Rosanne Cash, 2004

Washington Post, Thursday, May 13, 2004; Page C08

Rosanne Cash

Rosanne Cash had barely stopped her stride onstage Tuesday night at the Rams Head before she broke into "I Still Miss Someone."

It was clear who was being missed: Johnny Cash, the song's composer and Rosanne Cash's father, gone for only eight months. But his daughter's low-key set, with husband John Leventhal, also celebrated June Carter Cash, dead for barely a year. Rosanne Cash offered an anecdote about her stepmother's stint as a replacement banjo player for a touring band -- despite June's not knowing how to play the instrument: "Honey, when I got out there, I knew how to play the banjo."

It was that sort of spontaneity -- and perhaps a lack of rehearsal for this first show on a duo tour -- that led Cash and Leventhal to take numerous audience requests, including a lively rendition of "Tennessee Flat Top Box," a song about a guitar-playin' boy that allowed Leventhal some fancy rockabilly licks. Leventhal's equipment was plagued by a slight buzz all night, but he soldiered on -- sometimes, as on a by-request "Dance With the Tiger," even when he didn't know the tune.

Cash radiated relaxation and professionalism throughout the nearly two-hour set, turning her able alto to songs from the recent "Rules of Travel," new compositions such as the loss-laden "Like a Wave" ("My memory is filling with smoke"), and vigorous covers of her dad's "I Got Stripes" and the Creedence Clearwater Revival classic "Who'll Stop the Rain." Scrambling for encores, she quipped, "I love hanging off a cliff by my fingernails."

Johnny and June would have admired her courage and composure.

-- Pamela Murray Winters