Rosanne Cash Journeys Through Times Both Good And Bad

By John Roos

From her birth 62 years ago in Memphis to her current residence in Manhattan, it has been a long and winding road for Rosanne Cash. But the veteran country music singer-songwriter has persevered and is making some of the most important music of her career.

Along her soul-baring journey that began professionally with the release of her 1980 major label recording debut, “Right or Wrong,” Cash has since released 14 albums; won four Grammy Awards; scored 11 number-one hit records; survived brain surgery and a polyp in her vocal cords; and courageously stood up to the NRA—and country music establishment—to fight for common sense gun control laws. (Her Op-Ed piece that ran in the New York Times on Oct. 3, 2017 deplorably elicited death threats to Cash and her family from Far-Right extremists.)

Cash reached her commercial and critical peak back in the 1980s, and in 1987, she released the most critically-acclaimed album of her career, “King's Record Shop,” which had four No. 1 hits, including a cover version of her father Johnny’s "Tennessee Flat Top Box," John Hiatt's "The Way We Make a Broken Heart," John Stewart’s “Runaway Train,” and the Bob Gundry/Parker McGee-penned ”If You Change Your Mind."

The early-1990s proved to be a pivotal period for Cash that began with the release of “Interiors” in 1990, her first self-produced album featuring songs she all wrote or co-wrote during Cash’s marital struggles (and subsequent divorce from husband-musician Rodney Crowell.) Thematically darker and more personal than her previous work, “Interiors” was a critical success and received a Grammy award nomination for Best Contemporary Folk Album. However, sales were disappointing and it marked the beginning of a steep commercial decline.

What has continued undeterred since the release of “Interiors” is a body of work with the introspection, depth and maturity born from life itself, including the ups and downs of marriage, parenthood, career and most importantly, a voice that is uniquely her own. Cash has finally made others define her on her own merits and not as the eldest daughter of Johnny Cash.

Released in 2013 on Blue Note Records, the triple Grammy-winning “The River and the Thread” marked a further evolution in Cash as a complex artist. This praiseworthy collection of songs were written by Cash with her current husband, guitarist-songwriter-producer John Leventhal, following the couple’s trips through the American South. Cash has called the album "a mini-travelogue of the South, and of the soul." Included in this journey were visits to Johnny Cash's childhood home in Dyess, AR; her own early childhood home in Memphis, TN; William Faulkner's house, Dockery Farms in Cleveland, MS; and the plantation where Howlin' Wolf and Charley Patton worked and sang.

While “The River and the Thread” offers a revealing look back at Cash’s roots, her new “She Knows Everything” is more fixated on the present, and what impact these troubled, unpredictable times may have on future generations, including four daughters from her first marriage. Make no mistake, this is a serious-minded, female-empowered album with a lot to articulate that requires active listening on the part of its audience. Our investment is rewarded, too, because one can’t help but be moved by the passion and honesty running through these poetic yet vividly-drawn narratives.

Musically, the hushed tones and shimmering guitars provide the rich, sonic textures that draw listeners in to such unsettling songs as “8 Gods of Harlem,” which depicts a school shooting through three distinct viewpoints as written and sung by Cash and her special guests, Kris Kristofferson and Elvis Costello. This song is of course overtly political but its true power comes from humanizing a broader societal issue in a very real and personal way.

Two other selections that resonate deeply are the melancholy look at the loss of a mother and father in “Everyone But Me,” and the album-closing “This is My Least Favorite Life,” a brutal ballad that just may carry you to the darkest corners of your mind and soul. This song is haunting in a way that likely will linger for some time.

In contrast to the party-minded twaddle of today’s mainstream pop-country, Cash—who was inducted into both the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame (2015) and the Austin City Limits Hall of Fame (2017)--and her Americana kindred spirits (including Richard Thompson, Patty Griffin, Mary-Chapin Carpenter, John Hiatt, Lucinda Williams, Steve Earle, Robert Earl Keen and Emmylou Harris, among numerous others) offer a much-needed alternative as they continue to explore the very core of our fragile existence with both defiance and compassion.

Who can ask for much more than that?

*Rosanne Cash with John Leventhal plus opening act Joachim Cooder play Saturday at Chapman University, Musco Center for the Arts, One University Drive, Orange; (844) 626-8726. 7:30 p.m. $35-$65. www.muscocenter.org.