his Boston accent and cowboy duds, makes New England seem like a perfect place for a little twang to enter the picture: “In Dedham, when I was growing up, my grandfather and his brothers had a dairy farm in a section called Riverdale. In a manner of speaking, it was an island—the Charles River surrounded it on three sides,” he says. “The cows grazed on the banks of the Charles, so they called it Cow Island.”
Cow Island showcase with the Stone River Boys and the Starline Rhythm Boys: Oct. 20, 7 p.m., $10/advance, $13/door, Iron Horse Music Hall, 20 Center St., Northampton, (413) 586-8686. For more info on Cow Island, visit www.cowislandmusic.com.
