Gig review: Rosanne Cash

Published on Wednesday 26 January 2011 18:41

ROSANNE CASH CITY HALLS, GLASGOW ****

THE eldest daughter of Johnny Cash and his first wife Vivian Liberto, Rosanne Cash has carried one of country music's proudest dynasties gracefully for over 30 years as a recording artist, while gently distancing herself from her old man's shadow (she studied drama in her youth and has lately enjoyed a successful career as an author).

Success evidently hasn't been something she's treated as a birthright, and there was a simplicity and humbleness to this show which reflected that.

Cash's visit to Celtic Connections, which included an appearance at Monday's Bob Dylan tribute night, comes in support of her latest, Grammy-nominated album The List, which is based on selections from a sheet of 100 essential country songs that her dad passed to when she was a teenager, by way of introduction to the family business.

Her voice was gruff from a cold – "I sound a little like my father tonight," she croaked – but it hardly mattered; her style isn't that of a Nashville belter, but an understated vocalist adept at boiling songs down to their essentials. Accompanied only by her husband, gifted guitarist John Leventhal, she imbued the likes of Motherless Children and Dylan's Girl From the North Country with warmth and subtlety.

The Cash clan trace their roots back to Fife, so performing on Burns night was marked by a charming duet of My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose with Roddy Hart. Another, related great country dynasty, the Carter family, was invoked during the final number, a splendidly bittersweet Bury Me Under the Weeping Willow.