There are moments in a career that you can plan for, and then there are moments you never could have imagined when you started. Getting to know Cindy Cash has definitely been one of the latter for me.
I've spent a huge part of my life singing the music of Johnny Cash. Through Church of Cash, I've performed those songs thousands of times and taken them all over the United States and Europe. Johnny's music was part of my childhood long before I ever imagined making a living singing it. So developing a friendship and working relationship with Johnny's daughter has been something very special—and, at times, a little surreal.
One of the things that brought Cindy and me together was the Folsom Prison Experience, the theatrical production that Tom Pickard and I created around Johnny Cash's historic 1968 concert at Folsom Prison.
This isn't simply a Johnny Cash tribute concert. We wanted the audience to feel as though they had stepped back into January 13, 1968. From the moment you enter, you're part of the story. Actors, musicians, inmates, guards, radio personalities and the music itself recreate the atmosphere surrounding one of the most famous concerts—and live recordings—in American music history.
Cindy's connection to that day is obviously much more personal. She was only 10 years old in 1968, and she wanted to go with her dad to Folsom. She asked him if she could come along, but Johnny told her no. Understandably, a maximum-security prison wasn't exactly the place he wanted to bring his little girl.
All these years later, Cindy came to see the Folsom Prison Experience. Her reaction meant a tremendous amount to me. In a way, she finally got to experience the concert she had wanted to see as a little girl. To hear that she thought what we had created was fantastic was incredibly gratifying. When you're telling a story involving someone's father and their childhood, their response carries a different kind of weight.
Our friendship has grown beyond the stage, and recently Cindy and I had the opportunity to spend time together at Cash Mountain Ranch in Casitas Springs, California, the home where Johnny Cash and his family lived during the 1960s.
That experience is difficult to describe. Cindy wasn't showing me a museum. She was showing me pieces of her childhood.
We sat together in the living room and talked about growing up with Johnny Cash. My experience, of course, was completely different from hers. Cindy grew up with Johnny as Dad. I grew up hearing his voice and his records and eventually built a career around performing his music.
At one point I found myself singing Johnny Cash songs inside the house where those songs—and the man behind them—were simply part of everyday family life. I sang at the dining table. I sang in the kitchen. I even played music for the resident pigs outside, which might be one of the stranger audiences I've collected over the years.
But some of my favorite moments weren't performances at all. They were listening to Cindy tell stories. Walking through the house with her gave everything a different perspective. A room isn't simply 'Johnny Cash's living room' when Cindy can tell you what happened there. A backyard isn't just part of a famous musician's former property when she remembers her dad standing at the barbecue pit cooking hot dogs for her and her sisters.
Those little stories bring Johnny Cash back down to earth.
Cindy and I have also been working on a new storyteller-style show built around her memories of her father and family. We've collected dozens of Cindy's stories and have been developing them into a show that combines her firsthand memories with live music from Church of Cash. The idea isn't simply to tell the story of Johnny Cash the entertainer. There are already plenty of places to learn about the records, concerts and career.
I'm interested in the stories that only someone like Cindy can tell. What was Johnny like when the stage lights were off? What made him laugh? What was family life like? What does a daughter remember that a biography could never capture?
I'll be alongside Cindy helping guide the evening, while Church of Cash performs songs that connect with the stories she's telling. We've spent time rehearsing, talking, laughing, remembering—and occasionally singing together. The more we've worked on it, the more I've realized that the heart of the show isn't really nostalgia. It's perspective.
I've spent decades studying Johnny Cash the musician. Cindy has helped me understand more about Johnny Cash the father and the human being. And that's probably what I've appreciated most about our friendship.
Somewhere along the way, this became about much more than getting closer to the history of an artist I admire. Cindy has become my friend. We've laughed together, worked together, traded stories, made music and started creating something that I hope gives audiences a glimpse into a side of her father they haven't experienced before.
After all these years of singing Johnny Cash's songs, I never expected that the music would eventually lead me into his former home, sitting beside his daughter and talking about what those songs—and the man who sang them—meant to each of us. That's one chapter of this life in music I certainly never saw coming.
