John Carter Cash Offers Up "The Family Secret"
posted in: Music News
John Carter Cash may be the son of two of the most legendary performers in music history, but he doesn’t feel the need to always walk the line toward that format.
As the head of Cabin Cash Studio in Hendersonville, Tenn., the son of Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash has worked with an array of artists that have recorded at the studio his father built in 1978. Carter Cash’s first major US release The Family Secret, reflects those different influences.
“It’s a mixed bag of music all around,” said Carter Cash of the September 21 release. “I have been writing music for years and years. These songs are a mix of country and pop and rock.”
And then some, as Carter Cash showed when he opened his showcase at The Rutledge in Nashville, part of the recent Americana Music Festival, with a rocking rendition of “The Swimming Hole,” written by Loudon Wainwright III and often played by legendary British folk rockers Fairport Convention.
“That song, for me, defines a sense of freedom of spirit, good times and laughter,” said Carter Cash. That, said Carter Cash, is something he experienced often throughout his childhood.
“The image of my father is someone very foreboding and dark,” said Carter Cash. “He never was as dark a figure as he seemed. He was always full of laughter and joy. He struggled with his demons, certainly, but he never lost his faith.”
Perhaps that’s why the next song in his set, “No One Gets Out of Here Alive,” that Carter Cash wrote and which he calls a “personal prayer” is so moving with its lyrics that include: “The last thing my father ever said to me/as he laid down his weary head/was son this is all over in the wink of an eye/no one ever gets out of here alive.”
Although Carter Cash is justifiably proud of his family heritage and gives nods to it” his wife, fiddler Laura Cash, recorded with both his parents and joined him onstage for a rendition of the Carter Family classic “Diamond in the Rough””he proves on the album and in his rare concert appearances that he follows his own musical path.
Consider his verging-on-rowdy concert rendition of “Family Secret,” or the equally rocking “Uncle Sam is Dead,” that arguably sounds more like Lynyrd Skynyrd than Johnny Cash.
“To me, music has no boundaries,” Carter Cash told the audience. “Apply the trade, claim the spirit, and move forward.”
By Nancy Dunham
Nancy Dunham writes about music for Country Weekly, AOL Music’s site The Boot, The Washington Post, Relix and other publications.