It’s the site of one of her father's career-defining performances, and last month Rosanne Cash, too, performed in California's Folsom Prison.
"The folks at the prison heard I was playing the arts center in Folsom a few months ago and asked me if I would come to the prison and do a songwriting workshop/performance with some of the guys in maximum security, who were part of a music program at the prison," recalls Cash, back home in New York City.
"I didn't say yes immediately, for a couple reasons," she continues. "It seemed too, too close to my dad's history, and I had to think that through. Also, a woman going into men's maximum security--it was a bit unsettling to think about it. But after some thought, I said yes."
Johnny Cash released his landmark live At Folsom Prison album in 1968. It revitalized his career and engendered another album classic, the 1969 live follow-up At San Quentin.
Rosanne Cash was scheduled to do the show at the arts center on Sunday night, March 20, then visit the prison Monday morning. But a huge rainstorm in Los Angeles caused cancellation of her flight from Burbank to Sacramento--of which Folsom is a suburb.
"We had full band and crew with us," she says. "It was a nightmare: There was a flight from LAX, but it wouldn't get us there in time. The only thing to do was start driving, so we did. It took us seven hours, so we had to reschedule the show for the next night, Monday, and we had to let the band go for other commitments."
So Cash and her guitarist/husband John Leventhal did the arts center show as a duo, then went to the prison Tuesday morning.
"They were very strict," says Cash. "We had to be cleared weeks in advance, and couldn't wear blue. We had guards with us the whole time, of course."
She says there were about 40 men in the room.
"The plan was that I would sing to them, they would play some songs for me, one guy would recite a poem he wrote, and they could ask me questions about songwriting, my work, etcetera," she says. "They were incredibly respectful and attentive, and the songs were very moving: One in particular I remember being full of violent imagery and regret. The poem, read by a young man with dreadlocks, was full of self-awareness and regret as well. The director of the music program told us that these guys had some spark in them, something that was healing and rehabilitating, that they had real awareness of the consequences of their crimes. There were plenty in maximum security who didn't."
Incredibly, one man told her during the Q&A portion that he had been at San Quentin when Johnny Cash recorded Live At San Quentin.
"That was mind-blowing! He was in his 60's," says Cash. She added, "A lot of those guys will spend their lives in prison. I was very moved, and humbled. Of course, I was also aware that these men had done terrible things, the worst things. But music heals. That's what I was left with. Music has the potential to heal."
After the session, the prison guards took Cash back to the old prison--and the dining room where her father recorded At Folsom Prison.
"It looks much the same, except for new tables," she says. "I was in tears. We walked through the cell block to get to the dining room, and that's the only time I got nervous and a little freaked out: John was walking behind me and I reached my hand back to hold his. He whispered, 'It's okay, it's okay.' The guard made us walk under the walkway above rather than through the center, as he said it was 'safer'. But that meant we were very close to the cells."
The cell block itself, she says, "was right out of a movie."
"Tiny, tiny cells, a man in each one, a narrow bunk, a toilet," she says. "One man had a loaf of bread stuck through the bars to keep it away from God only knows."
The director of the music program was in tears when she left.
He said I would never know what it meant to them," she says, "but it changed me, too. I noticed the feeling of being able to walk out of there, and as I did, one guard we passed going out as he was coming in, said with a chuckle, 'You're going in the right direction!'"
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