Released on June 28, Songwriter is the fifth posthumous album of unheard Johnny Cash material to be released since the Man In Black passed in 2003. And it strongly challenges the idea that his artistic powers were in decline at the time of their early nineties creation.
Its eleven tracks are, as its title suggests, all self-compositions (in itself quite unusual for Cash) recorded at Nashville’s LSI studios and his own Cash Cabin in Hendersonville, Tennessee in spring 1993 – a year prior to the first, career-resurrecting American Recordings album helmed by producer Rick Rubin.
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Rubin told MOJO in 2022 that Cash was “surprised that anybody cared” at that juncture of his career. His son, John Carter Cash, who co-produced Songwriter, begs to disagree.
“Dad certainly didn’t feel that way,” he says, speaking from the Cash Cabin. “He was actually in a great space at this point in his life. He’d been through a recovery centre in 1992, and that had turned his life in a positive direction. He was working hard on the road, giving everything he had, and I know because I was out there playing with him.”
For these eleven tunes, the majority of which are unheard outside bootlegs, Cash did basic recording with a hastily convened band of associates at LSI. Says John, “In his mind, they were demos. The reason they haven’t been out before was, the strength of his voice and the songs were there, but I felt like something needed to be done with the production.”
To that end, Cash Jr says he “de-produced” the recordings, stripping out all the instruments bar his father’s acoustic guitar, and building fresh rhythm tracks with trusted sidemen including early-eighties guitarist Marty Stuart and late eighties bassist Dave Roe “surrounding his voice more simply”.
Early in that process, John called in Dave Ferguson to co-produce. ‘Fergie’ had been the Cash Cabin engineer during Johnny’s twilight American Recordings phase and was involved in 2021’s comparable reconstruction job on Tony Joe White’s Smoke From The Chimney, alongside The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, who for Songwriter provides an achingly bluesy solo on the heartbroken Spotlight. Two voicings from late fellow Highwayman Waylon Jennings were kept on (his office was across the street from LSI), while bluegrass crooner Vince Gill contributed more recently.
Such care in the re-assembly has definitely paid off, and you wonder how these performances, ranging from grittily blue-collar (Poor Valley Girl) to cosmically spiritual (Hello Out There), from playfully romantic (Well Alright) to nightmarishly war-torn (Drive On), never came out before. It’s worth noting, however, that two (Drive On, Like A Soldier) were good enough to be re-cut for the first American Recordings.
More songs in the vaults...
The quality of Songwriter of course begs the question: what else is in the vaults? “Ask Rick Rubin,” suggests Cash Jr, intriguingly. “Rick gave Dad freedom to do whatever, he would go in and record and produce it himself, but that meant that the recordings were not necessarily in line with the American Recordings [sound]. There may be some of those tapes pretty close to where I’m sitting right now! But it’s got to be the right time to release them.
“Right now,” he concludes, “I’m just grateful for these songs, and that Dad’s voice still calls to us from all those years ago.”
Songwriter is released on June 28 via Mercury Nashville/ UME
Pre-order: Amazon | Rough Trade | HMV