Rosanne Cash's newest release, The River and the Thread approaches masterpiece status. I know I included it on my latest list of albums I'd like to take to the other side...one of the troubling things for a lot of us is that we realize the South in a lot of ways represents the American Id and as such is part of all of us. We have to find out how to deal with it before the Id slaughters us all -- is it the food, water, reliance on religion, in-breeding or what the hell is going on there? Who wants iced tea so sweet and treacly it rots your teeth as you chew it? Who has NASCAR drivers tatooed on their private parts? Who would elect Ted Cruz, Mitch McConnell and the newest dingbat who things homosexuals should be purged from the Republican party?
Well Rosanne doesn't really try to answer those questions, but she might have some insights.
45 years later, I see that this matches the brilliance of "Ode to Billy Joe..." The album cover was a picture taken by Rosanne's husband and music director John Leventhal standing behind her looking down at the Tallahatchee River from the Tallahatchee bridge.
