The Los Angeles singer-songwriter aesthetic meets Nashville’s somewhat more bluegrassy singer-songwriter aesthetic on The HercuLeons’ 2025 debut album John Cowan and Andrea Zonn: The HercuLeons. Cowan sang and played bass with New Grass Revival in the 1970s before joining The Doobie Brothers and writing the 2024 memoir Hold to a Dream: A Newgrass Odyssey, while Zonn has sung and played fiddle with the likes of Pure Prairie League and James Taylor. Cowan and Zonn cut The HercuLeons with producer Wendy Waldman, who gives it a sheen that’s appropriate for a record that aspires to the kind of studio-perfect slickness you might hear on, say, a ’70s Karla Bonoff album or Little Feat’s Dixie Chicken. There are hints of newgrass-y and somewhat prog-leaning blues on “Straight Up,” and Cowan and Zonn fuse Nashville-style soul with Los Angeles folk rock throughout the album. The HercuLeons peaks with their cover of John Sebastian and Lowell George’s “Face of Appalachia,” which Sebastian cut with George on slide guitar for his 1974 album Tarzana Kid. Cowan and Zonn’s harmony vocals take Sebastian’s song about romanticizing Appalachia into a zone Sebastian’s more workaday version didn’t approach, and it’s slick without being superficial, which counts for a lot.
7:30 p.m. at 3rd and Lindsley
818 Third Ave. S.
