Roseanne Cash Telling It Like It Was

Roseanne Cash has just released an album called The List based on a list of classic country songs that her father, Johnny Cash, made for her "in an effort to expand [her] teenage taste in music beyond the Beatles."

She sat down with Deborah Solomon for a New York Times interview a few weeks ago, and she didn't pull punches:

Did you have a good relationship with [your father]?

It’s hard to be close to a drug addict when they’re active. He was erratic and withdrawn. But when I was 17, he said, Come with me, and I left the day after I graduated high school, went on the road with him. It was wonderful. He was clean and sober by that time. That’s when he wrote the list for me, on the bus.

I haven't heard the album yet, but Elvis Costello duets on "Heartache by the Numbers"; Bruce Springsteen on "Sea of Heartbreak"; Jeff Tweedy on "Long Black Veil"; and Rufus Wainwright on Merle Haggard's "Silver Wings." Wow! And then Roseanne sings "Girl from the North Country," "Take These Chains from My Heart," "Miss the Mississippi and You," too! Sounds like a winner so far.