Johnny Cash
1994-12-08
Frank Erwin Center
Austin, TX
Soundboard Recording
CD 1:
01. Folsom Prison Blues
02. Get Rhythm
03. Sunday Morning Comin’ Down
04. Ghost Riders In The Sky
05. Cowboy’s Prayer
06. O’ Bury Me Not
07. Big River
08. I Walk The Line
09. I Still Miss Someone
10. Man In Black
11. The Alamo
12. Orange Blossom Special
13. Death And Hell
14. Delia
15. A Bird On A Wire
16. The Beast In Me
17. Tennessee Stud
18. Down There By The Train
19. Drive On
20. Ring Of Fire
CD 2:
01. Jackson
02. If I Were A Carpenter
03. It Ain’t Me. Babe
04. Live Forever
05. Will The Circle Be Unbroken
06. The Next Time In Town
07. Guess Things Happen that Way
08. The Ballad Of Ira Hayes
09. Home Of The Blues
10. Long Black Veil
11. A Boy Named Sue
12. Jam??
13. Peace In The Valley
14. Outro
Cash is now a hero to Generation X (or whatever we're now calling that generation). In April of 1994, Cash had released American Recordings, his first collaboration with Rick Rubin, who would serve as Cash's producer until his 2005 death. Under Rubin's stewardship, Cash would reinvent himself for the final time and later cover, among other songs, Soundgarden's "Rusty Cage" (two years later), U2's "One," (three years later), and, of course, Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt" (eight years later). But it was not just the novelty covers that cemented Cash's reputation as an icon and hero to a generation of college students born two decades after he first achieved fame. (Let me be clear: Cash's version of "Hurt" is so stark and believable that it is far beyond a mere novelty.). Rather, it was the dark honesty conveyed by Cash's coarse voice and years of hard living accompanied by an ominous sounding acoustic guitar. On March 17, 1994, Cash served as the keynote speaker at South by Southwest and played Emo's, an alternative rock club on Austin's noted Sixth Street, that night. (See here - and scroll down to the "Walking the Line" story - for a neat anecdote about the 1994 Emo's show.).
Pictured above is Cash during his keynote speech to South by Southwest on March 17, 1994.
On December 8, 1994, Cash returned to Austin as part of the American Recordings tour for the aforementioned show at the Erwin Center. Music critic John T. Davis reviewed the show for the Austin American Statesman. In so doing, he cooed:
Anyone who ever questioned the potency of one man and one guitar need only have been at the Erwin Center on Thursday night to lay all doubts to rest.
There onstage sat a 63-year-old great-grandfather, clad entirely in black and holding an ebony acoustic guitar ("It's time for the black guitar!" he said as he traded in his blond Martin and pulled up a stool to take the stage alone). The only illumination in the house was one white spotlight, trained squarely on him; there was no place to hide.
He was singing something about a beast that raged inside him, a wild thing constrained only by the frailest bonds of love and compassion. And he sang a song about shooting his sweetheart; he felt pretty bad about it. And there was a song about a horse. And the house was rapt. Attentive, engrossed, and above all, silent. Thousands of people, all focused on that one man and that one guitar. If you're Johnny Cash, you can conjure up intimacy amidst absolute strangers.1
But that review could have described any show by Cash at numerous points in his career. It wasn't until later in his review that Davis attempted to recount this show's specifics:
Over the course of his 31-song set at the Erwin Center, he sang his first hit, 1955's Get Rhythm, contemporary songs by Nick Lowe and Leonard Cohen, and evergreens such as Peace in the Valley and Orange Blossom Special. And he made it all of a piece, so that his set flowed seamlessly across the decades in a way that appealed to grunge fans and graybeards alike.
The Tennessee Three, Cash's accompanists since the Rockies were knee-high, proved themselves a surprisingly supple ensemble, considering how many times their fingers have caressed these licks. They brought a sassy, cantering edge to Big River, I Still Miss Someone and Folsom Prison Blues.
And June Carter Cash infused the show with her own thoroughbred elan and dash, in a miniset that found her crooning and growling in counterpoint to her spouse on Tim Hardin's If I Were a Carpenter, Bob Dylan's It Ain't Me Babe, and the couple's own hit, Jackson.
But it was that time alone in the spotlight that lingers in the memory. Johnny Cash has always wanted to be taken on his own terms, as both a man and an artist. On Thursday night, he got his chance, and it made for a splendid evening.2
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