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Alison Stewart: You're listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Rosanne Cash is a Grammy-winning songwriter, a best-selling author, and, as we learned at our Get Lit event, a dedicated student of history. For all these reasons, she was the perfect musical guest to join us with Samuel Adams' biographer Stacy Schiff at the New York Public Library for our January Get Lit with All Of It book club event. Stacy herself had even requested that Rosanne join. Before Rosanne's solo interview and performances, she and Stacy discussed writing and history. Rosanne shared that many of her Cash family relatives fought in the Revolutionary War. In fact, the first one they identified was named John Cash, like her father. She also discussed a new musical she's working on. Here's a highlight from that part of our Get Lit event featuring both Rosanne Cash and Stacy Schiff.

Rosanne Cash: I've been working on a musical for six years now with my husband, John Leventhal, and book writer John Weidman, and it's--

Alison Stewart: It's not just any musical, we have to say.

Rosanne Cash: No, it's Norma Rae. Some people may remember that story.

Alison Stewart: It's so perfect.

Rosanne Cash: It's timely, you know. It's a woman's story, and it's about her transformation and about community, about union organizing in the South in the 1970s. It's not a polemic, it's a human story with her transformation at the center of it, framed by these really timely concerns.

Alison Stewart: As someone who writes nonfiction, what counsel can you give your friend? Yes, please.

Stacy Schiff: I don't think Rosanne needs any counsel, but I do wonder, like, how much, and I'm not sure there's no quick answer to this, how much of the story can you tell, do you tell with the music? How much do you feel you can load into the songs, and how much do you feel has to come in the interstitial pieces?

Rosanne Cash: That is the question I asked the book writer. Being a first-time lyricist for a musical, I didn't understand that. He said that the lyrics have to drive the story. You can't just do set pieces of really nice songs, but the lyrics in that song have to take you someplace, the character in the story. That was a whole shift for me about writing for character, particularly writing in the character of older black men, their lyrics. That was really difficult for me. Ultimately, maybe the most satisfying lyric writing I did, because I tapped into so much compassion and so much connection on these levels I didn't imagine. It was beautiful.

Stacy Schiff: I think what I have was more jealousy, that you can do in three notes what takes me 20 pages, if I'm lucky. Seriously.

Rosanne Cash: Well, come on. You can do in 20 pages what I can't do because I can only do it in three notes. Let's look at it that way.

Alison Stewart: That was a highlight from our Get Lit event with Rosanne Cash and Stacy Schiff. Here's more from my solo interview with Rosanne Cash, including a song she'd only performed twice before this event from her new musical.

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Alison Stewart: Since we were talking about history, and you were talking just about your ancestry, a lesson that you learned from an elder in your life that is still useful to you and still informs how you live?

Rosanne Cash: Oh, it's actually a scene in my mind of my grandmother. I'm a modern woman. I live in New York City. I have every amenity at my disposal. My life is incredibly privileged. Two generations back, my grandmother lived on a cotton farm without electricity or running water for the first years they were there. She picked cotton every day. She raised seven children, one of whom died in childhood, and she gave birth at home. One story she told is her longest labor, three days labor with one of these children. The doctor came by in a horse and buggy every day to check on her to see how she was doing, [chuckles] and he pulled out two aspirin from his pocket to give to her, the same pocket in which he kept his fishing worms. I said, "How did you do that?" I asked my grandmother. She's long gone, but, "How did you do that?" She goes, "Why, honey, you just endure it." Sometimes I just think, "Ah, you just endure it."

Alison Stewart: That's why you're a New Yorker.

[laughter]

Rosanne Cash: That's right.

Alison Stewart: There was a great piece around New Year's Day and the times that you wrote about what you did with your day. You described going to Eataly and getting pizza from Topo and listening to WFUV. We were thinking, I was like, "Well, Rosanne Cash lives in New York and Steve Earle lives in New York, these truly country singers," but you're also really a New Yorker.

Rosanne Cash: Yes, I've lived in New York for 31 years. I married a native and our son on his side is a fifth generation New Yorker. When you're not from here, you always feel like a newcomer in some way if you're married to a native, but yes, I'm a New Yorker. I knew it from the moment I came the first time at 12 years old.

Alison Stewart: Oh, when you came at 12?

Rosanne Cash: I knew it.

Alison Stewart: What was that? Why were you here? That's interesting.

Rosanne Cash: I was with my dad. He would bring us to New York when he was playing here and we'd stay at the plaza and I would think, "Oh, this is nice. This is New York."

[crosstalk]

Alison Stewart: You were Eloise.

Rosanne Cash: I was Eloise, exactly.

Alison Stewart: Before we hear some music, I was listening to an interview, I think it was a TED Radio Hour interview you did and you said, "I don't write. I am a writer. Writing's not what I do. I am a writer." When did you know you were a writer?

Rosanne Cash: Seven or eight years old, and I won a poetry contest when I was nine years old, and I just knew that was what I wanted to do with my life.

Alison Stewart: What are you going to sing for us?

Rosanne Cash: Okay, so I want to sing a song. I've performed it exactly twice in my life. It's from Norma Rae from the musical. A song that John Leventhal and I wrote and here he comes. He's going to play.

[applause]

Rosanne Cash: This song comes at the moment in the story when she realizes she has to change her life and she doesn't know how.

[guitar playing]

[MUSIC - Rosanne Cash: Norma Rae]

Rosanne Cash: I remember when I was in school, the long and endless days.

When the future was a mystery, so many things I couldn't say.

The sound of my blood rushing was the one thing that I knew.

Then nothing came from nothing, nothing real or true.

I was the one with my eyes shut so tight.

I thought that smoke and mirrors were the same as the light.

Now the wind blows through my life, could take everything in sight.

Where is the hurricane? Am I the kite?

Whiskey in the morning bell and I walk a narrow line.

There's nothing soft as cotton but there's nothing hard as time.

I'm running blind and backwards. Am I dreaming? Is it real?

A feeling's not forever but it's still mine to feel.

I was the one with my eyes shut so tight.

I'm on a rod that fits my shoes but I don't feel right.

Now the wind blows through my life, could take everything in sight.

Now who is the hurricane and who is the kite?

I hope something new comes through this lonesome light.

Smoke and mirrors aren't the same as the light.

Now the wind blows through my life, could take everything in sight. Where is the hurricane

Where is the hurricane

Oh, where is my hurricane

[applause]

Rosanne Cash: Thank you. It's John Leventhal. [chuckles] Thank you. Talking about history, I wanted to do a history song that John and I wrote with Rodney Crowell. A Cash man has fought in every American war since the Revolutionary War. The Civil War, the War of 1812, the Vietnam War up to the present. We wrote this song about my Cash ancestors, one of whom was a Civil War soldier. I have Cash ancestors who fought on both sides of the Civil War, and how about that for a metaphor, right?

I found this, his picture on the Civil War database list, William Cash. I looked up in my family history and I found a young woman, Marry Anne Cash, 20 years old at the start of the Civil War, and I wanted to put William and Marry Anne together. They're together forever now in this song. This is called When The Master Calls The Roll.

[MUSIC - Rosanne Cash: When The Master Calls The Roll]

Girl with hair of flaming red

Seeking perfect lover

For to lie down on her feather bed

Soul secrets to uncover

Must be gentle, must be strong

With disposition sunny

Just as faithful as the day is long

And careful with his money

And so the open letter read

The news boy did deliver

Three months later plans were made to wed

Down by the King James river

Though the season may come

Though the season may go

When man is joined together

With whoever be made whole

When the master calls the roll

Oh my darlin' will you leave?

Take me to the altar

I don't have strength to watch you as you leave

But my love will never faulter

Oh my darlin' Marry Anne

The march to war is calling

Somewhere far across these southern lands

The bands of brothers falling

My tender bride, the tides demand

That I leave you with your mother

With my father's rifle in one hand

Your locket in the other

Though the season may come

Though the season may go

Beware the storm clouds gather

Take heed dear mortal soul

When the master calls the roll

But can this union be preserved?

The soldier boy was crying

I will never travel back to her

But not for lack of trying

It's a love of one true heart at last

That made the boy a hero

But a rifle ball and a cannon blast

Cut him down to zero

Oh Virginia once I came

I'll see you when I'm younger

And I'll know you by your hills again

This town from 6 feet under

Though the season may come

Though the season may go

When man is torn asunder

Will someday be made whole

When the master calls the roll

Alison Stewart: That was Rosanne Cash featuring her husband John Leventhal on guitar with a special performance of When The Master Calls The Roll. There's more All Of It on the way. Up next, we'll hear another all-star author-musician duo. A. M. Homes will discuss her political novel, The Unfolding, and we'll hear a performance from artist Laurie Anderson, who created a new composition especially for this Get Lit event. Stay with us. That's all coming up after the news.

 

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