Tag: june carter cash

Sugar + the Hi-Lows Join Nashville Ballet for Johnny Cash-Inspired Shows

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In 2014, the Nashville Ballet performed “Under the Lights,” an original ballet about the life of legendary country artist Johnny Cash. This year, the Ballet will reprise the show’s performance as part of Attitude, an annual series celebrating contemporary dance. 

Nashville’s Sugar + the Hi-Lows reimagined a number of Cash songs for that 2014 debut and will return for this year’s series of performances, which run February 9 – 12. The duo, comprised of songwriters Trent Dabbs and Amy Stroup, were recruited by Nashville Ballet dancer and “Under the Lights” choreographer/creator Christopher Stuart.

“We watched Matthew Perryman Jones perform with Attitude four years ago,” Dabbs explains. “He’s a dear friend of ours, and we thought the idea of having these two art forms come together is really something else. Chris Stuart had reached out to Lightning 100 to ask Mary Brace, who’s a DJ there, if she had any picks for who would make a good match for this concept, and she said us and Chris called us. That’s how it started.”

Stuart was initially inspired to develop “Under the Lights” after he saw the music video for “Hurt,” Cash’s 2002 cover of a Nine Inch Nails song that the artist released not long before his death at the age of 71 in 2003. For the most part, the 2017 performances will stay true to the show that Stuart and the rest of the Nashville Ballet debuted in 2014, one that Stuart worked carefully alongside members of Cash’s own family to curate. “I think we’re switching out one or two songs but as a format, it will be pretty much on par,” Stroup explains. “Last Summer, we got to go with Chris and some of the Nashville company to Little Rock and perform it, as well. It’s just been an incredible experience to see the ballet and see it in full. It’s pretty much the same story, with Johnny Cash and some of his best-known work and some of the duets with Johnny and June brought to life.”

“Chris pretty much chose [the songs] himself,” Dabbs adds. “I think he spoke to some members of the Cash family to get permission and to get ideas. It was a mix of Chris and some of the Cash family.”

Songs included in the ballet include “Ring of Fire,” “I Walk the Line,” and “God’s Gonna Cut You Down” — the last of which is a personal favorite of Dabbs’ — as well as a handful of Sugar + the Hi-Lows originals. Though honoring Cash is at the heart of the project, Dabbs and Stroup work a bit of their soulful blend of rockabilly-tinged pop into the mix, too, as well as a healthy dose of historical context. 

“When we were first asked to approach this, first of all, Trent and I were like, ‘How do you approach such a legend’s work?’” Stroup says. “Trent and I are both songwriters, even outside of being Sugar + the Hi-Lows, so we found it interesting to go back and research and find out how and why these songs were written. For example, a song like ‘Ring of Fire,’ we think of Johnny Cash’s version of that song and the horns that we hear and it’s really upbeat, but the song was actually written by June and two other people, and she wrote it more as a ballad and she played it for Johnny and he had a dream and heard the horns in the song. Then he said, ‘Hey, can I cut this version?’ So, on that song, we kind of perform it more as June wrote it.”

As passionate fans of both Cash and of dance — if you’ve heard their latest album High Roller, you already know it’s tailor-made for the dance floor — both Dabbs and Stroup have found “Under the Lights” to be one of the most artistically and emotionally fulfilling experiences of their musical careers. 

“I think being such fans of dance that it’s kind of like going to a show while you’re playing it,” Dabbs says. “In fact it is. [Laughs] But it’s much more experiential than anything else live. We both try not to watch the dancers too much, but when you look up and get a glimpse of what’s happening, it affects you in a lot of emotional ways and, to me, the experience of the whole thing is much more powerful than just us and a band playing in front of people.”

When the final curtain closes on this particular Attitude performance, it won’t be the duo’s last rodeo with the Nashville Ballet. They already have plans to take part in Seven Deadly Sins, which will feature music from the current roster of Ten Out of Tenn. That show debuts in May.

Photo credit: Karyn Photography

Dualtone Records Reflects on 15 Years of Music

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Since 2001, Nashville's Dualtone Records has established itself as a major player in the independent music scene. Over the course of their 15 years in business, the label has released albums from legends like June Carter Cash and Guy Clark, while discovering and championing new artists like the Lumineers and, most recently, new signees the Wild Reeds. To celebrate its 15th anniversary, the label recently released In Case You Missed It: 15 Years of Dualtone, a compilation featuring rare and unreleased tracks from a diverse group of artists on their roster.

"As we’ve thought about ways to commemorate the anniversary and look back on everything that’s gone down the past 15 years, we wanted to shine a light on some tracks that hadn’t necessarily gotten their fair shake in the mainstream," Dualtone President Paul Roper says. "We dug through the catalog and found some songs that we loved for one reason or another and threw them on a record together. We tried to focus on putting some unreleased content on there. You have some new tracks from Shakey Graves and the Lumineers and Ivan & Alyosha and Langhorne Slim, combined with some of our favorite songs that are in the catalog that didn’t really get heard. It was our opportunity to look at the breadth of the catalog."

In addition to the artists Roper mentions, the compilation includes cuts from June Carter Cash ("Keep on the Sunny Side"), whose Dualtone project, Wildwood Flower, would be her last before unexpectedly passing away in 2003, and Guy Clark ("My Favorite Picture of You"), who won his first Grammy for work he did with the label. "It was the first time in his career," Roper says of Clark's Grammy win. "I think he’d been nominated maybe six or seven times throughout his career and hadn’t won one until we put out My Favorite Picture of You. And that was his last album that he released. And we won a Grammy for Best Folk Album. That was a great moment for him in the twilight of his career, kind of a great bookend for his life and his career and his music."

As for that album from Carter Cash, it featured some of the last recordings between June and husband Johnny, and earned the label two additional Grammy Awards. "We took down some of the giants," Roper says. "Some of the major labels were our competition, because she won for Best Female Country Vocal Performance."

Though the David to a major label's Goliath, you also can't talk about Dualtone without talking about another musical giant — the Lumineers, the Denver indie folk band best known for their 2012 breakout single "Ho Hey." "Delivering the Lumineers the first time around was just a whirlwind, with things happening so fast," Roper says. "I don’t know if any of us had a moment to take in what was really going down. But delivering the second record, Cleopatra, and having it go number one — which was the first number one for a debut album that we’ve ever had from a sales standpoint for first week — was pretty awesome and it was great validation for the company. You hear a lot of noise about how anybody can get lucky one time, you know, but when you deliver the sophomore record and it’s received to such great acclaim from the industry and from fans and has continued to have an incredible life, that’s a great moment."

While Roper and his colleagues at Dualtone have spent a good deal of time reflecting on the label's past, they've also been looking to the future. Two recent signings include the Wild Reeds, an emerging Americana band from Los Angeles, and Chuck Berry, a household name and legendary musician who, at 90, is still putting out new music. "We have a deal going with Chuck Berry and his estate and announced on his 90th birthday that a record’s coming," Roper says. "That was a really fun moment, just to see all of the pickup from the announcement. It was everywhere. It’s been an exciting vision of what’s to come with that project. It’s a really special body of work, too. "

As for the direction of the label, Roper hopes to continue to run a company driven by a love for music and a passion for helping artists bring their work into the world. "We want to continue to be in a position to help artists build careers," he says. "That’s the underlying philosophy of the company. As the industry transitions and changes — it’s probably going to change another five different ways, at least, in the next six months — it’s always evolving and we have to be able to adapt and change with it. I think the idea of a label is constantly evolving. What we do know is that artists are going to need a team around them, whatever that looks like. We like to think of ourselves as partners with our artists and not so much the label. We try to be in the position where we add value to artists’ careers."