The Friday Morning Listen: Rosanne Cash – The List (2009)

It was easy to say because there was so much evidence all around: Garth Brooks, Toby Keith, Faith Hill and all of that — it was really just pop music with belt buckles, boots, and big hats. I guess I was pushing back against the popularity of it.

Still, there was more than a hint of disingenuousness on my part because a) I owned a Shania Twain record (OK, more than one) and b) I didn’t hate any of it so much as just ignore it. Looking back, what really bothers me is that I let the assumption pass by that I hated all country music. That was, as the boneheads like to say in modern political yammering discourse, a lie.

I would have had to rationalize all of the country-leaning music that I’d listened to throughout the years: The Eagles, Marshall Tucker, The Grateful Dead, Commander Cody, Neil Young, Charlie Daniels, and on and on. Heck, I probably did rationalize, all the while suppressing memories of listening to the stuff my folks had on the radio: The Amazing Rhythm Aces (anybody remember “Third Rate Romance”?), Jeannie C Riley, Freddie Fender, Charlie Pride. That’s a lotta rationalization!

Silly me, maybe I hadn’t yet connected the dots between what I’d listened to in my youth and my current leanings (Shania Twain excepted…ahem…). So one day I’m listening to say, Lyle Lovett singing “Stand By Your Man,” and it occurs to me that the folks loved Tammy Wynette and…hell…so do I! Same goes for when I spent that summer during college living at my Aunt Roses’s house. She’d put on that live Willie Nelson record and I had to admit that, yeah, it was some good stuff. In my head I’m thinking, dang, I shouldn’t have given my high school friend all of that grief for buying Stardust.

These days, it’s not uncommon for me to mix all manner of country and country influences into my listening: Gilliam Welch, Hank Williams, Band of Horses, bits of Wilco, Alison Krauss, Waylon Jennings, etc. The thing is, I don’t really think about it. It’s all just music that I love, music that has a connection to my history.

Of course, Rosanne Cash never really shied away from her history. As she tells it, the roster of songs that ended up on The List began to form just after she graduated from high school. On tour with her father, the country music legend was concerned that his daughter was unfamiliar with so many of the songs that were important to him. All of these years later, Cash recorded the songs with an audacious cast of guests including Rufus Wainwright, Jeff Tweedy, Elvis Costello, and Bruce Springsteen. I’m fairly certain that the man, Johnny Cash, would have been proud.

To the casual listener, the former three musicians make the most sense if you’re thinking about country music, but what about Bruce? Well, his appearance on “Sea of Heartbreak” makes perfect sense to these ears. Most Springsteen fans seem to profess a dislike for both “Factory” (from Darkness On The Edge of Town) and “Tomorrow Never Knows” (from Working On A Dream). I’ve always heard the Floyd Kramer in Roy Bittan’s piano on the Darkness track, and the lighthearted hope expressed in the latter. That’s why this duet with Cash makes sense to me.

Does it make sense to say that you hate any particular genre, that there’s nothing there for you? That there never can be? Think about it.