Acclaimed singer and songwriter Rosanne Cash accepted the award for “Album of the Year” for her most recent recording The List at the 2010 Americana Honors & Awards Show last night. The ceremony, attended by Emmylou Harris, Robert Plant, Jack White, Lucinda Williams, Mary Chapin Carpenter, and many other luminaries, was held at the fabled Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. Cash performed the Bobbie Gentry classic “Ode to Billie Joe” and presented John Mellencamp, the 2010 Lifetime Recipient for Songwriting honoree, with his award.
Selected by members of the Americana Music Association, the awards reflect the genre’s affection for innovative and inspiring artistry, something Cash has displayed throughout her long and storied career. In October 2009, she released The List, her first-ever covers album, which shot to No. 1 on Amazon’s Top Country Albums chart following the publication of Cash’s new memoir Composed (Viking; $26.95).
Composed — which finds Cash sharing her recollections growing up as Johnny Cash’s eldest daughter and coming into her own as a performer, daughter, and mother — appeared on The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post bestseller lists. Called “one of the best accounts of an American life you’ll likely ever read” by The Chicago Tribune and “wise, honest, and utterly engaging” by The Washington Post, Composed has earned rave reviews from media outlets across the country, including Entertainment Weekly, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Daily Beast, The Forth Worth Star-Telegram, as well as starred reviews from Kirkus and Publishers Weekly.
In other news, Cash will make several upcoming television and concert appearances, including an interview and performance on CBS The Early Show on September 18th. She will also perform at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park on October 3rd and return to The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson on October 4th. On October 5th, Cash will participate in “An Evening With Rosanne Cash At The Grammy Museum®” in Los Angeles, where she will be interviewed onstage about her songwriting process, The List, and Composed, and will perform a selection of songs from The List with her husband and producer John Leventhal. On October 7th, Cash will sit down for a conversation about her life in music with author A.M. Homes at the 92nd Street Y in New York City (Tickets for “The Lyricist’s Voice: Rosanne Cash are available here: http://www.92y.org/shop/event_detail.asp?productid=T-TP5MS03). Finally, Cash will perform songs from The List at the San Francisco Jazz Festival, held at the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre, on November 14th. (Ticket info is available here: http://www.sfjazz.org/concerts/2010/fall/artists/cash.php.)
Over the course of her career, Cash has recorded fourteen albums, including 1981’s gold Seven Year Ache and 1987’s gold King’s Record Shop, and charted 21 Top 40 country singles, 11 of which climbed to No. 1. She has received ten Grammy Award nominations — winning in 1985 — and was nominated last December for “Sea of Heartbreak,” a duet with Bruce Springsteen on The List, which is eligible for Grammy consideration this year. The album, which Vanity Fair called “superb,” debuted in the Top 5 on the Country Chart, and entered the Billboard 200 at No. 22. Cash is also the author of Bodies of Water and the children’s book Penelope Jane: A Fairy’s Tale. Her essays and fiction have been published in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, and New York magazine.
For more about Rosanne Cash, Composed, and The List, please visit www.rosannecash.com and http://twitter.com/rosannecash
About the Author
