R is for Rules of Travel

Before I had an iPod or a phone that stored thousands of songs, I kept about a dozen CDs at the office and just kept them in rotation. Roseanne Cash’s Rules of Travel was in heavier rotation than the others.

Now that I do have a phone that stores most of my music, and everything else is up in the cloud so I can download and listen to it whenever I want, these songs are still in heavy rotation, as they’re on several playlists. Most albums – even really great ones – have one or two tracks I’m sort of ambivalent about. I love every track on this record.

Roseanne Cash is a very successful singer/songwriter. Critics love her. She’s won multiple Grammys. She’s in the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. She’s had multiple gold records and 11 number 1 Country hits. She’s also written and edited books, contributed to magazines, and collaborated with everyone from her father, Johnny Cash, to Stephen King.

This was her first recording of new music in seven years due to health issues, and included duets with Sheryl Crowe, Steve Earle, and her father, Johnny Cash. It’s full of songs about love – mostly love gone wrong. She has a fantastic melancholy to her voice that’s on full effect here.

The duet with Johnny Cash, a song called “September When it Comes” is a reflection on mortality.

“So when the shadows link them,
And burn away the clouds.
They will fly me, like an angel,
To a place where I can rest.
When this begins, I’ll let you know,
September when it comes.”

Every good country record has to have at least one song that makes you cry. The record was released in March 2003. Johnny Cash died that September.