Johnny Cash’s Son, John Carter, Says New Posthumous Album ‘Songwriter’ Took So Long To Come Out Because He Wanted To “Follow His Father’s Wishes”

How cool is it that we got new Johnny Cash music in 2024? It's definitely a reason to be grateful, especially considering the long story behind the project that ultimately culminated with the record being released. Songwriter may sound like a regular ol' Cash album now, but there's more than meets the eye (and ears) as to how it came to be. For a period in the early 1990's, the great Johnny Cash was without a label at all. He eventually signed to Rick Rubin’s label, American, but during the years in between where he was an independent artist, Cash recorded quite a few demos of his own of songs he wrote by himself at what used to be Nashville’s LSI Studios. When he signed on with Rubin, those recordings were basically abandoned and didn't come over along with Johnny Cash. Which brings us to more recent times, where John Carter Cash rediscovered the stripped-down tapes, which essentially consisted of Cash singing with an acoustic guitar, along with some other band elements. The tracks were originally recorded in 1993, then shelved, but would it be too crazy of an idea to give the songs new life and release them to country music fans? John Carter Cash didn't think so, which is why he went through with Johnny Cash's posthumous album Songwriter . John Carter Cash explained that in more detail in an interview with Premier Guitar , and revealed that it was only until recently that the technology existed to pull out the most important parts of the "lost" songs: "My father was at a point in his 'record company career' where he was in transition, and so there was not to be another PolyGram record. This is right before he went to Rick Ruben. So in some ways, these recordings fell through the cracks. I knew of the existence of the record because I was in some of the sessions. It made sense for us now to look at it as, 'There's my father's vocal track and his guitar.' I really was hoping to go back to the heart of it all being that, being just the bare essence." That means that John Carter Cash only moved forward with the project when they were successfully able to isolate Johnny's vocals and guitar playing from everything else in the original recordings, much like how the Beatles recently released a new song after they were able to recover John Lennon's vocals from a tape recorder. As to why Songwriter took so long to see the light of day, a promise that John Carter Cash vowed to fulfill on his father's behalf presumably delayed the project. You certainly wouldn't want to rush something like this, and it seems as though John Carter only produced the album when the time was right: "The music was good on the original recordings. And I've had people say, 'Release the original recordings!' Really, I followed my father's wishes with this, and that's about as far as I want to put it." And we'll all respect those wishes, whatever they may be. All that matters is the project is now out for all Johnny Cash fans to enjoy. Though there are some that argue new albums from deceased artists shouldn't ever happen, I'd like to think that John Carter's father would be proud of how this one turned out. You can hear more from Johnny Cash's son in the interview below: https://youtu.be/eDQCePfVCFU?si=e2nENdDxt-2dwlgK&t=57