CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS AT PENN STATE ONSTAGE © Clay Patrick McBride Patrick © Clay Today’s performance is sponsored by Richard and Sally Kalin COMMUNITY ADVISORY COUNCIL The Community Advisory Council is dedicated to strengthening the relationship between the Center for the Performing Arts and the community. Council members participate in a range of activities in support of this objective. Nancy VanLandingham, chair Bonnie Marshall Lam Hood, vice chair Pieter Ouwehand Melinda Stearns Judy Albrecht Lillian Upcraft William Asbury Pat Williams Lynn Sidehamer Brown Nina Woskob Philip Burlingame Deb Latta student representatives Eileen Leibowitz Brittany Banik Ellie Lewis Stephanie Corcino Christine Lichtig Jesse Scott Mary Ellen Litzinger CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS AT PENN STATE presents Rosanne Cash The River & The Thread Rosanne Cash, vocals and guitar John Leventhal, guitars, vocals, and music director Kevin Barry, guitars Glenn Patscha, keyboards Zev Katz, bass Dan Rieser, drums and percussion 7:30 p.m. Thursday, April 9, 2015 Eisenhower Auditorium Tonight’s program will be announced from the stage. The concert includes one intermission. sponsors Richard and Sally Kalin media sponsor BIG FROGGY 101 Some photographs and moving images have been generously provided by: James Jaworowicz and The Jack Robinson Archive, Memphis, Tennessee; Dave Anderson, Little Rock, Arkansas; Oxford American, A Magazine of the South; and The Library of Congress. Rosanne Cash appears by arragement with Opus 3 Artists and Cross Road Management. The Center for the Performing Arts at Penn State receives state arts funding support through a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. © Clay Patrick McBride Patrick © Clay THE RIVER & THE THREAD With The River & The Thread, Rosanne Cash has added the next chapter to a remarkable period of creativity. In 2015, Cash was awarded three Grammy Awards. The River & The Thread won for Best Americana Album and the track “A Feather’s Not a Bird,” which she co-wrote with her longtime collaborator (and husband) John Leventhal, won for Best American Roots Performance and Best American Roots Song. Her previous two albums, Black Cadillac (2006) and The List (2009), were both nominated for Grammys. The List—an exploration of es- sential songs as selected and given to her by her father Johnny Cash—was named Album of the Year by the Americana Music As- sociation. In addition, her bestselling 2010 memoir, Composed, was described by the Chicago Tribune as “one of the best accounts of an American life you will likely ever read.” Rosanne Cash, who has charted twenty-one top-forty country singles, including eleven number ones, wrote all of the new album’s songs with Leventhal, who also served as producer, arranger, and guitarist. Featuring a long list of guests—from young guns like John Paul White (The Civil Wars) and Derek Trucks to legends such as John Prine and Tony Joe White—The River & The Thread is a kalei- doscopic examination of the geographic, emotional, and historic landscape of the American South. The album’s unique sound, which draws from country, blues, gospel, and rock, reflects the soulful mix of music that traces its history to the region. “When we started forming the idea for this record,” Cash says, “it felt like it was going to be the third part of a trilogy—with Black Cadillac mapping out a territory of mourning and loss and then The List celebrating my family’s musical legacy. I feel this record ties past and present together through all those people and places in the South I knew and thought I had left behind.” The literal journey toward The River & The Thread began when Arkansas State University contacted Rosanne Cash about its inter- est in purchasing her father’s boyhood home in Dyess, Arkansas. A series of benefit concerts to get the project started featured artists such as George Jones, Kris Kristofferson, Dierks Bentley, Willie Nel- son, and The Civil Wars. While helping with the purchase and renovation of the Dyess house, Cash and Leventhal took several extended trips through the South- ern states—visiting William Faulkner’s home; Dockery Farms, the plantation where Howlin’ Wolf and Charley Patton worked and sang; and Natchez and the blues trail. “The thread” in the album’s title comes from Rosanne Cash’s friend Natalie Chanin, a master seamstress in Florence, Alabama. “Nata- lie was teaching me to sew,” Cash says, “and she said, ‘You have to learn to love the thread,’ in this beautiful accent, and it hit me as an enormous metaphor.” The line appears in the album’s opener, “A Feather’s Not a Bird,” a deeply swampy shuffle that Cash describes as “a mini-travelogue of the South and of the soul.” The journeys repeatedly took Cash and Leventhal through Memphis, Tennessee, the city of her birth and a place that had a profound impact on the album’s direction. They visited the studio of Sun Records and watched their son strum a guitar in the same room where her father cut his first record. “The connection to Memphis is powerful and deep,” she says. As the themes and subjects of The River & The Thread emerged, Cash gradually envisioned how she wanted to connect the dots into a cohesive work, connecting her own story to the rich history of a region. “I guess I weave in and out of these songs, in a way,” she says. “I don’t think I had a complete map of it, but John really became a guide. We would write something and say, ‘This is part of the geography, both emotional and physical.’” Cash acknowledges that, even with fifteen albums and four books behind her, it was difficult to start writing songs again after spend- ing several years immersed in the masterful compositions featured on The List. “You cannot keep that in your mind, except as an inspi- ration, a standard to aspire to,” she says. “To say, ‘I’m going to write a song as great as ‘Take These Chains’—you’re not. So the only way to not get dismantled by that is to stay connected to your own muse and immerse yourself completely in what you’re doing, so it can be as rich and authentic as it can possibly be. That’s all you can hope for.” With The River & The Thread, she has risen to that challenge and emerged with a beautiful and haunting album, one of the finest works in an extraordinary career. WHO’S WHO JOHN LEVENTHAL (guitars, Carpenter, Susan Tedeschi, vocals, and music director) is a Mighty Sam McClain, Sarah Grammy Award-winning musi- McLaughlin, and the Consuelo cian, producer, songwriter, and Candelaria group. Along with recording engineer who has acoustic and electric guitars, produced albums for Rosanne Barry has disciplines in lap steel, Cash, Michelle Branch, Shawn pedal steel, Dobro, bass, and Colvin, Joan Osborne, Marc high-strung requinto. Cohn, Rodney Crowell, and many others. As a musician, GLENN PATSCHA (keyboards), he has worked with all of the who was born in Winnipeg, above as well as artists such Manitoba, moved to Louisiana as Elvis Costello, Dolly Parton, in 1989 to study with Ellis Mar- Willie Nelson, Jackson Browne, salis at the University of New Emmylou Harris, Bruce Hornsby, Orleans. He went on to play and and Charlie Haden. As a song- record with many New Orleans writer, he has had more than icons young and old such as 100 songs recorded by vari- Brian Blade, Nicholas Payton, ous artists. In 1998, he won the and Leroy Jones. A recording Grammys for Record and Song and touring stint with Marianne of the Year for producing and Faithfull reignited an interest co-writing “Sunny Came Home” in composing and songwriting. with Colvin. He lives with Cash, After moving to New York City his wife, and their children in in 1998, Patscha started the New York City. acclaimed band Ollabelle. T Bone Burnett signed the KEVIN BARRY (guitars), a multi- group to his Columbia Records instrumentalist based in Boston, imprint DMZ. Patscha has teaches guitar at the Berklee recorded and performed with College of Music and tours Levon Helm, Sheryl Crow, Bet- regularly with Rosanne Cash, tye Lavette, The Holmes Broth- Peter Wolf, Marc Cohn, and Ray ers, Cubanismo, Madeline Pey- LaMontagne. He has also per- roux, Roger Waters, Lizz Wright, formed and/or recorded with Ryan Adams, Willie Nelson, Jonatha Brooke, Mary Chapin Loudon Wainwright, and others. He scored the Sundance Grand between Jones and Green Day’s Jury Prize-winning film Sangre Billy Joe Armstrong. De Mi Sangre with Brian Cull- man, the award-winning Finnish MIRIAM NILOFA CROWE film Kukkulan Kuningas (On Thin (lighting designer and operator) Ice), and a number of short films designs regularly for Latin by photographer Mary Ellen Grammy- and Grammy-winner Mark and Martin Bell. Recently, Lila Downs, Ko-Ryo Dance Patscha has produced record- Theater, The Drilling Company, ings for The Holmes Brothers and Strindberg Rep. Her and Marc Cohn, plus a record recent projects include home/ with his new band The Big sick (The Assembly), Honky Bright with Fiona McBain (Olla- (Urban Stages), The Penalty belle) and Liz Tormes. (Apothetae), What it Means to Disappear Here (Ugly Rhino), ZEV KATZ (bass) first met and Gorilla (SATC), RescYou worked with Rosanne Cash in (Eckert+SorensonJolink), 1993 on her album The Wheel. Project RUIN (Carlye Eckert Katz has been a friend and and Lucie Baker), Bridesburg associate of John Leventhal’s (Miscreant Theater), Symphony since 1974. It is his pleasure to for the Dance Floor (Daniel be accompanying them in sup- Bernard Roumain), Life after port of The River & The Thread.