In 1993, Grammy Award-winning singer and songwriter Rosanne Cash released her album “The Wheel.” To mark its 30th anniversary, Cash and her husband and longtime collaborator, a six-time Grammy-winning producer and songwriter, John Leventhal have remastered the album and are making a stop at the Savannah Music Festival.
“I had a clause in my contract with Sony when I made ‘The Wheel’ that the master recording would return to me after 30 years and that 30 years came up last year,” Cash stated. “It was a powerful feeling to get it back, you know, to actually own that record again. So, John and I formed a record label, remastered it for modern times and released it with some added bonuses and fun stuff. We’re just out celebrating it.”
“The Wheel 30th Anniversary Deluxe Edition” features the original, remastered album, a second live LP which includes Cash’s Austin City Limits performance from 1993, and a unique broadcast of her appearance on the Columbia Records Radio Hour. The album is about transformation and was the first album Cash recorded after relocating from Nashville to New York City. According to her, it was recorded during a transient time in her life when her marriage to Rodney Crowell was falling apart and marks the start of a lifelong creative and loving partnership with Leventhal.
“I was married and it was falling apart,” Cash said. “I didn’t know what was going to happen. The label at the time had not wanted to promote my last album. Everything was just falling apart in my life. I had met John…it wasn’t clear what place he was going to have in my life but I felt something very powerful for him. I started writing these songs and then I wrote the lyrics to ‘Seventh Avenue’ and asked him if he would write the music for it and that began a working relationship.”
Cash says she brought seven songs to Leventhal already completed - “The Wheel,” “Change Partners,” “Sleeping in Paris,” “You Won’t Let Me In,” “From the Ashes,” “Roses in the Fire,” and “If There’s a God on my Side.”
“I told him they were 'elemental,' full of references to the natural world: wind, fire, rain, moon, snow. I wasn’t even sure what I was talking about when I said it, but I had noticed that I was using a lot of nature metaphors, many of them violent. He sort of cocked his head, a little confused, and said, ‘Okay. But are they good songs?’ I think he was a little clueless that a lot of the songs were about him.”
One song on the album “The Truth About You,” is about Leventhal and hits very close to Cash’s heart.
“It was written before we were together and you know just couldn’t get past ‘how is this going to work?’ We were both trying to extricate ourselves from previous lives so it took awhile. Our story did not happen overnight…it was complicated.”
Together Cash and Leventhal have birthed seven albums including the three-time Grammy Winning “The River & the Thread,” “Black Cadillac,” “The List,” 10 Song Demo,” “Rules of Travel,” and “She Remembers Everything” in addition to dozens of side projects and countless live shows.
“When we co-write I usually give him lyrics or at least partial lyrics and he starts writing the music. We go back and forth until it’s done. When we’re in the studio there’s a lot of arguing and hashing things out,” she said laughing. “We have a pretty smooth working relationship now, it took us a while to figure that out. But, I love working with him and I think he loves working with me too.”
Leventhal has been a Grammy winner in five consecutive decades, including as a co-writer and producer on Shawn Colvin’s “Sunny Came Home.” He released his most recent solo album “Rumble Strip” in January.
“His album is very beautiful,” Cash said. “It draws in a lot of his influences and it’s not anything predictable. It’s a really eclectic record.”
Although remastering the tracks on the “The Wheel” was very well-rounded for Cash, she says that wasn’t the only wheel that spun full circle.
“It was really special to go back to Central Park with Pam Springsteen who shot the original cover to the same location and shoot again with her 30 years later. It was like connecting the past and future…she had never done anything like that and I had never done anything like that. It was really special.”
