Orchestra Center, Row H, Seat 101 – 8 rows from the front,
on the center-right aisle. Sightlines and sound were both excellent.
This was the third time I’ve seen Rosanne Cash at the Strathmore
Music Center, but the experience never gets old. (She doesn’t appear to age
much either.) This time I had a sneak peek, as the night before she closed out Saturday night
of #XPNFest, the annual three-day music festival that WXPN conducts (and
broadcasts) from Camden NJ, right across the river from Philadelphia. The
setlists and patter were fairly similar, although the Strathmore show was
significantly longer.
She reached back near the end of her show for 3 of the 11
(!) country-chart-topping songs from her 1980s commercial heyday (two of which she
wrote), but most of her performance consisted of original material from her
post-80s albums. She did, however, throw in a song from hubby John Leventhal’s
new album, an expressive duet with Leventhal on the classic “Ode To Billie Joe”,
Dylan’s “Farewell Angelina” as the encore, and two tracks from 2009’s The
List, her record with a dozen of the 100 “greatest country songs” listing that
her father had prepared for her. (She teased her husband on “Sea Of Heartbreak”,
saying that he’d have to fill in for Bruce Springsteen as a duet partner, and referring
to him semi-seriously as “The Boss” at the end.)
This year she’s been spotlighting The Wheel, the 1993
album which she remastered and re-released earlier this year once the rights to
the recordings reverted to her. The group performed three tracks from it during
the first half of the show, including a lovely acoustic take on “Tears Falling
Down” and a driving version of the title track, which was one of the high
points of the show, along with “The Only Thing Worth Fighting For” (one of my
personal favorites) and “She Remembers Everything”.
The five-piece band was excellent, with Leventhal on acoustic
and electric guitar throughout and Kevin Barry providing additional guitar work,
including lap steel on several numbers. It also included Sam Katz on bass, Dan
Rieser on drums, and Misty Boyce on keyboards (apologies for any misspellings).
Cash also revealed that she was going to be among the
speakers at Tuesday’s unveiling of her father’s new statue in the U.S. Capitol,
joining the one of civil rights leader Daisy Bates to represent the state of
Arkansas.
The crowd was attentive and enthusiastic throughout. I didn’t
see a single person going in or out until the end of the show (unlike some
recent experiences at Wolf Trap).
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