Rosanne Cash

Rosanne Cash

THE PATH NOT TAKEN
Rosanne Cash Plots Her Own Course on Rules of Travel
Apart from a memorable rendering of "I Still Miss Someone" on last year's paean to her father, Kindred Spirits: A Tribute to the Songs of Johnny Cash, Rosanne Cash has not been heard from on a studio recording since her 1996 album 10 Song Demo. She ends that hiatus with Rules of Travel. And what a journey it's been, starting with the near-complete loss of her voice almost three years ago, shortly after the sessions for the new album had started. In time, her voice recovered and Cash returned to writing. When she and her husband/producer, John Leventhal, finally got to work, Cash had a batch of lyrically eloquent, delicately personal songs. Not least among them is a stunning meditation on mortality, "September when It Comes," which for the first time teams the younger Cash with her father. On a bitterly cold February day in New York, Ms. Cash -- lovely to behold and feisty in conversation -- guided Barnes & Noble.com's David McGee along the path that led her to the richest recording of her 23-year career.

Barnes & Noble.com: Did you completely lose your voice?

Rosanne Cash: [whispers] I could speak like this. I couldn't yell at my kids or anything.

B&N.com: That's terrible. As a parent, I sympathize.

RC: It is terrible! [laughs] I just had a rasp for two and a half, three years.

B&N.com: And you had already started some sessions for this album?

RC: Yeah. We had laid down the tracks for eight or nine of the songs and had started working on it [when] I lost my voice. So we tried to work a little more with me just putting rough vocals on, but finally we gave up. It was just too hard; I couldn't go anywhere with it. And we didn't pick it up until the spring of 2001.

B&N.com: Did you wind up having surgery to correct the problem?

RC: I was scheduled for surgery, and -- this is kind of personal -- but it was the hormones of pregnancy that made the polyps grow. So after I quit nursing my baby they started to shrink until they eventually went away. Took another six to eight months after I stopped nursing before I got back to normal.

B&N.com: There's some interesting historical connections on this album.

RC: I'm glad you noticed that. That was very intentional.

B&N.com: Having Sheryl Crow on the record is interesting, because her generation of female singer-songwriters was so influenced by the way you wrote. If you talk to younger female country artists of this generation, almost all of them will cite Sheryl Crow as their primary influence. And here's the two of you harmonizing beautifully on "Beautiful Pain."

RC: Well, Sheryl and I have known each other a long time. I knew her when she was singing backup for people. I think she's phenomenal. But you know what's interesting is that she's only five or six years younger than me, and that, musically, is a generation. That's very interesting. I was talking to Matraca Berg the other night, and she's 39, eight years younger than me, and she's a complete other generation musically. Not even the same pool. It was so fascinating.

Anyway, Sheryl was an obvious choice. I ran into her on an airplane and she was reading Songs Without Rhyme, the book of songwriters' prose that I edited. And I thought, That's really nice, she's reading this book, and we talked. And then I ran into her in an airport again, several months later, and by that time my voice was back and we were working on the record. We were talking in the baggage claim and she got up to leave, then John came over and said, Sheryl should sing on "Beautiful Pain." It was like, boing! -- the light bulb went off!

B&N.com: You set out to do about half originals and half covers on this album.

RC: At one point I would love to have done a whole covers album.

B&N.com: Because you were fed up with yourself?

RC: Right. You know the feeling. I just get so tired of my own little cesspools. [laughs] And I thought, Now that I have my voice back, wouldn't it be great to be an interpreter. But--

B&N.com: But you ended up doing only three songs from outside sources. Now that you've done it, are you satisfied with what you're saying, what you're revealing?

RC: Yes. A friend emailed me and wrote, "It's really a grown-up record." I thought that was very complimentary. Like it has an air of experience without being narcissistic. I hope.

B&N.com: What were the most difficult songs to write from that perspective?

RC: "September when It Comes." "Rules of Travel" was a particularly difficult song to write. Even though it's so simple, it seems like the simplest things are the hardest to get to. I'd written the chorus as a whole, and the chorus sat by itself for a long, long time. Then John wrote the melody to the verses and I kept rewriting verses, rewriting verses, and then after 9/11 I had a different perspective on it a little bit. And that's why the second verse is "when the walls tumble down into the sky."

B&N.com: The lyrics to "September when It Comes" are among the most poignant you've ever written, especially the lines your father sings, which speak to the physical decline we see in him as a result of his illness. But your notes on the songs indicate you wrote it intending to sing it all yourself.

RC: Yeah. I did sing them myself. We recorded it with just me, and when I do it live I do it by myself. John knew that this song was partly about my dad, because I wrote it at the beginning of when he got ill and I was first faced with his mortality. I mean, we're at the point in our lives when we gotta face that about our parents. It was a big shock for me. You know, when you switch roles? I wrote that around that time, but I didn't think about asking him to do it because that's not my nature. I wouldn't use him like that -- and it would appear to me that I am using him. But to John it was an artistic thing, like, Your dad belongs on this song. And he does. Those words were meant for him to sing, 'cause they're about him. And he's really alive artistically right now.

B&N.com: Was he eager to get involved?

RC: Well, he was sick, really sick. So when John suggested he sing on it, I said, "Dad, I've got this song. If you feel like it I'd like you to sing on it." He said, "Well, I don't know if I will. If I feel like it I will." Then he said, "But I have to read the lyrics." He wouldn't just do anything, you know. He has to read the lyrics! So I took it down and he read the lyrics and said, "Yeah, I can do this." So the next morning he really didn't feel well, I could tell, but he said, "Let's go over and try it." His energy started picking up once he started singing. We basically rebuilt the song from scratch. Because the way he sang it was so idiosyncratic, you know. We couldn't just plop him down in it the way it was.

B&N.com: A lyric that really jumped out and became the key to this whole album for me is from "Closer than I Appear": "I've got to rethink what I know about love." It resonates in the context of your body of work and what we've learned about the way you look at the world. This is a grown-up point of view, something you can't get when you're 20 years old --

RC: No, you can't, and you shouldn't. I hadn't thought about it that way, but it is a rethinking of not only love but of intimacy and relationships and respect, and about living with questions instead of answers.

B&N.com: "I'll Change for You" is a song you mention in your notes that changed over time, particularly the male part, and it sounds like it came together the moment Steve Earle walked into the studio. What did he bring to that song that wasn't there before?

RC: Well, when we decided to ask Steve, then I had the male voice in my head and knew what he should say. Up to then I was like I was really floundering with what the male voice should say. I wrote some crap; I rewrote it; then when we decided on Steve, I could hone in on it. Literally I was finishing the last line when he came in.

B&N.com: It's an interesting song in that it's a woman singing, "I'll change for you." I'm sure I could poll my male friends, attached and unattached, and to a man they will say --

RC: [leaning forward] A woman won't change for you?

B&N.com: That's the perception. And right off the bat you're singing, "I'll change for you," and Steve is there, lazily drawling like he's accepting it, and it's like pillow talk.

RC: It is like pillow talk!

B&N.com: Maybe that accounts for the erotic aspect you mention in your notes.

RC: I think it is erotic. Also, I hate this therapeutic political correctness: Oh, you're not supposed to change for anyone. That's crap! Because you do change for someone you love, whether you want to or not. That's just the truth. I wasn't afraid to say it. [smiles and laughs] Also, it's kind of obsessive.

B&N.com: It certainly keeps comin' at you.

RC: Right! The way it reveals itself is obsessive, but the idea is obsessive: that you want someone so bad you'll turn your insides out.

B&N.com: Another favorite lyric of mine is in that same song: "I'll travel through time to love you again." There's a line in Francis Ford Coppola's film version of Dracula: "I've crossed oceans of time to find you."

RC: I love that line!

B&N.com: Was your lyric inspired by that bit of dialogue?

RC: No, I had forgotten about that line until you mentioned it. Well, it could have come from it unconsciously. But it's about the obsession, you know, I'm gonna carve your name in my skin! I'm gonna defy the laws of nature! I'm gonna leave this body and go into another one if I have to find you! I mean, to be consumed by that kind of love, that's what we all want.

B&N.com: That's the gold standard.

RC: Oh, it's the gold standard.

B&N.com: And on an album titled Rules of Travel, "Last Stop Before Home" --

RC: It had to be the last song, right?

B&N.com: Everything about it is perfect to close out the journey we've taken with you.

RC: [Photographer] Annie Leibovitz and I were talking about that. She did the cover photos. We went deep into the metaphor of travel and what it meant. I said, "Ultimately all travel leads to home. No matter how long you're gone, it ends up back at home." So then I knew when we were sequencing that that song had to be last. Also, it influenced the photograph she took, too.

B&N.com: The song does feel like a summing-up, both in what you're saying and in its mood.

RC: I was a little worried about closing with it for one reason, which is that it's the most resigned song on the record. And I don't feel that resigned. When I wrote it, it was going into character. That woman suffers with a crushing sense of loss -- even though she stayed intact, it was still tremendous. I thought, Well, it's a slightly depressing note to end the record on, but it was elegiac too.

March 14, 2003