Cash wrote the album’s 11 original songs with her longtime collaborator (and husband) John Leventhal, who also served as producer, arranger and guitarist. See below for track listing.
In 2010, Cash put out a bestselling memoir, Composed. With The River & The Thread, she turns her attention to various American lives and locations. The album richly evokes the Southern landscape – physical, musical, emotional – and examines the indelible impressions it has made on our own collective culture and on Cash.
The River & The Thread is sweeping in its breadth, capturing a unique, multi-generational cast of characters – from a Civil War soldier off to fight in Virginia to a New Deal-era farmer in Arkansas to a contemporary Mobile, AL couple.
While Cash and Leventhal found inspiration in the many musical styles associated with the South – swampy Delta blues, gospel, Appalachian folk, country and rock, to name a few – this is a completely contemporary collection. Cash’s voice and Leventhal’s guitar work are at the heart of the album, and they bring in additional instrumentation to suit the tone of each particular song – from the delicate orchestral passages of “Night School,” (which nods to Stephen Foster, who also had a deep affection for the South) to the ghostly keyboards of album closer “Money Road.”
The River & The Thread follows 2009’s The List, which was named Album of the Year by the Americana Music Association and nominated for two Grammy Awards.
“If I never make another album I will be content, because I made this one,” says Cash of The River & The Thread, which is a marked departure from her earlier works.
She was joined in the studio by a cast of friends and fellow musicians who also have a deep affection for and/or roots in the South, including Rodney Crowell (who also co-wrote one song), Kris Kristofferson, Allison Moorer, John Prine, Derek Trucks, John Paul White (The Civil Wars), Tony Joe White and Gabe Witcher (The Punch Brothers.)
On Dec. 5, Cash will begin a three-day residency at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. Events will include a concert, a round robin with Leventhal, Crowell, Cory Chisel and Amy Helm and a conversation with Natasha Trethewey, U.S. Poet Laureate. For additional details, visit http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2013/13-141.html.
“We were dreaming of the Tallahatchie Bridge, and we found it,” says Cash. It’s an inevitable, essential destination on this journey through the Southern spirit, a journey that begins with the artist’s assertion in the opening track that “a river runs through me.”
Track Listing
1. A Feather's Not A Bird
2. The Sunken Lands
3. Etta's Tune
4. Modern Blue
5. Tell Heaven
6. The Long Way Home
7. World Of Strange Design
8. Night School
9. 50,000 Watts
10. When The Master Calls The Roll
11. Money Road
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