Rosanne Cash Finds Her Southern Roots, And Sings About Them

Rosanna Cash, daughter of the legendary Johnny Cash, says that her new collection of songs was inspired by trips to the South.

She added that her family history also played a part in her composing: “There’s never any highway when you’re looking for the past,” she sings in the opening minutes of her album, “The River & The Thread.”

Rosanna Cash was raised initially in California, and has been living in New York for more than twenty years. “I have some Southern sensibility, but it would be false to say I’m Southern at the core,” she said. “I don’t think I could have written the record if I was. It required some distance.”

For example, “Money Road” is a song which came from a birthday road trip for her husband and producer John Leventhal. The couple stopped at the Tallahatchie Bridge, made famous by Bobbie Gentry’s “Ode to Billie Joe,” a song that Rosanna Cash has recorded, and frequently sings in concert.

Many of her lyrics are connected to the South: Florence, the Tallahatchie Bridge, the James River in Virginia, Mobile, Alabama, Memphis,Tennessee, and Nashville, Arkansas.

Rosanne spent some time in Dyess, Arkansas, helping Arkansas State University restore the home where her father grew up.

Rosanne Cash is now 58; she spent her 20s and 30s successfully singing country music. However, styles change, and she fears that the country music establishment is likely to ignore her this time. She wants the music to be heard, but understands that its appeal is limited.

Jed Hilly, executive director of the Americana Music Association spoke about Rosanne: “She’s unique, not because of who she is but because of her talent and her personality,” he said. “She’s incredibly smart and passionate about making music.”

Rosanne acknowledges that it was her road trip to the South which influences her music now: “I know writers who go to other locales just to shake it up, to get a shift in perspective so they can be inspired,” she said. “We definitely had that in our mind. We knew that we would see things, feel things that would be out of the norm for us and hopefully would be inspiring. And they were.”

So, Rosanne Cash knows what she wants, and understands better now where she came from. The big question is: Where is she going?