Rosanne Cash got derailed just as she was getting ready to go on tour this fall to promote the 30th anniversary reissue of her superb album “The Wheel.” The esteemed singer/songwriter had knee replacement surgery and recovery didn’t go as expected.
“My surgeon said I’m a problem child because I’m recovering so slowly. But progress is going in the direction it should go,” Cash said in early December when she was still using a cane. “By the time I get to [Minneapolis], I’ll be fine to perform. I couldn’t have done it this month or last because I couldn’t stand long enough, nor could I sit long enough.”
Cash will kick off a limited tour Jan. 9-10 at the Dakota, shows that were originally set for mid-November.
Cash, 68, has a family history of knee replacements on the side of her famous father, Johnny Cash.
“My dad, my aunt, two of my sisters and more,” she said rattling off the litany of relatives with artificial knees. “And it’s my turn. And [my] last sister is going to have to do it soon.”
“The Wheel” was neither a hit album in 1993 nor did it feature any hit singles, but it was significant for Cash because it was her first collaboration with producer/multi-instrumentalist John Leventhal, whom she would later marry.
“It’s where our relationship began, personally and professionally. The first song we ever wrote together, ‘Seventh Avenue,’ is on that album,” Cash said of a tune for which she jotted lyrics on a napkin during a Leo Kottke concert in New York City.
Cash had clauses in her Columbia Records contract to acquire her recording masters after a specified period.
Unlike Taylor Swift and her battle with the business executive who secured the rights to the masters of her first six albums, this wasn’t a case of acrimony with Cash and her label. She didn’t re-record “The Wheel” in 2023 but simply remastered it and added a live concert album from that era. She did put together a new package for the reissue.
“I went back to Central Park with Pam Springsteen to reshoot photos in the exact same location. That was like looking into the past and the future at the same moment. It was powerful.”
Also powerful for Cash was having a sense of ownership.
“There’s something about ownership that meant something that I didn’t expect. I didn’t really expect how powerful that would feel to me.”
Another reason Cash reissued “The Wheel” was because of feedback from fans.
“They got it at a time in their lives when they were going through a profound change or some kind of transformation,” said Cash, who wrote it after leaving Nashville and Rodney Crowell, father of her three oldest children. “One young man who was gay said it gave him permission to come out and step out on a limb in his own life.
“We look for art to reflect back to us, what we need, who we are, what’s real, what’s truth. I do. ‘The Wheel’ provided that. It was an intense record about real change, loss, hope, transformation — and people recognized that. I have been surprised how many people came forward to tell me those things. It’s humbling, really humbling.”
“The Wheel,” her eighth album, was Cash’s exit from Nashville, Crowell and mainstream country (after 10 No. 1 country hits) and her full-blown entrance to New York, Leventhal and artful pop. The seething rocker “Roses in the Fire” spells g-o-o-d-b-y-e, the down-tempo “The Truth About You” oozes the melancholy of resignation, the dreamy piano pop “Change Partners” contemplates a new relationship. Guest vocalists included Mary Chapin Carpenter, Marc Cohn, Patty Larkin and Bruce Cockburn.
Selections from “The Wheel” will be the centerpiece of Cash’s limited duo tour with Leventhal.
“We are reinventing some of ‘The Wheel’ songs, if you’ll pardon the pun, as well as other things from my catalog from ‘The River & the Thread’ back to ‘Seven Year Ache.’ ” “Killing Fields,” a topical single from 2021, will be included.
‘Norma Rae’ musical
Since 2017, the Grammy-winning singer/songwriter has been working on a stage musical adaption of the 1979 Sally Field movie “Norma Rae” about a laborer who becomes involved in union activity in her textile factory where working conditions are unsatisfactory.
“We’ve had these workshops, we’ve done these rewrites. A certain theater has it and is interested in putting it in its season next year. So once we know about that, we’ll go into final rewrites,” she said. “I’m hoping we get it staged in 2024. But in the theater world, six years is nothing.”
For Cash, it has been a learning curve to write in the voice of other characters and collaborate with the show’s book writer. And it has had its share of frustrations.
“The first two years I said ‘I’m never doing this again’ and then the last four I said ‘I can’t wait to do this again.’ “
The ever-versatile Leventhal has composed the music, drawing on both his love of musical theater and of roots music from North Carolina.
Winding down touring
Cash and Leventhal have established a record label, Rumble Strip, which put out the 30th anniversary of “The Wheel” and will release Leventhal’s debut solo album, “Rumble Strip,” on Jan. 26. As a producer, songwriter and musician who has collected Grammys in five different decades, he has worked with Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, Elvis Costello, Paul Simon, Johnny Cash and Shawn Colvin, among many others.
In 2021, Cash, a four-time Grammy winner, became the first female musician to receive the prestigious Edward MacDowell Medal, given annually since 1960 to someone who has made an outstanding contribution to American culture and the arts. Previous recipients include Thornton Wilder, Aaron Copland, Georgia O’Keefe, Stephen Sondheim and Toni Morrison.
“It was one of the proudest moments of my life,” Cash admitted. “I’m still in awe that I got that. It makes me feel better about myself.” She laughed. “I never have thought anything I’ve done has been quite good enough. Getting that medal eased some of the insecurity about that.”
After 32 years in New York City, the Memphis-born, California-reared and formerly Nashville-based Cash feels Manhattan has affected her songwriting.
“It’s definitely thickened my skin, but it didn’t close my heart,” she said while gazing at a photo triptych of Bob Dylan visiting Johnny Cash backstage at the latter’s Carnegie Hall concert in 1962. “I stopped overusing nature metaphors.”
Equally important has been her partnership with Leventhal, with whom she made seven albums, did dozens of side projects and performed countless concerts.
“John had this tremendous effect of grounding me. I was not on the planet before I met John. Being grounded with still an open sense of getting inspired in lots of curious places, that’s made me a better writer.”
After releasing 14 albums since 1978, including 2018’s “She Remembers Everything,” Cash is talking about winding down touring.
“I want to perform in a very curated way. I don’t just want to go from town to town to town anymore,” she said. “It’s a young person’s game. Don’t tell Mavis Staples that.”
She still plans to write, record and perform (she sang with Kris Kristofferson at Willie Nelson’s 90th birthday concert last spring). In fact, she’s been busy in the studio. She and Leventhal cut a version of “Magician” for a Lou Reed tribute album. She penned a tune, “We Don’t Walk Away,” with Matt Berninger of the National that she’s going to record with him. And two days before this phone interview, she wrote and recorded a new piece called “Bottle and Cross” for her next solo album. With Leventhal, of course.
By Jon Bream Star Tribune
JAN 9-10 • 7PM
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