Photo courtesy Modlin Center for the Arts
For so many years, Rosanne Cash refused to play the Cash card, establishing her own distinctive musical voice instead of mining the easy nostalgia of being Johnny Cash's daughter. In the 1980s, she crossed over from country to pop with an ear-pleasing twang that satisfied traditionalists as well as a larger audience — the chart-topping King's Record Shop is still her finest album. Cash's restless spirit soon found her exploring the chameleonic possibilities of the singer-songwriter, dabbling in baroque pop, Beatles covers and confessional folk, all while battling substance addiction, throat polyps, brain cancer and the aftermath of divorce. Starting with Black Cadillac in 2006, followed five years later with The List — a collection of songs her daddy taught her — Rosanne began to look back at where she came from; her new The River and the Thread is an ambitious concept album about what it means to grow up in the South, and to be a Cash. Rosanne Cash and her band will bring classics old and new to the University of Richmond's Modlin Center for the Arts on March 12. 7:30 p.m. Children. $22, adults $45. 289-8980 or modlin.richmond.edu.
