In one sense, Rosanne Cash has been writing her memoir since she was a teenager, passing on her most private thoughts through dozens of songs over 15 albums. Cash doesn’t sing on her records as much as she simply spills over, letting the highs, lows and anxious moments of her famously led life overflow into her compositions. Fans know her well.
Still, putting together an actual autobiography for a publisher required a different set of skills. Prose is, as she puts it, “a bigger forest” than songwriting. Finding your way through it takes more time.
And while Cash’s musical material, drawn largely from her own experiences — most notably (and wrenchingly) the death of her father, Johnny Cash, and her divorce from singer Rodney Crowell — certainly rings true, its not necessarily factual.
“I didn’t feel like I could take poetic license” with the autobiography, said Cash, who signs books Thursday evening at the Tattered cover in LoDo and performs a concert Friday night at the Denver Botanic Gardens.
It helps that Cash, 56, has kept diaries her whole life, though there were other sources. Few families can match the level to which the Cash clan has had its history chronicled in the media. There were also sisters to coordinate the facts with. “I even checked my own Wikipedia page,” Cash said.
She lays out many of her personal findings in “Composed”: her curious childhood with a father who was too often absent from the action, her own rebellion from her family and country music, her true artistic awakenings, which started stirring on the 1990 album “Interiors.”
In some places, the book is full of tiny details, like what she wore to her mother’s funeral. In other places, it stays mum. A reader never really learns why she and Crowell broke up; she seems to go easy on her dad, who died in 2003, a man she clearly adored and misses.
Cash stands by what is in there, and what isn’t.
From the start, she said, she warned publisher Viking Press that she had no intention of hurling insults or revealing dark secrets. Settling scores in public is undignified.
“I didn’t dish dirt. I didn’t want to cause anyone pain,” she said.
“I hate those kind of books that are attacks or where the writer is a victim.”
What’s left for the reader is context, and plenty of it. Just out in paperback, the tales are well-rendered by Cash, who has authored short stories, a children’s book and many a thoughtful newspaper and magazine column. We learn where her head was when she made certain albums, how she reconciled with her own legacy, some — though not too much — about raising her children.
At one point, she writes intimately about her awkward relationship with her own voice. Possessing neither the croon of a country singer nor the technical skills of a pop diva, Cash has had her insecurities. She made her peace with it during an illness that almost cost her the ability to sing. It is what it is, and ultimately, it has served as a powerful communicator for her art.
Discussing it was embarrassing, she said, but necessary. And when readers respond with comments that she has a perfect instrument, “That feels embarrassing, too.”
But Cash is happy with her confessions, and they fit into the turn her career has made, looking back these days rather than looking forward. Her last album “The List,” featured classic country songs, and they make up the heart of her touring act these days.
The songs were recommendations from her father. She’s happy to have his list, she said, and her unique ability to sing it.rosanne cash Book signing: 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Tattered Cover, 16th and Wynkoop streets. for more info Concert: 7 p.m. Friday, Denver Botanic Gardens, 1007 York St.;
Ray Rinaldi: 303-954-1540 or rrinaldi@denverpost.com
NONFICTION
Composed by Rosanne Cash
