PHILADELPHIA — Have Jon Houlon’s cowboy dreams come true?
The songwriter who leads the Philadelphia country-and-folk-rock band John Train recently released "Cowboy Dreams," the sextet’s first album in a decade and first ever issued on vinyl. It’s spurred by Jodi Houlon’s — Jon’s wife — love of riding on the streets of Philadelphia and trails of Fairmount Park.
The 10-song set is a horse opera, a collection of songs by Houlon and his songwriting heroes that have an equine connection.
The LP’s gorgeous sleeve features artist Crystal Latimer’s kaleidoscopic painting that evokes the Byrds’ pioneering country rock album "Sweetheart of the Rodeo."
It’s available at John Train gigs, of which there are plenty. The band founded by Houlon and steel guitarist Mike “Slo-Mo” Brenner in 1995 has just begun its winter residency at Fergie’s Pub, where it will play two sets starting at 6 p.m. with no cover every Friday through March 31. You can also buy (and stream) it on the group’s Bandcamp page. Four record stores — Long in the Tooth in Center City, Main Street Music in Manayunk, Hideaway Music in Chestnut Hill, and Collingswood Music in South Jersey — will be stocking it, too.
On a bright winter morning, the Houlons talked "Cowboy Dreams" while walking the Andorra Meadow Trail in Wissahickon Valley Park. Jon was on foot while Jodi saddled up on Kira, their 7-year-old quarter horse.
Jon doesn’t ride, but “he’s the best horse husband,” Jodi says. “He gets my gear ready in the barn, he brushes her, he cleans her up.” Around the barn, Houlon, who’s an attorney for the city of Philadelphia’s Department of Human Services, is known as “Squire Jon.”
Jodi started riding “when I turned 40 and our son turned 16, and I needed something to do.” She started at the Work to Ride program at Chamounix Equestrian Center near Belmont Plateau. There she met Twister, who became her regular ride, at Monastery Stables near their Mount Airy home.
She followed him to Belmont Stables on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, which was featured in a scene in the 2020 Idris Elba movie "Concrete Cowboy."
"Cowboy Dreams" is bookended by two Houlon instrumentals: “Sun Up at Belmont” and “Sun Down at Belmont.” They demonstrate the band’s dexterity, with William Fergusson on mandolin and bouzouki, Mike Frank on bass, Mark Schreiber on drums, and Mark Tucker on guitars.
Kira, Jodi Houlon says, “is so sweet. I’ve had a bad fall off a horse and it really scared me. But I know I can trust her.” The horse lets out a happy snort, as if on cue.
The Houlons made the leap to ownership after Twister died unexpectedly from colic on Christmas Day in 2017.
Jodi Houlon’s experiences riding Twister are chronicled on two "Cowboy Dreams" songs. On “Concrete Cowgirl,” Houlon sings: “I was coming down the Kelly Drive, saw my one true love out for a ride/ Listen to the clip clop of their feet, horse’ll dump its truck right on the street.”
But the heartbreaker is “Twister,” a eulogy to a beloved animal that thanks the horse “for your service done and taking good care of my hon.”
“I knew I had written a good song,” Houlon said, “because when I played it for Jodi the first time she cried.”
"Cowboy Dreams" is titled after a song by Paddy McAloon of Prefab Sprout. It is the latest stop on a sojourn that began for Houlon as a child in Rockville, Maryland, when he heard George Jones and Merle Haggard songs on Elvis Costello’s 1981 album "Almost Blue."
After college, in 1990, Houlon — now 54 — moved to Austin to pursue his Texas troubadour dream in the footsteps of songwriters like Townes Van Zandt and Butch Hancock.
Two years yielded little more than open mic nights, so he came to Philadelphia to study law at the University of Pennsylvania.
In 1993, he struck up a conversation with a guy wearing a Richard Thompson shirt outside Sam’s Place in West Philly. It was Brenner, the leader of hot Philly indie band the Low Road that included John Train drummer Schreiber.
“That was a lucky thing,” Houlon says. “Because if not for that, I do not believe I would have ever played music again. And having Mike in my corner gave me instant credibility.”
Houlon and Brenner played their first John Train gig at the Tin Angel in 1995, opening for John Wesley Harding, the British songwriter who’s since moved to Philadelphia.
The group grew, adding Schreiber, Fergusson, Tucker, and original bass player Steve Demarest, and recorded six albums starting with "Angels Turned Thieves" in 1999.
They’re marked by frisky interplay between Tucker and Brenner, an in-demand steel guitarist who’s a member of Brooklyn buzz band Wild Pink. They’re chock-full of literary leaning songs by Houlon, whose 15-minute “Talkin’ Rabbit (Harry Angstrom’s Blues)” impressed the John Updike Society so much that they flew him to Belgrade for their gathering in 2018.
Along with John Train, which takes its name from an alter ego folksinger Phil Ochs used in the 1970s, Houlon also leads the raucous pub-rockers the Donuts.
He also co-hosts an annual Bob Dylan birthday bash on May 24 at Ardmore Music Hall with Kenn Kweder.
John Train had residencies at various Philly venues over the years, at the North Star Bar in Brewerytown and Jack’s Firehouse in Fairmount. In 2005, they landed at Fergie’s.
“It became this 6 o’clock rock thing that suits a lot of people of a certain age,” said Fergus Carey, owner of Fergie’s.
The steady weekend work has kept the band of musicians with day jobs going.
“I love Fergie’s,” says Brenner. “It’s a very unique gig. It’s in a big metropolitan area, but it feels like a village pub that’s the only place in town. Jon has some beautiful quiet songs, but it also gets a little rambunctious, so we rock it out.”
The bond between band and venue was cemented in 2013. In between sets, Demarest suffered an aortic dissection in the bar’s upstairs bathroom, and died the next day. “After that, we realized how much we’re all in each other’s lives and how much we liked each other,” says Carey.
Frank joined as bass player and a new residency began the next year.
Frustrated with unsold CDs piling up in his house, Houlon had pretty much given up on recording after "A Wig and a Wonder," a frustration that’s mentioned in one of the band’s most requested songs: “Nobody’s Listening Blues.”
But he then got the idea of corralling his horse songs, with select covers like David Halley’s “Further” and Jonathan Richman’s “Since She Started To Ride.”
In 2021, the band went into Gradwell House studios in Haddon Heights and recorded almost the entire album in two days. “It really was like a dream,” says Brenner.
And for Houlon, the finished product fulfills a lifelong wish.
“Every John Train and Donuts album has been on CD only,” he says, picking up a copy of the LP. “So playing this was hearing my own voice come off a vinyl record for the first time in my life. ... It makes me feel great. It’s beautiful.”
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