Living the Legacy—Rosanne Cash on Celebrating Her Father and Curating Her Own Musical Story

When talking to Rosanne Cash, it’s hard to avoid the word legacy. (For the record, she said it first, in the second exchange of our Q&A below.) And what a legacy she represents, not only by virtue of her lineage—daughter of one American musical icon, Johnny Cash, and stepdaughter of another, June Carter Cash—but through her own work as a musician. Over a 45-year, 18-album career, Cash has built an estimable reputation for herself. Much like her predecessor Emmylou Harris and her contemporaries Nanci Griffith and Lucinda Williams, she has always gravitated toward something rawer, less sentimental, and more singer-songwriter–focused than much of the music that ruled the country airwaves of the 1970s and ’80s: a style that decades later would come to be called Americana. 

For the past couple of years, Cash has been heavily involved in the management of that reputation and that legacy. The results can now be viewed by all in Rosanne Cash: Time Is a Mirror, a retrospective exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville that opened in December 2024 and runs through March 2026. This long walk through Cash’s personal and professional history is chock-full of priceless artifacts—including, of course, guitars (more on those in this article’s sidebar). 

In conjunction with the exhibit, there’s also a new two-CD best-of on the market, Rosanne Cash: The Essential Collection. It’s just one of several archival releases we should be seeing over the coming years on RumbleStrip Records, the label Cash recently founded with her partner in music and life for more than three decades, guitarist/songwriter/producer John Leventhal. After starting RumbleStrip, Cash acquired the master tapes to all the recordings she’d made for Columbia Records over 17 years; that catalog includes classic albums like Seven Year Ache (1981), King’s Record Shop (1987), and Interiors (1990).

Last but by no means least, Cash took a hands-on role in developing two new limited-edition Gibson Custom acoustic guitars: the Johnny Cash SJ-200, modeled after a pair of Super Jumbos that the company built for the Man in Black in the late 1950s, and the Rosanne Cash J-185, which, although inspired by her eminent father’s guitar, is very much its own instrument. 

Cash spoke about these subjects and more in a warm and insightful interview with Acoustic Guitar, conducted via Zoom, from her home in New York City.

I’m presuming that the signature models were something that Gibson approached you about rather than an idea you came up with. 

I would have never thought of such a thing [laughs].

Was the idea always to do two models, one for you and one for your dad?

Yeah, they wanted to do a reissue of his and a release of mine at the same time. They thought it would be cool to do that with me at this point in my life and my career. It took me a minute to come around to it. In the beginning, I wasn’t sure. Then the more I talked to John [Leventhal] about it, I thought, that’s really a beautiful idea. My dad and I are the only father and daughter in the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, and this kind of was on a par with that. It just made me feel like, yeah, this legacy is important to own and step into. And it was a beautiful way to do it. 

I didn’t want my guitar to be exactly like my dad’s, obviously. And John and I, after much discussion, both between the two of us and with [Gibson senior director of entertainment relations] Peter Leinheiser and [Gibson director of acoustic guitar sales and marketing] Robi Johns, came up with a design that suited me better. The J-185, which my model is based on, is just a better size for me.

I can’t really see you playing a Super Jumbo like your dad.

No. I’m only five-four. It wouldn’t make sense. So this size is perfect. I’ve already taken it on the road and been playing it live; it sounds phenomenal. 

You know, my dad’s model is an aggressive guitar, and I say that fondly. It comes at you: the color, the script, the size. And I wanted something that was more feminine and subtle, the honey tone and CASH just done in that simple font, and the curves on the pickguard. I went back and forth with them many times about the shape of the pickguard. His pickguard is very angular, and it covers a lot of real estate. I wanted something smaller that had curves in it rather than points and angles.

My soundman really likes the sound of this Gibson live. It cuts through, but it’s also warm. It’s very well balanced. They put a [L.R. Baggs] pickup in it. I don’t really know that much about pickups, to tell you the truth, but John felt like this was the best one for me. 

Was John involved in the design of the guitar?

He suggested the woods [flame maple body, Sitka spruce top, mahogany neck, rosewood fretboard]. You know, he’s got over a hundred guitars, he knows a lot about guitars, and he’s somewhat of a luthier himself. He felt that those would be the best woods for that size guitar and for how I play, and he was right. He also had to pull me back from the ledge when I wanted too much mother-of-pearl on it.

But mother-of-pearl is so nice and shiny!

Yes! But I love how much is in there now. And he’s actually the one who suggested the J-185 shape and style. Of course, when you design it, it always looks beautiful. Then you’re waiting for the actual guitar to arrive, and there’s that scary moment of “Oh God, it looks great, I hope it sounds great.” But it did, from the first strum. 

Those two SJ-200s that Gibson made for your dad in the ’50s—where are they now?

One of them is in the Country Music Hall of Fame. And my sister had the other one for quite some time. I believe she still does. I don’t know if she’s holding onto it, or if she’s going to donate it somewhere or what. I’m a little embarrassed that I don’t know exactly [laughs].

He got those guitars when you were just a youngster, so they must be resonant in your early memory. 

Oh gosh, yes. That guitar was my dad. It was so identifiable with him. You think of him and you think of that guitar. You’re right, I don’t have a memory of it not being in existence. 

Over the years, you’ve spoken and written eloquently about what the acoustic guitar means to you. I remember some fine words you contributed to the catalog of the Early American Guitars exhibit at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2014. I’m curious about whether the acoustic guitar always meant something to you. I know you were ambivalent for a while about going into the family business, for want of a better term. Were you ambivalent about the tools of the trade as well?

Well, I didn’t want to learn guitar in the beginning. It just seemed my dad’s province, and why would I step into that? It was a big shadow. But there is something so resonant and mystical to me about an acoustic guitar, the shape of the guitar, the sound of the guitar and the image of it slung across my dad’s back. There’s just something about love in that, in that image and the feel of that.

And, like you said, it’s the family business. It connects me to the past. It connects me to the future—because my son [Jakob Leventhal] is a great musician—and it connects me to my husband. I’ll never be as good a player as my husband. I’ll never be as good a player as my son, who has a really refined sense of harmonics. But I am what I am and I can accompany myself, and I love the guitar so much that that’s the important thing to me. 

When and how did you decide that you wanted to learn guitar after all?

I was writing songs before I got to that point. I was writing poetry and I wanted to learn how to put it to music. Then I went on the road with my dad when I was 18, and the Carter Family was on the road with him, and Carl Perkins. Carl was always sitting in the dressing room noodling when it wasn’t his time to be onstage. The Carter women were there too, and I wanted to learn those Carter Family songs, so Helen in particular taught me how to chord. She had the most patience with me. So I learned G, C, and D, and then I learned the Carter Family songs that were just three chords: “Banks of the Ohio,” “Black Jack David,” some of the others. 

Once I started, I was obsessed with becoming better, and then it’s a matter of refining. It took years, but now I can accompany John pretty well, because we do a duo show and he sounds like a band. You know, I’m not ever going to be a great guitar player. I am in love with it. 

Although I have to tell you one thing: I was talking to T Bone Burnett once. He’s a dear friend of mine for many, many years, and I played him a demo of some song I wrote, and I was playing guitar on it. I said, “Just overlook it. I’m not a great guitar player.” He goes, “You’re not a great guitar player, but you’re a great guitar player”—because I could accompany myself so well. That’s what he meant. 

It all depends on the context, right? 

Exactly. It’s what you use it for.

In the promotional video that Gibson shot for the new signature models, you mention finding an old patch that belonged to your dad, which became a regular part of your live performances. Could you say a little more about that? 

After he died, I inherited the desk that was in his office, this beautiful little antique desk. I went through the drawers and this white patch with black lettering [spelling out CASH] was in there. It had been on his Air Force uniform. And it was so touching to me that he had saved it for so many years. I just had it sewn directly onto my guitar strap. It took one of those tailors that sew boots and things, because it was heavy and hard to attach to the strap. And I had it on the road for years. Then I had a dream that it got stolen when I was on the road, and I woke up kind of shaken. I went to my tour manager and said, “I’ve got to take the strap off the road,” and he said, “Oh, thank God. I worry about it all the time.” So I took it home.

When I was talking to Peter and Robi at Gibson about putting my name on the pickguard [of the new J-185]and what kind of font should be used, I said, “Well, I have this strap with my dad’s Air Force patch, and the font is just a very simple block.” We all thought, well, that’s the only font to use. So I took a lot of pictures of it and sent to them, and they copied it as closely as they could. And I just love it. In a way, it’s like an inheritance just in itself. 

It also relieves you of having to carry that strap around.

Yeah! The strap will be in the Hall of Fame exhibit. Do you know what’s so funny, though? When the curators came to my house, we went through a ton of stuff, and then they came back to pack everything up. That strap was the only thing I was worried about them transporting. Everything else, the awards and even the lyric books, I thought, well, okay. But I said, “If you lose the strap, it’s not replaceable in any way.” So they were very careful. 

That’s good. I also want to ask you about upcoming projects. In 2023 you put out an expanded 30th-anniversary edition of your album The Wheel. Was that the opening salvo of a full reissue campaign, now that you own the masters to all your Columbia records?

Yeah,they’re all coming back now. They’ll fall like dominoes [laughs]. I’m still signed to Blue Note—I owe them an album of original stuff, and we’re about halfway through making it right now. Talk about lending itself to acoustic guitar—it’s like swampy folk.

Is there anything you’ve done previously that you would liken the new material to?

I don’t know. It’s deeper and darker than [2015’s multiple Grammy winner] The River and the Thread, and more country-influenced than the last record [2018’s She Remembers Everything]. I really am loving it. And it’s like, I don’t know how much longer my voice is going to last. I was talking to Elvis Costello about this recently. He said, “I want to stop while my voice is still in great shape.” I said, “Oh, me too. I don’t want to be out there reaching for notes.”

How does all this recent retrospection—the Hall of Fame exhibit, the reissues, the work on the SJ-200—make you feel?

Well, if I’m not careful, it feels like an end-of-life review [chuckles]. So I’m trying to reframe it as not just looking backwards, but piecing out what’s in the future. I mean, I’m excited about the exhibit. I’m really excited about the guitar. And my guitar is brand new, even though it’s connected to an iconic guitar of my dad’s. So yes, I’m excited.

Cash guitars on display

The oldest instrument you’ll see at the Rosanne Cash: Time Is a Mirror exhibit in Nashville is a late 19th-century Martin parlor guitar with a remarkable pedigree. First it was owned by Maybelle Carter, matriarch of the legendary Carter Family and pioneer of the Carter scratch style of rhythm guitar playing. Next it went to Maybelle’s even more famous son-in-law Johnny Cash, who in turn passed it on to his daughter Rosanne. “It’s really precious,” Cash says of the tiny acoustic, before acknowledging that “it doesn’t sound that great right now. It does need some work, but I’m afraid to have it worked on because it’s so delicate.”

Also in the exhibit is a 1964 Gibson Dove, bought by John Leventhal in the early ’90s, that was Rosanne’s main road guitar for more than a decade. She gave the Dove to her daughter Carrie as a wedding present ten years ago, and one person who’s not happy about it being in the Hall of Fame is Carrie’s husband, Grammy-nominated producer/engineer Dan Knobler. “When I told him I needed to borrow the Dove, he asked, ‘How long are you taking it for?’” Cash recalls with a chuckle. “I said, ‘A year and a half.’ He goes, ‘A year and a half? Are you kidding me? It’s my favorite guitar in the studio.’ Well, he can still go visit it.”

Sharing floor space with the Dove is Cash’s next significant acoustic and first signature model, the Martin OM-28M Rosanne Cash, built in 2007. Number one in an edition of 48, this is the guitar that she’s holding on the cover of her 2009 album The List. Cash also owns the prototype, which she’s keeping at home. 

Two custom instruments from master luthier Danny Ferrington round out the gear portion of Time Is a Mirror. The first was commissioned for Cash by her ex-husband Rodney Crowell: “It’s a baby guitar, midnight blue with my name on it—so sweet-looking,” she says. The second was built at the behest of her dad. “That has a mushroom on it, of all things,” she notes. “I used to really like mushrooms, and he just thought that was so funny, so he had a mushroom Ferrington made for me.” As one does. —MR

This article originally appeared in the March/April 2025 issue of Acoustic Guitar magazine.