Fresh from Rosanne Cash's successful "Twittercast" last month via the AllCaliforniaRock.com website, the New York-based singer-songwriter is undertaking a new Twitter-related music event, this time a full-fledged radio concert based on her 36-song, definitive double-CD anthology The Essential Rosanne Cash (Columbia/Legacy).
But whereas the hour-long September Twittercast had Cash selecting her 15 favorite California-related songs (she similarly surveyed Memphis songs in April at AllMemphisMusic.com), she'll pre-record a similar number of songs from Essential in her living room on Nov. 2, the selections based on the song requests submitted via Twitter from her 35,701--and counting--Twitter followers.
Cash has tweeted--naturally--her Live From Zone C concert particulars, which call for the Nov. 2 performance to be filmed at her home in Chelsea, which lies in the so-designated "Zone C" hurricane flooding evacuation area of Manhattan. Cash learned of her Zone C residence status in August during Hurricane Irene--Zone C being an area of potential flooding from a Category 3 or 4 hurricane. She has referred to her neighborhood as "Zone C" in tweets ever since.
Through Oct. 31, then, Cash's Twitter followers can tweet their song requests--along with the hashtag #essentialrc and Cash's @rosannecash username, in order to track them and allow Cash to review them. Participating radio stations will then broadcast or stream the concert between mid-November and Christmas; if chosen tweet submissions also hashtag or mention the tweeter's local station, Cash will acknowledge it during the concert.
"It was really Sony's idea," says Cash, the Columbia/Legacy label being a division of Sony Music Entertainment. "We're taping a full concert set and sending it out to a lot of radio stations because not enough people would get to hear it if it were only available live."
Of the "interesting" requests registered so far, Cash notes that some are for songs that she's never performed.
"Some people are going rogue and requesting things that aren't on Essential, and some are really going rogue and requesting Jackson Browne and Vikki Carr songs!" she adds. "But we're sticking strictly to Essential--but that's 30-something songs already."
Cash does say that she'll perform songs that she doesn't usually do live.
"I haven't performed 'Never Be You' live in 20 years, but people are requesting it, so it might be in the set," she says. "Same with 'My Baby Think's He's A Train."
She notes that Live From Zone C will actually be performed acoustically in her living room--with a full sound and video crew. She'll be accompanied by her guitarist/producer husband John Leventhal--and perhaps another musician.
"It's my living room, man!" she concludes, acknowledging her space limitations. "I can't go too deep."
The Essential Rosanne Cash was released earlier this year. Prodigious tweeter Cash, whose tweets now total 44,350, continues to tour behind it, and for the first time will perform with a symphony orchestra when she joins forces with The Minnesota Orchestra in Minneapolis on Nov. 18.
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