Rosanne Cash at the Colonial June 29
Performing the List Johnny Cash Gave Her
By: Uriah Pennington - Jun 12, 2010
The Colonial Theatre presents Rosanne Cash: The List Sponsored by Berkshire Bank Rosanne Cash will be at the Colonial on June 29 for one performance at 7:30 PM. Tickets are $55 and $35 and can be purchased in person at the Colonial Ticket Office at 111 South Street Monday-Friday 10AM-5PM, perforrmance Saturdays 10AM-2PM, by calling (413) 997-4444 or online at www.thecolonialtheatre.org
The genesis of Rosanne Cash’s new album The List dates back to a day in 1973 when Cash’s father, the incomparable Johnny Cash, discovered some gaps in her knowledge of American roots music. He spent the rest of the day making a list on a legal pad, and at the top he put “100 Essential Country Songs” handed it to her and said, “This is your education.” Three dozen years later, Roseanne has selected twelve songs from “the list” presented to her by her father to record her first album of covers. She approached each composition—from Jimmie Rodgers’ “Miss the Mississippi and You” to Bob Dylan’s “Girl from the North Country ”—in search of its particular essence.
The idea for The List came about while Cash was on tour promoting her 2006 studio album, the widely acclaimed, Grammy-nominated Black Cadillac—a reflective song cycle about the loss of her father; her mother, Vivian Liberto; and her stepmother, June Carter Cash. She had held on to the original copy of “the list” for all those years, but had never thought to do anything with it.
‘It just didn’t interest me,” she says. “I learned all the songs, but then I set on my own course as a songwriter, and set about separating myself from my parents, as you do when you’re young. When I was writing the narratives for the Black Cadillac show, I had recently found “the list” again, so I wrote about it. And virtually every show, people started asking me. ‘Where’s “the list?” What about ‘that list?’”
Still, she resisted the idea of recording the classic songs herself. Eventually, though, Cash decided that she needed a change after Black Cadillac, a break from that project’s emotional intensity. On tour in Europe, she tentatively added a few songs from “the list” into her set.
The response was immediate. “People were eating it up, like they were hungry for these songs,” she says. “And the importance started to sink in: that this was about me and my dad, but it was also about a cultural legacy. These songs are as important as the Civil War to who we are as Americans. Something clicked and I entered it full-bodied then, with all my heart.”
To complicate matters, however, in 2007 Cash underwent surgery for a benign brain condition. After a full recovery, she and her husband, Grammy-nominated producer John Leventhal, got down to the business of culling through the songs on “the list” and choosing the ones that best fit her voice and her sensibility, and that added up to the most complete story. Songs were attempted and scrapped; others were in, then out, then back in again.
Some of the selections were straightforward. (“I’ve loved ‘Silver Wings’ and ‘Long Black Veil’ since I was a kid,” she says.) Others proved more difficult for the singer to find her own point of entry.
Patsy Cline’s recording of “She’s Got You” is so iconic that Cash was intimidated to take it on, before ultimately creating her own glorious take. “Heartaches by the Number” felt structured and fixed, but bringing in Elvis Costello helped her find a way to loosen it up. The result is a glorious range of sounds and moods.
A Grammy-winning singer and songwriter, Rosanne Cash has released fourteen record albums over the last twenty five years and charted eleven number-one singles. She has earned numerous accolades for songwriting and performance. Cash recorded her first US album, Right Or Wrong, in 1979. In the following 10 years, Cash released Seven Year Ache, which yielded both country and crossover hits, Rhythm and Romance, a widely-acclaimed fusion of country and pop and King’s Record Shop, which generated four number-one singles. She was named Billboard Magazine’s Top Singles Artist in 1988.
The early ’90s saw the release of the critically-acclaimed, highly personal albums Interiors and The Wheel. 10 Song Demo, a stark, minimally-produced “home” recording, was released in 1996. After a hiatus following the birth of her son Jake, Rules of Travel, was released in 2003. Her most recent album, Black Cadillac, was released in 2006, and was nominated for a Grammy award for Best Contemporary Folk/Americana Album. Her first book, Bodies of Water (1995), received widespread critical acclaim, as did her children’s book, Penelope Jane: A Fairy's Tale (2000). Her essays and fiction have appeared in the New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Oxford-American, New York Magazine and various other periodicals and collections. Rosanne Cash lives in New York City with her husband, John Leventhal, and her children.
Tickets for the performance are $55 and $35 and can be purchased in person at the Colonial Ticket Office at 111 South Street Monday-Friday 10AM-5PM, performance Saturdays 10AM-2PM, by calling (413) 997-4444 or online at www.thecolonialtheatre.org