The River & The Thread

• Shrink-wrapped

Produced by and co-written with John Leventhal, this album marks Cash s Decca/ Blue Note debut. The River & The Thread is Rosanne Cash s first album in more than four years. Cash wrote the album s 11 original songs with her longtime collaborator (and husband) John Leventhal, who also served as producer, arranger and guitarist. With The River & The Thread , Cash turns her attention to American lives and locations. The album richly evokes the Southern landscape physical, musical, emotional and examines the indelible impressions it has made on our own collective culture and on Cash. The River & The Thread is sweeping in its breadth, capturing a unique, multi-generational cast of characters, from a Civil War soldier off to fight in Virginia to a New Deal-era farmer in Arkansas to a contemporary Mobile, AL couple. While Cash and Leventhal found inspiration in the many musical styles associated with the South swampy Delta blues, gospel, Appalachian folk, country and rock, to name a few this is a completely contemporary collection. Cash s crystalline voice and Leventhal s compelling guitar work are at the heart of the album, and they bring in additional instrumentation to suit the tone of each particular song, from the delicate orchestral passages of Night School, (which nods to Stephen Foster, who also had a deep affection for the South) to the ghostly keyboards of the album closer Money Road . ‘If I never make another album I will be content, because I made this one’, says Cash of The River & The Thread , which is a marked departure from her earlier works.