NORTH ADAMS, Mass. - On Tuesday, Rosanne Cash's new 36-song, double-CD set, "The Essential Rosanne Cash," was released. On Saturday, she stepped into the spotlight at MASS MoCA's Hunter Center and explained that the compilation of her best work meant two things. "A, I'm old," she told the sold-out crowd. "And B, I've done a lot of work."
She may have been feeling old, considering that Tuesday was also her 56th birthday, but the truth of the matter is that she never sounded better, more intimate or more confident on stage.
Of course, she played a few of her classic tunes - including "Seven Year Ache," "The Wheel" and John Stewart's "Runaway Train" - as well as her dad's "Tennessee Flat Top Box," but it's obvious that Cash doesn't spend a lot of time looking back at the past. And the vast majority of songs in her Saturday night repertoire were drawn from her two most recent albums, 2006's "Black Cadillac" and 2009's "The List."
Accompanied only by her husband-guitarist John Leventhal, Cash only occasionally picked up the guitar herself, preferring to simply stand at the microphone and sing. And she sounded magnificent.
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