[music]

Alison Stewart: You're listening to all of it on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Rosanne Cash is a Grammy-winning songwriter, a bestselling 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 earlier this week. Stacey herself even requested that Rosanne join.

Before Rosanne's solo interview and performances, both she and Stacey were on stage, and we talked about their writing process and about history. Rosanne shared that many of her Cash family relatives fought in the Revolutionary War. In fact, the first person they identified was named John Cash, just like her dad. 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 Wideman.

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. It's so perfect. It's timely. 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?

Rosanne Cash: Yes, please.

Stacey Schiff: I don't think Rosanne is any counsel, but I do wonder, 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? 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'd tapped into so much compassion and so much connection on these levels. I didn't imagine it was beautiful.

Stacey Schiff: I think what I have was more jealousy that you can do in three notes what takes me 20 pages.

Rosanne Cash: 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 Stacey Schiff. Here's more from my interview with Rosanne Cash solo including a song she'd only performed twice before this event from her new musical.

[music]

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 write.

Rosanne Cash: 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 at 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-day 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. 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 gone, long gone. "How did you do that?" She goes, "Why, honey, you just endure it." Sometimes I just think, "You just endure it."

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

Rosanne Cash: That's right.

Alison Stewart: There was a great piece about around New Year's Day in The Times that you wrote about what you did with your day. You described going to Italy and getting pizza from Tapo and listening to WFUV. We were thinking it's like, "Rosanne Cash lives in New York, and Steve Earl lives in New York." Truly country singers but you're most 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.

Alison Stewart: Wow.

Rosanne Cash: 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: Yes, I knew it. What was that?

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

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

Alison Stewart: You were Elouise.

Rosanne Cash: I was Elouise. 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 don't write. I am a writer. Writing is not what I do. I am a writer." When did you know you were a writer?

Rosanne Cash: Seven or eight years old. 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 Cash: What are you going to sing for us?

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

[applauds]

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

[music]

[sings] I remember when I was in school 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 smoking mirrors were the same as the light.

Now the wind blows through my life. Take everything inside.

Where is the hurricane? Am I in the kite?

Whiskey in the morning bell and I walk and never line

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

I'm running blind and backwards

now my dreaming is a real the 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 road that fits my shoes but I don't feel right.

Now the wind blows through my life could take everything inside

Now who is a hurricane and who is the kite?

I hope something new comes through this long sunlight

Smoke and mirrors aren't the same after light

Now the wind blows through my life

Take everything in sight where is the hurricane?

Where is the hurricane?

Oh, where is my hurricane? [applause]

Thank you. It's John Leventhal.

[applause]

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. How about that for a metaphor?

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

[music]

[sings]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 newsboy did deliver

Three months later plans were made to wed

Down by the King James river

Lo, the season may come

Lo, the season may go

When man is joined together

Will forever 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 falter

Oh my darlin' Mary 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

Lo, the season may come

Lo, the season may go

Beware the storm clouds gather

Take hid 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 whence I came

I'll see you when I'm younger

I'll know you by your hills again

This time from 6 feet under

Lo, the season may come

Lo, the season may go

What man is torn asunder

Will someday be made whole

When the master calls the roll

[applause]

Alison Stewart: That was Rosanne Cash featuring her husband John Leventhal on guitar with a special performance of Where is the Hurricane from her musical Norma Rae, as well as When The Master Calls The Roll. If you'd like to join us for our February Get Lit event, we will be reading Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James. We'll gather back at the New York Public Library's SNFL Rooftop Event Center on February 24th. Mark your calendars.

 

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