Fred Eaglesmith Teaches A Lesson On “Johnny Cash”
Fred Eaglesmith puts fresh-faced country music interlopers riding a popularity wave in their place in “Johnny Cash,” a song off of his 2012 release 6 Volts, and whose new video was just released this month. Eaglesmith chides the brittle, shallow understanding of Johnny Cash that starts with his American Recordings era, but overlooks his prolonged career struggles, and Johnny’s well-documented and deep religious devotion.
When the prevailing image of Johnny Cash in culture is one of him flipping the bird, the argument can be made that it’s the wholesale reduction of a man of such towering accomplishments and time-tested faith. At some point the imagery and cult-of-celebrity of Johnny Cash trumped the man himself, and society lost sight of his greatest contribution: his noble and charitable spirit.
Fred Eaglesmith is a Canadian-based singer-songwriter whose been touring and releasing albums for going on 35 years. Known for his banter between songs when performing live, he can be a great storyteller, as well as a social advocate in a similar vein as James McMurtry or Steve Earle. Eaglesmith’s subjects mostly rage from canonizing the mechanized world in songs about trains and tractors, to the tribulations of the family farm. The album 6 Volts is a stripped-down, lo-fi affair, with “Johnny Cash” capturing a very Neil Young & Crazy Horse vibe.
The message of “Johnny Cash” is pointed and poignant, but to play devil’s advocate, it’s also a little presumptuous to assume some Cash fans whose knowledge of him is more recent still don’t have a sincere understanding of the man and his music. Some of those Cash fans may have not been born in 1989, and is it a bad thing if heavy metal kids find themselves being drawn into Cash’s music, and country music by proxy?
It is if they do it from the rawness of the imagery or from his most recent burst of popularity that fails to fully encompass his entire body of work. That seems to be the lesson of “Johnny Cash.”
1 1/2 of 2 guns up.
March 30, 2013 @ 9:43 am
It seems to me Johnny was a man at war. Spiritual warfare against pride and humbleness. In the end pride lost.
March 30, 2013 @ 10:08 am
Man, I wasn’t even born in ’89. But I grew up listening to Cash. Had a good portion of his songs on cassette back in the 90’s, when I was a little kid. Mostly his religious stuff, as my family was ultra-catholic, but I managed to get ahold of Live At Folsom. Still have those tapes somewhere…
March 30, 2013 @ 10:19 am
Yes, and so are you less of a Cash fan just because you weren’t around to support him when few others did? I understand and appreciate the message Eaglesmith is trying to convey. I just wish he would have offered a little more clarification.
There could also be a completely different way to look at the song, to not take it so literal. As someone else pointed out, “Fred’s a poet and Johnny Cash is his Metaphor. This song has deeper, more profound meanings.”
March 30, 2013 @ 10:34 am
Definitely no less of a Cash fan.
Anyway, this song is definitely more complex than that. I’d say it’s a shot at all those people who buy the flipping of poster at Hot Topic without giving any of his stuff beyond Ring of Fire a listen, or the assholes who name drop him (cough aldean cough) without knowing anything. And hell, all the people who claim to “love” the greats, but who never play them.
March 30, 2013 @ 3:02 pm
I think what he’s saying here is that he rejects the “neck tattoo, mohawk, goth” type people embracing and assimilating into Cash’s and furthermore Real countries identity and culture. Country isn’t country anymore when this happens. Alot of these “former metalhead now honkey tonk crooner people” are basically a zombified version of honkey tonk. They don’t live a traditional country lifestyle, or hold traditional values. Hank3 is actually a country type person, even though he’s tattooed and plays metal. If you read and watch interviews of him, he grew up on a farm, takes care of animals, shoots guns, and has a survivalist attitude.The metal side of him is based around him liking to do sinful things as an “escape”. Too many of these other people are just as fake as a pop country singer.
March 31, 2013 @ 8:23 am
I can’t stand Johnny Cash. There, I said it. His music and his life are far overrated in my opinion. He seems to be the link between rock and roll and country and western culture. It that a bad thing? Well, I know many many metalheads who will say they don’t like country but they like Johnny Cash…To me, this doesn’t mean he is a gateway to country music for a wider audience. This means he is much less country than most other traditional country artists.
Most of his songs are like Wagonwheel to me. He is so over played and worshiped as a middle finger flippin’, druggin’, rebel I can’t stand to listen to one word of his songs.
As my dad would say: “I love country music, but I don’t like Johnny Cash”.
April 1, 2013 @ 12:05 pm
Its not necessary for a country artist to have to have grown up on a farm or have a hillbilly survivalist attitude. Thats the line of thinking that this current mainstream crop of artists wants everyone to think
April 8, 2013 @ 12:51 pm
Catholic? Please read John’ autobiography. Not many Catholics in rural Arkansas ….
March 30, 2013 @ 11:11 am
I normally don’t like judging other poeple’s taste in music, but I get very annoyed when people say “I hate country, but I love Johnny Cash” I honestly have heard this dozens of times.
Yes, this is kind of understandable to your average person who’s main exposure to country is Toby Keith and Taylor Swift, but I have found that almost every single person who says that thinks that they are somehow special for liking Johnny Cash and culturally superior to the imagined redneck country fans.
March 30, 2013 @ 12:07 pm
“I normally don”™t like judging other poeple”™s taste in music, but I get very annoyed when people say “I hate country, but I love Johnny Cash””
Bingo.
March 30, 2013 @ 11:48 am
I get what he’s saying and he makes a great point about a lot of the so-called “Johnny Cash fans” but it comes across as an unfair blanket statement to those who love heavy metal as well as Johnny Cash.
March 30, 2013 @ 11:52 am
What Rick Rubin did for Johnny Cash was a blessing and a curse. I love the American Recordings (all except volume 6 because it really felt like we were beating a dying race horse for one more go around of the track). The American recordings songs, the covers, the collaborations and imagery are my favorites of his catalogue. It made me fall in love with Johnny Cash and made me embrace my southern roots of growing up in Mississippi. I was a punk/indie music kid who would rebel against anything in the south except Cash..
Years later with a wife and two daughters, I have watched a ton of Cash films, purchased books, and read his autobiography. He led me to get into acts such as Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Springsteen, and then Drive By Truckers, Jason Isbell, Jamey Johnson, Steve Earle etc etc etc.. I love cash for that.
But Rubin reinvented Cash to this giant machine, and made money off his likeness. Cash was on his last leg in 1989, running on fumes. Cash had no choice really but to accept Rubins offer. It’s kind of the same way Jack Kerouac wrote about Neal Cassady in On the Road, Kerouac made him famous and for the rest of Neal’s life to his early death he had to live up to this incredible hype. Neal had to be larger than life the way the public wanted Cash to be the Outlaw..
In reality Cash was a simple man, in search of truth, sobriety, and just to be loved. He had his down falls and short comings, but he loved family and his wife. That’s the Cash I like to remember.
March 30, 2013 @ 1:09 pm
if there’s one song of his i don’t like,it’s that fuckin NIN track…
March 30, 2013 @ 4:54 pm
I watched the video posted above and didn’t really care for the song. Went to youtube and found a live version here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyF6fjcqIKg
Obviously going to be similar…it’s the same song but the live version rocks.
I dig it.
March 30, 2013 @ 6:06 pm
If I were to come on here and say i liked a band before they were popular and that i wish everyone else would jump off the bandwagon everyone here would call me a hipster… that seems like what he is doing.
I was 5 in 1989. And although i really like Cash, i hands down prefer his badass stuff to his religious stuff.
March 30, 2013 @ 9:06 pm
This seems to be a perpetual problem in our ‘scene.’ Look, I was a bit too young to like Cash in ’89 and honestly I didn’t really start to get interested until after his death (I didn’t like country until the early 2000s). Does this make me less of a fan? Maybe I don’t understand everything Johnny did but I’ll be damned if he isn’t one of the few people who can play a song and I immediately like it, even if I don’t understand the context and every single lyric. I don’t know a lot about his history and maybe I don’t get it, but I listen to him often and I enjoy his music.
You know, I really started thinking about this when Chet Phillipo wrote that article on things people need to know before becoming country. I knew some of the answers…other’s I didn’t. I’m sorry if I don’t know what Cash’s great grandmother’s neighbor’s dog’s favorite toy was; but I like his music. I don’t know how many pieces of duct tape are on Sheldon’s worn out boots; but I like his music. I didn’t know much about the Hank Williams story until years after I loved him; but all the while I loved his music. I know virtually nothing about Garth Brooks; but I don’t like his music.
Look, I love country music, but I am only one person with many interests. I cannot know everything about everyone. I have a limited capacity of knowledge and quite frankly not enough time to learn it all if I could. Be happy that someone likes good music. Be happier that you like the music on a deeper level and explain this to the others. There will always be people jumping on the bandwagon. Educate them and they may become our true allies. And stop feeling superior because you liked someone before or because you know exactly why the musician used the indefinite article in that one line in that song rather than using a definite article or noun. That’s the kind of stuff that splits us apart.
March 30, 2013 @ 11:43 pm
I’m only 19 years old and have only been listening to Johnny Cash since I was 13, but The Essential Johnny Cash album got me through one of the toughest periods of my adolescence. Since then I have almost totally lived and breathed Johnny’s music/literature all the way from 1955’s Sun singles to the American Recordings series.
I don’t think this song is very good and the message offends me a little bit, especially since the music video (which is confusing is its use of meaningless close ups and poorly edited) uses some one who “represents” a younger generation that is only aware of the reputation of Cash’s 90’s career, and there for some how trivializes the great yet relatable, imperfect man.
Yes there are plenty of poser Johnny fans and they piss me off too when they pretend to know all about him, but that happens when ever an artist enters into the legendary status, the same case could be made for Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley, Marvin Gaye etc. That doesn’t make them undeserving to share and enjoy the mans music. Not every fan needs to be someone who was there from the start, especially if they we’re even born at that time. If that was the case an artists popularity would never rise or grow.
The song is ageist, antagonizes Cash’s new fans, and as a result does a disservice to the man the song is written after, as he produced some of his best work in his last years and the Hurt video is one of the most powerful short films in recent history.
I think it would have been more effective if the song was written to music row and the country music establishment that was very late to acknowledge the work Johnny did in the 90’s, instead of disrespecting fellow Cash fans, but even that massage seems out of date now. I also really like and respect Caleb’s comment, I completely agree.
Ps. I love the site and appreciate all you do trigger. Sorry if that got into a bit of a rant.
March 31, 2013 @ 4:15 pm
This song is fairly offensive, and bad TBH. What does he have against the younger generation, heavy metal listeners, and the later albums? I love Johnny Cash and have loved him for about 10 years (i’m 25). Also, what is so wrong with people liking them because of the movie and the American Recordings? That exposure can very well lead to the exploration and the discovery of truly great artists. So again, why is that a bad thing? Hank III has dibbled in Heavy Metal.. Does that mean he’s a hipster wannabe? I’d think not. I also find it quite hypocritical that this guy is bashing Cash fans while trying to cash in on his name.
/rant
March 31, 2013 @ 4:35 pm
Rick Rubin didn’t ‘make’ Johnny Cash into anything.. didn’t make him famous, didn’t make him an outlaw, and certainly didn’t add any pressure to his life. All Rick did was bring out a level of musical creativity that Johnny hadn’t experienced in years; and Rick was a wonderful steward of the trust Johnny placed in him. All the hero worship that ensued was mostly a product of Johnny’s behavior that was decades in the rear-view. Some of Johnny’s most fulfilled years were the last ones of his life. Neal Cassady was a derelict before the events of On the Road, and he was a derelict after.
As to the song.. I find it pretentious and contrived. Fred sets up a huge strawman which he then proceeds to knock down.
April 1, 2013 @ 6:00 am
Agreed. The song is just as contrived as the whole goggles on a top hat gig.
March 31, 2013 @ 5:41 pm
Pretty lame.. I really can’t stand people who claim to know who is and is not a “true” fan.. Ole Fred needs to get over himself..
April 2, 2013 @ 11:13 am
Exactly.
people who claim to know who is and is not a “true” fan = hipster
June 22, 2013 @ 11:40 am
A big ol’ YES and high fives to both of you. Anyone who sincerely loves the music is a true fan. End of story.
March 31, 2013 @ 6:46 pm
The true targets of this song should have Jason Aldean and John Rich, who were responsible for the sonic atrocity that was the hit single of the same name about five years ago.
As far as Cash and his legacy are concerned, I think part of the reason he has become especially posthumously victimized by Music Row as far as the infamous name-dropping is concerned stems from his involvement with the Highwaymen almost as much as the fact the likes of the Peach Pickers think he is one of the best names to capitalize on. Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson are name-dropped just as much as Johnny Cash is (where’s all the love for Kris Kristofferson? I’m guessing it has to do with his politics! 😉 ) and when you’re part of a highly-regarded supergroup much like the Traveling Wilburys, it unfortunately sets you up for exploitation from others who are aiming to flaunt their pseudo-country credentials.
I’d say my favorite phase of his career would be from the mid-sixties to late sixties, before he started to fully embrace his signature “Man in Black” appeal. I feel his output was at its freshest and most diverse at that time. I think many have forgotten, or fail to realize altogether, that Cash had a wicked sense of humor and assume he had always been reserved as a public personality and decidedly despondent. Yet, as true as it is that he had battled demons throughout his career, especially regarding his addiction to prescription drugs, he had quite a good-humored streak on through the 1980’s. “One Piece at a Time” was especially hilarious.
If there was one point Eaglesmith was trying to communicate here but perhaps didn’t pull off as eloquently as he should have, it’s that many who are only familiar with Cash through his “American Recordings” series, unfortunately, don’t recognize how vastly his earlier catalog can be distinguished from his latter output. And there’s an amplitude of gems encrusted in both its bookends.
March 31, 2013 @ 9:24 pm
I rarely post on here but really enjoy the website, we can all agree to disagree but my personal feeling is that the American Recordings era of Johnny Cash’s career were garbage and I thought it did a disservice to his prime recording years 1960 – to the mid 70’s. Johnny was a larger than life figure, very humble, very poor growing up in Dyess, Arkansas and an advocate for the common man. I respect him for what he stood for but not always in agreement. With that being said, I am not offended by the song and Fred doesn’t really care what we think anyways.
Thanks again for sharing your website, these types of things are always thought provoking and it is good to share opinions even though we don’t agree.
Todd Villars
April 1, 2013 @ 7:53 am
This song first made me think of a Conan O’Brien show where Ice T was one of the guests. It was an entertaining interview for the most part until Ice T talked about how rap and country music were on opposite ends of the music spectrum in that rap was basically dangerous and cool while country was safe and lame. Except for Johnny Cash, of course. And then the predictable reference to “shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.” I suppose the subject of this song could be considered the punk/metal Caucasion version of what Ice T represented that night. That is, a different twist on “I hate country but I love Johnny Cash.”
On the other end of the spectrum, this song remindsd me of those “get off my lawn” roots music elitists who like to use a very broad brush when identifying those “alleged roots music fans” that they think don’t pass their purity test.
Let’s see. In 1989, I was 29 yeas old and the only Johnny Cash in my album collection was a couple of songs from a single CD Sun Records compliation (you can guess what they were). I didn’t start getting into him in a big way until the “Unchained” album, which was the second American Records album and the one that featured Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers as the backing band. It struck me as a very good roots rock album and thus right up my musical alley at the time. And I l did love his versions of Rusty Cage and Rowboat. Shortly thereafter, I got the the first American Recording album, which was just Johnny and his guitar. One of the songs was Delia, which is a song I vividly remembered from some album my parents had and often played in the late 60’s or early ’70s. Then, I got the 3 CD The Essential Johnny Cash, which covered the Sun and Columbia years. I hadn’t heard some of those Columbia songs (e.g., his eight minute version of John Henry) in at least 25 years but they had obvious been seared into my brain from listening to my parents play them. All great music, but I still love the American Recordings albums and for numerous reasons. They were the Johnny Cash albums that I experienced as new music releases and thus feel more like my Johnny Cash. I like the stripped down feel of those albums (some of the ’60s Columbia stuff seemed overproduced). Also, I have been a rock and roll fan a lot longer than I’ve been a straight country music fan and these albums definitely have strong crossover appeal in that respect.
April 1, 2013 @ 10:22 am
I should say that this song made me think about those “roots music elitists”, not that I necessarily think Fred Eaglesmith is one. I know that he’s well thought of by many in the Americana music community, but I know next to nothing about his music.
April 1, 2013 @ 10:10 am
Johnny Cash records were some of the first I ever ehard as a child that started my lifelong love affair with music. I was buying Cash records with my allowance money is a kid in the 70’s. I love Eaglesmith as a general rule and understand were he is most likely coming from in this song. We should take Cash’s work as a whole and admire it as a whole. The beauty of art is in the variations and the complexities of it over an artists lifetime not trying to put in a box and pigeon hole it.
April 1, 2013 @ 10:31 am
Good tune. Why no uproar??? This song is a shot at someone like just add much add Shooter’s songs ever been. And this isn’t to stir things up, im sure Fred doesn’t know you, .gy he’s singing about people like you. Just like Shooter did.
April 1, 2013 @ 10:36 am
Damn autocorrect…if my above wasn’t clear, This song is a shot at you just like Shooter’s song is.
Fred is singing about guys like you Trigger. Why no uproar, no video rant?
April 1, 2013 @ 11:40 am
Why not give us your take on the song Tim instead of trolling the comments section?
April 1, 2013 @ 11:52 am
So many people have co-opted the many and varied images and attitudes of Johnny Cash to their own end, and ironically in this song, so has Fred Eaglesmith
April 1, 2013 @ 1:27 pm
@ Cooter. If the person hasn’t experienced it “in some matter” it won’t be authentic. If Hank SR never had never experienced pain or loss, do you think his songs would have held water ? If you’re listening to Mexican music, you expect the person to have some kind of connection to Mexican culture, if not it’s a farce. Country music is no different. Do you think the Carter family was singing about “the sunny side” then practicing paganism or satanism in their spare time?
April 1, 2013 @ 7:31 pm
Anyone care to explain the Fred Eaglesmith steam punk fascination? I don’t get it.
April 1, 2013 @ 11:09 pm
Ya know, I was just about to make the same comment! I got tired of that steampunk shit two or three years ago, and I’ve noticed for awhile Fred’s been rockin’ the look. I dig the hell out of Fred, though I’m not really much of a “Fredhead.” I still cover a couple of his songs regularly (“Alcohol and Pills,” though it’s a bit overdone, always gets a great crowd response) but I’m not too crazy about the sound of some of his recent music, this cut included. The message is cool, but I think it’d be more effective without the “country music Tom Waits”-ian approach. Even though some of my favorite Eaglesmith tunes were off the heavily electric, musically busy “50 Odd Dollars” album I kinda wish he’d go back to his acoustic roots sometime and do a straight bluegrass or stringband-type record.
April 1, 2013 @ 8:23 pm
Rad, rocking song with some badass guitar work. I guess the message of the song could really go beyond just the commercial exploitation of Cash and the lemmings that eat it up. It could apply to anything that the mall culture exploits and bleeds dry.
April 2, 2013 @ 8:01 pm
It definitely sounds like Crazy Horse. I think Fred’s sentiment is one expressed by a lot of fans when their favourite becomes all popular. I wrote about it on my blog years and years ago. I grew up listening to Johnny Cash and a lot of old school country, that was what my dad listened to, that and the oldies station.
I think long before “Hurt” the biopic made him popular again. It is true people like to gloss over his religious albums/songs. The time where he went to the holy land and made that record, he shoved that down the record companies throat. And Fred has a point when he got dropped from Mercury Records was probably his career low point, but he still toured and sold places out, maybe not the Viper Room but Johnny toured a lot.
I think now that he is gone, it is kind of selfish to want to keep him to yourself. If you were a real Johnny Cash fan you’d have vintage tour shirts and first printings of his albums, not to mention ticket stubs and memories of seeing him live before he went downhill…
Sometimes you have to make a pilgrimage to see someone before they’re gone or all you have are biopics and greatest hits packages. It is a sad but recurring theme that many artists go unappreciated in their lifetime. Johnny Cash sold a lot of albums. He toured all over the world. His records never really went out of print. He was far from an underground sensation.
If you want to test someone’s cred you can bust out ‘3 feet high and rising” or “Rock Island Line” or “Dirty Old Egg Sucking Dog” or any number of gospel tunes, heck “Wanted Man” the song Bob Dylan basically gave him.
April 7, 2013 @ 4:33 am
It’s the first time I read about Fred Eaglesmith on SCM, and it’s just about one song. That somehow seems to offend some people who love Johnny Cash for all the right reasons, whatever they may be. If you don’t have a good answer to the question Why you love Johnny Cash, then this song is for you.
My guess is Fred laughs his ass off if he reads all the comments, and it could very likely end up in one of his famous onstage stories. Check him out when he is in your hometown, you’ll get good entertainment from one of the best story-telling singer-songwriters around. It’s not always country, like the song Johnny Cash, but the next songs on this album are, and they are just plain good songs.
He has released albums that his fans hated. He doesn’t care. There is a lot more Fred Eaglesmith than just one song or just one cd. And when you hear him sing about farming, don’t think of it as a gimmick. He DID grow up on a farm.
June 13, 2015 @ 9:04 am
Fred Eaglesmith is as authentic as they come. I’ve listened to him practicly daily for over fifteen years now and how anybody can get offended by this song is beyond understanding.
Get a grip on yourself.
And Trigger, do an article about him, please. People need to know about this man. All for their own sake.
November 10, 2023 @ 6:51 pm
What a terrible song. Hes trying to fit words and lyrics that just don’t fit. Fred Eaglesmith’s whole catalog is almost unlistenable.. how can anyone like his “music”?