Can’t Live With It, Can’t Live Without It – Rosanne Cash

Rosanne Cash is not a name that immediately springs to mind when thinking of a high profile, longstanding artist with a back catalogue where you will find a series of albums that are all worth listening to (in substantially equal measure), whether you like your americana in the form of traditional country, or slightly more on the pop side of country or, as more lately with her, very definitely on the rootsier side.

She is however, country music royalty, being the daughter of Johnny Cash and his first wife, Vivian, and the first wife of Rodney Crowell, and subsequently the wife of guitarist/producer John Leventhal and whose standing in country music and nowadays in americana is not surpassed by many. And she has released, in a recording career stretching back more than 45 years, fourteen albums of remarkable consistency, initially as a country music singer, but recognized as an americana artist as the the genre name became more familiar. She has written some of the most emotionally charged and indeed harrowing songs about the state of marriage (in most cases hers) and about family and death. Despite highly acclaimed albums over the last 15 years, her most famous song is the title track of her third album, “Seven Year Ache“, released in 1981. It’s about a man who goes out to a bar to forget his marital problems and the song is so good that despite a slight unevenness to the quality of the whole album, it is not a track I could live without. Indeed the early albums and those produced by Crowell, are perfect examples of slightly left-field country music by a female artist (1978 – 1989). Although already a very competent writer (viz ‘Seven Year Ache’), her early albums were dotted with songs written by other artists (Crowell, Merle Haggard, Tom Petty, Johnny Cash) and it was not until “Interiors” in 1991 that she wrote or co-wrote every track including the beautiful, though dark, ‘Dance with the Tiger’ (with its scintillating interplay of acoustic guitars of Pat Flynn, Steuart Smith and John Stewart, who co-wrote). Another track that I cannot live without.  This was her first foray outside the country music scene in Nashville and examined her disintegrating marriage to Crowell.  It was a pre-cursor to her relationship with John Leventhal and a permanent move to New York in the early 90s.

And from then on came a constant stream of (commercially unsuccessful yet highly acclaimed) albums, though occasionally truncated due to health issues and parenting duties (she has four children). And these won her nominations and awards for best song, best album, best single, best female artist and so on with the CMA, ACMA and the Grammies (she won 2 of these).

Following “Interiors” came “The Wheel” which explored her feelings for Leventhal, and was an altogether lighter album than the one before.  “Rules of Travel” was released in 2003, after seven years during which she lost her voice, but in 2006 she released one of her outstanding albums, “Black Cadillac”, a reflection and a tribute to her mother and father who had both died at the age of 71 (there is a 71-second silent track at the end). Then came….

Can’t Live with It:  “The List” (2009). That is not to say that this is a bad album by any means album, containing as it does Cash’s interpretations of twelve from the list of 100 country songs that her father gave her when she was 18 years old, and which he considered the most important songs in country music. Leventhal provides a great deal of variety from the originals and some bog standard country interpretations, and her voice, having recovered, was a marvellous instrument that fronted the stellar sounds that Leventhal wrapped around it.  And A-list artists were invited to join in a number of duets (Springsteen on ‘Sea of Heartbreak’, Elvis Costello on ‘Heartaches by the Number’, Jeff Tweedy on ‘Long Black Veil’).  Unfortunately, as the album progresses, it becomes somewhat listless, and the songs are SO familiar that this writer’s ear tended to revert to other, more dynamic, versions or, in the case of the last three tracks, shut off altogether. A very worthy concept, but not on repeat in my house.

Cash got back to songwriting after treatment (including brain surgery) for Chiari malformation, a problem with the cerebellum affecting activities driven by the brain. It was to be another 5 years and a successful recovery, before the release of …….

Can’t Live Without it:  “The River and the Thread” (2014), Cash’s masterpiece and an album that included, not just half a dozen outstanding songs, but all eleven of them, all co-written with her husband, who as usual produced and contributed with his multi-instrumentalist mastery. The album garnered three Grammies (Best Americana Album, Best American Roots Performance and Best Roots Song). It covers the whole spectrum of  Cash’s life – how she became who she is, and how her parents influenced her, the meaning of life and the things that happen to shape a person’s life, and is summarised by a journey back to her geographic roots (so, an appropriate Grammy), It is a deeply personal album, with erudite and literary lyrics referencing various staging posts in her journey – Mobile, Memphis, Nashville, the Tallahatchie Bridge in Arkansas (of Bobby Gentry fame). She harks back to the Civil War in the majestic ‘When the Master Calls the Roll, and the beginnings of the Civil Rights movement in ‘Money Road’. There are telling contributions from  Derek Trucks  on slide guitar on ‘The World of Strange Design’, David Mansfield on violin on the eerie ‘Night School‘, but especially from vocalists Rodney Crowell, Kris Kristofferson, Tony Joe White, Amy Helm and  John Prine – God’s Own Choir on the aforementioned ‘Master’)  The opening track, the slinky, bluesy ‘A Feather’s not a Bird‘, trails the album title “The money’s all in Nashville but the light’s inside my head / So I’m going down to Florence just to learn to love the thread. / A feather ‘s not a bird / The rain is not the Sea / A stone is not a mountain / But a river runs through me” This is the Grammy-winning song, but the others are its equal – the folksy ‘Tell Heaven’, the sinuous ‘The Long Way Home’ and so on

Cash has written New York best-seller about her life and living with and without her father. She was inducted into the Songwriters’ Hall of Fame and has been involved in promoting the tourism industry in the US. As well as touring with her husband she has also appeared at prestigious venues such as the Universal Preservation Hall in Saratoga Springs (with an orchestra ) and at Carnegie Hall as Perspective Artist (where she compered a series of shows introducing a wide variety of roots music). She is indeed quite a colossus in the genre.