About this CD
- Recording: 2002-2004, Los Angeles, CA and Nashville, TN
- Release date: July 4, 2006
- Label: American Recordings/Lost Highway
- Catalog number: 862696
- Produced and arranged by Rick Rubin
- Engineered by David "Fergie" Ferguson
- Musicians: Mike Campbell, guitar; Benmont Tench, keyboards; Smokey Hormel, slide guitars; Matt Sweeney, guitars; Johnny Polonsky, guitars.
Pros
- Johnny Cash works the emotions in these songs as only a dying man of his talent could.
- While the song selection is tailored to make a (possible) final statement on Cash's life, it's done with a dignity and restraint equal to its subject.
- The production is largely unobtrusive, recalling his first, bare-bones American Recordings album of 1994.
Cons
- Cash's voice is almost gone, but that can't be helped.
My review
This CD's most notable as a document of Cash's first days without June Carter Cash, his longtime wife, who died just six months before him. The combination of her passing and The Man In Black's own impending mortality makes for a hard listen on Highways, with the new context (and Johnny's own formidable charisma) forging whole new experiences out of seeimgly innocuous songs like Gordon Lightfoot's "If You Could Read My Mind," the Gatlin Brothers' "Help Me," or Cash's own "I Came To Believe." Knowing this, producer Rick Rubin gives Johnny his sparest treatment since the first American CD, which makes this sequel a homecoming of sorts. But Cash's vocal persona is too deep to make this easily dismissed as a recorded funeral. And there's more to be written.
