CONCERT REVIEW: Cash makes sense of her musical legacy

By Diana Nollen

IOWA CITY - Rosanne Cash is genetically programmed for country music.

She may have started her career in the pop/rock realm, but 30 years later, she's come home.

Sharing the DNA of her legendary father, Johnny Cash, and embraced by her stepmother's musical Carter clan, she has the nature and nurture for country in her soul.

Wednesday's sold-out crowd leapt to its collective feet several times during her Hancher concert at the Englert Theatre. Fans of her and her father showered her with cheers and applause throughout 100 minutes of hits.

Her program drew heavily from her new CD, “The List,” which just scratches the surface of the “100 essential country songs” her father told her she should know. He drew up the list in 1973 when he discovered his 18-year-old daughter didn't know the music of her roots.

She knows it now.

The most wonderful aspect is that she taken the first dozen classics and made them her own, through beautiful arrangements, changes in tempo and her edgy alto vocals.

Surrounded by five band members, including husband John Leventhal on guitar, she opened the concert with the breezy “Miss the Mississippi and You” and “She's Got You” before launching into my favorite cut on the CD, “500 Miles.” And old-fashioned organ sound provided poignant counterpoint to her earnest interpretation of this beautiful folk song, as the other instruments gently joined in.

She didn't speak to her fans at first, which made me fear this would be a rather impersonal concert of very personal music. But when she did address the crowd, it was like she was chatting with old friends. She shared glimpses of the life and legacy of her famous family and begged our forgiveness if she couldn't hit all the high notes after “flying among airborne petri dishes.”

At times her voice had more grit than she displayed on her album and her pitch dipped here and there, but I seemed to be the only person who noticed or cared.

She also displayed a devilish wit as she heckled several latecomers who strolled down the aisle 30 minutes into the concert to claim their seats near the front. She turned her humor toward herself when she put the verses out of order during an audience request for “I Don't Know Why You Don't Want Me.” She drew a huge laugh when she apologized, saying, “I can't remember the lyrics. I should have written them on my hand.”

She struck just the right chord, however, in weaving her own songs through the texture of her father's list. She also drew huge applause on the opening strains of her father's “Tennessee Flat Top Box.” And especially sweet was a final photo on the backdrop, showing a young Cash and her father playing their guitars on a sunny summer porch.

The family flame is burning brightly as she claims her father's list and begins to amass her own list for her children. Johnny would be proud.