Rosanne Cash: Kentucky Author Forum

The only time I've seen Rosanne Cash live was in the mid-90's in NYC at the Bitter End or the Bottom Line (I can never get those two straight). She was playing in support of her album 10 Song Demo, but all I really knew about her was that she was Johnny Cash's daughter and that was good enough for me.

I must have been feeling flush at the time. After all, I was working three jobs just to make rent and ramen noodles at my East Village apartment. There was never extra money for things like concerts at clubs, unless my friends were in the band and my name was on the list.  And as I was living with a musician (sometimes two or three depending on who needed a place to crash), that wasn't all that unusual.

But I was definitely not on the list for Rosanne Cash, and I'm relatively sure I'd never heard her music before that night.  But it was love at first listen.

And from that night for the next couple of years-- a move to Tampa, then a move to Baton Rouge, then a move to New Orleans-- 10 Song Demo was on regular rotation in my cd player. Some song or another from the album made it on every mix tape/mix cd I made for every boy or man I dated. I vaguely remember wallowing over a broken heart listening to "Price of Temptation" on repeat and singing my heart out through sobs.

I can still sing the entire album by heart.

Flash forward a decade and a half. Now @RosanneCash is probably my favorite celebrity I'm following on Twitter.  From her mock feud with @SusanOrlean about who exactly is Mrs. Colin Firth to her Hurricane Irene tweets from "Zone B" in Manhattan, I've fallen even more in love with her. She's smart, funny, and responsive to her fans.

I enter into evidence her tweet from ten minutes ago:

rosannecash Flipping channels: Miss Universe 2011, Tea Party debate, Hoarders. I'm confused. Which ones are the potential world leaders? 9/12/11 9:42 PM

And now she's coming to the Kentucky Author Forum at the Kentucky Center in two weeks in support of her memoir, Composed (which I tried to pick up at Carmichael's this weekend, but it was nowhere to be found).

The last Kentucky Author Forum featured Billy Collins interviewed by Garrison Keillor, and it was utterly delightful.  As I mentioned in that blog post, both Collins and Keillor are polarizing figures, but I adore both of them.  This time, the interviewer is Nick Spitzer, host of American Routes, one of my favorite NPR music programs.  

I'm not on the list again for this Rosanne Cash show.  And instead of working three jobs, I work one and some odd jobs to make mortgage and a more well-balanced meal plan.  But that one job yields only a teacher's salary, so $20 is still a bit steep for an hour-long visit with Ms. Cash.  ($100 gets you a VIP experience including dinner with Cash and Spitzer.)

But I will be there.

On a side note, last night Roommate and I saw Le Petomane's 5 THINGS, finally.  I can't recommend it highly enough.  I desperately wanted the show to be good after spending a couple of hours with the actor-writers for my preview for The Louisville Paper; I liked all three of them so much, it would have been awful if the show had been just so-so.  Trust me, it is not.  It is, as I'd hoped, brilliant.  And you'll be so sorry if you miss it.  There are four more shows-- Sep 14-17.  Go go go.

The relavent tangent is this: 5 THINGS is a play that is a play on the whole "desert island discs" concept.  If I were stranded on a desert island and could only have five albums to keep me company, 10 Song Demo, would be one of them. Even though, as the characters in 5 THINGS realize eventually, all of the songs are already with me... in here. *taps her noggin*