Ring of Fire: The Music of Johnny Cash

Arts Club Granville Island Stage to August 11, 2024
Tickets from $39 at 604-687-1644 or www.artsclub.com

Posted June 28, 2024

I don’t know a thing about Johnny Cash so I thought I’d better see Ring of Fire: The Music of Johnny Cash and educate myself about this iconic figure in the country music/rockabilly/gospel music world. But after a couple of hours of songs – almost thirty of them – I don’t know much more about Johnny Cash. Although the songs are roughly strung along a narrative thread, there’s just not much story going on. I know it’s not fair to criticize a show for what it doesn’t purport to be, but just a little more would have been great.

Don’t get me wrong; directed by Rachel Peake this is a good show performed by six extremely capable musicians/singers. And despite the fact that country music has never been my thing, my toe did do a little tapping.

So I went to Wikipedia to get some facts: Cash was born in 1932 to poor cotton farmers in Arkansas who couldn’t agree on whether to call him John or Roy so he was officially J.R. Cash until he entered the armed services where J.R. didn’t cut it. After that, he was John R. Cash and eventually Johnny Cash.

His marriage to Vivian Liberto in 1954 resulted in four daughters but ended in 1962 due to his addiction to amphetamines and barbiturates and “destructive behaviour”, according to Liberto.  The daughters remained with Vivian. He later married singer June Carter who stuck it out with Cash in spite of many, many relapses. His only son – John Carter Cash – was born in 1970.

When June Carter Cash died in 2003, Cash was devastated and is quoted as saying, “ The spirit of June Carter overshadows me tonight with the love she had for me and the love I have for her. We connect somewhere between here and Heaven. She came down for a short visit, I guess, from Heaven to visit with me tonight to give me courage and inspiration like she always has. . . .  I thank God for June Carter. I love her with all my heart.” Johnny Cash died four months later of complications from diabetes.

Despite his bad boy image, Cash never served time in prison although he did spend a number of one-nighters in jail for misdemeanours. He wore all black, he said, “on behalf of the poor and hungry, the prisoner who has long paid for his crime, and those who have been betrayed by age or drugs.” It was also easier, he said, to keep clean on the thousands of road trips.

Okay, the show: created by Richard Maltby Jr., conceived by William Meade,  with orchestrations by Steven Bishop and Jess Lisenby. The setup is a little confusing. Six singers/musicians: Devon Busswood, Frankie Cottrell, Daniel Deorksen, Tainui Kuru, Patrick Metzger and Caitriona Murphy. Cottrell, in the iconic black pants, vest, long coat and Stetson, seems to be Cash looking back on himself as a young man while Kuru is young Johnny Cash. Murphy is Cash’s mother, his schoolteacher and various other characters who figured in Cash’s life. Busswood is Vivian and June. Deorksen and Metzger are members of Cash’s band that ended up in the Grand Ole Opry. At times they are all playing, all singing: acoustic guitar, electric guitar, fiddle, banjo, mandolin, piano, percussion, washboard and autoharp. Maybe more.

Briefly and confusingly, they are all prisoners in Folsom Prison rattling chains or hammering steel. This scenario is only there to feature a few songs about prisons and prisoners.

Highlights include “Ring of Fire”, “Five Feet High and Rising”, “Jackson”, “Going To Memphis”, “A Boy Named Sue” and the audience favourite sung by Devon Busswood, “ I’ve Been Everywhere”. Cottrell, with his rich deep baritone, does a fine job of portraying Johnny Cash.

Patrick Rizzotti provides a go-everywhere set: a planked interior with shelves packed with knicknacks and a 50s-style beat-up convertible stage right. Lighting designer Robert Sondergaard keeps things looking  country vintage but pulls out the stops for a lightning storm and ensuing flood that nearly wipes out the Cash family’s farm. Costume designer Jessica Oostergo has a heyday with white and black Stetsons, tons of fringe on red and white jackets and a swirly white dress on June Carter Cash.

What I did learn from this Arts Club production is that Cash’s music is not my music. But it’s hard not to admire a musician who had such an impact on the industry. He rubbed shoulders with the likes of Bob Dylan, the Beatles, Elvis Presley, Kris Kristofferson and all the greats of his period. He was an advocate for the poor, the underprivileged, Native Americans, the addicted and the wrongly accused. He struggled again and again with addiction. He wrote thousands of songs, recorded hundreds of albums.

He viewed himself as a complicated and contradictory man and, according to Wikipedia, has been deemed the philosopher-prince of American country music. Attention must be paid.

Of the countless awards he won, I wonder how (from his place in the Heaven he so firmly believed in) he would view this posthumous recognition:  in 2015, a new species of black tarantula was identified near Folsom Prison and named Aphonopelma johnnycashi in his honor. How’s that for a fitting award for The Man in Black?

 

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