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Rosanne Cash - Etta's Tune

Rosanne Cash - Etta's Tune Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: The River & the Thread
Released: 2014

Etta's Tune Lyrics

What’s the temperature darling? 100 and more
The horses pawing out the dust, but it’s Wilton by the door
But you pour your strongest coffee and I’ll take back of the wheel
We’ll drive straight down the river road, spread a blanket on the hill

What’s the temperature darling? I don’t stare into the past
There was nothing that we could change or fix, it was never gonna last
Now don’t stare into those photos, don’t memorize my eyes
We’re just a mile or two from Memphis in the rhythm of our minds

[Chorus]
A mile or two from Memphis
And I must go away
I tore up all the highways
Now there’s nothing left to say
A mile or two from Memphis
And I finally made it home

There were days you paced the kitchen, there were nights that felt like jail
When the phone rang in the dead of night you’d always throw my veil
No, you never touched the whiskey and you never took the pills
I travelled for a million miles while you were standing still

What’s the temperature darling as the daylight fades way?
I’ll make one last rehearsal with one foot in the grave
We kept the house on all the corners, we kept the polished bass guitar
We kept the tickets and the wheels of tape to remember who we are

A mile or two from Memphis
And I must go away
I tore up all the highways
There’s nothing left to say
A mile or two from Memphis
And I finally made it home

What’s the temperature darling?

Writer/s: JOHN B LEVENTHAL, ROSANNE CASH
Publisher: DOWNTOWN MUSIC PUBLISHING LLC
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Etta's Tune

Rosanne Cash wrote this song with her husband John Leventhal, who also produced and arranged the album The River & the Thread. The song was named for Etta Grant, who was the wife of Johnny Cash's original bass player Marshall Grant, and a lifelong family friend. Etta died on August 7, 2011.

Rosanne told Radio.com : "He was like a surrogate dad to me, after my dad died. So John and I wrote 'Etta's Tune' shortly after he died. And it was all true [the details in the song's lyrics]. They did keep a house on Nokomis Avenue in Memphis full of their memories. And he did play the bass guitar one last time the day he had an aneurysm."

The song starts with the line, "What's the temperature darling?" Rosanne explained to Radio.com: "She (Etta) told me, after Marshall had had the aneurysm, 'We'd wake up every morning of our lives and say, 'What's the temperature darling?'" And I thought, what a practical, solid way to start the day. On all levels, metaphorical and practically. And John said, 'oh my god, that's a great first line for a song.'"

This was the first song written for The River & the Thread, and it set the theme for the album. In our interview with Rosanne Cash , she said: "After we wrote that one we said, this is what we're going to do; this is going to be a record about the South, and these people, and these characters, these places, the sense of time travel, the peculiarities of the South."

The listener hears Marshall's voice speaking to Etta. Rosanne said: "That line about, 'I traveled for a million miles while you were standing still.' He was on the road for so many years with my dad. You just don't hear about a 65-year marriage surviving the life of a touring musician. And it did."

John Paul White of the Civil War accompanies Rosanne on the song, "because we thought he had the sweetness that the song deserved." She added: "But also that kind of…he's powerful, but he's also ephemeral in a way. We thought that was a great combination for that song. I just love the Civil Wars. I've loved them since the first note."

Rosanne Cash - Money Road

Rosanne Cash - Money Road Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: The River & the Thread
Released: 2014

Money Road Lyrics

I was dreaming about the town of Hutchy bridge
A thousand miles from where we live
But the long mine at the pearly gate
The keepers of our fate
None of them will congregate
Out on Money Road

A lonesome boy in a foreign land
Out on money road
And a voice we’ll never understand
Out on money road

One lies in the Zion yard
And one sleeps on the river bar
Neither one got very far
Out on money road
Out on money road

I was dreaming about the deepest blue
But what you seek is seeking you
You can cross the bridge and carve your name
But the river stays the same

We left but never went away
Out on money road
Out on money road
Out on money road
Out on money road

Writer/s: ROSANNE CASH, JOHN B LEVENTHAL
Publisher: DOWNTOWN MUSIC PUBLISHING LLC
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Money Road

The thread that runs through The River & the Thread is a series of trips that Rosanne Cash and her husband John Leventhal took to the South, which started when she was asked to participate in events surrounding the restoration of her father's boyhood home in Dyess, Arkansas.

This song references an actual journey the pair took through the Delta, down Money Road in Mississippi. The Mississippi route has lot of history attached to it including the Tallahatchie Bridge from Bobbie Gentry's "Ode To Billie Joe," which is noted in the first line (the album cover shows Cash looking over the bridge).

Money Road is the site of two landmarks of American history. It is where the Blues legend Robert Johnson is buried, and also the site of Bryant's Grocery and Meat Market, where an incident involving a black teenager named Emmett Till led to his brutal murder. The abandoned building where the market was located was still standing when Cash visited. "It was hard to take in," she told us. "There was nobody there. It was key to where the Civil Rights Movement began, right at that spot. It chills you to your core." (Here's our full Rosanne Cash interview .)

Rosanne Cash - World Of Strange Design

Rosanne Cash - World Of Strange Design Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: The River & the Thread
Released: 2014

World Of Strange Design Lyrics

Well you’re not from around here
You’re probably not our kind
It’s hot from March to Christmas
And other things you’ll find

Won’t fit your old ideas
Their line is shifting sands,
You walk across a ghostly bridge
To a crumbling promise land

[Chorus]
If Jesus came from Mississippi
If tears began to rise
I guess I’ll start at the beginning
The World Of Strange Design

Well I’d like to have the ocean
But I’d settle for the rain
Humbly as for true love
There was such a price to pay

This room was filled with trouble
And sacraments deceived
And I’m with you, we’re in the shade
Of his weeping willow tree

If Jesus came from Mississippi
If tears began to rise
I’ll have to go back to the beginning
In this world of strange design

We talk about your drinking
But not about your thirst
You set off through the mine field
Like you were round in first

So open up their window
And hand the baby through
Point up towards the ghostly bridge
And she’ll know what to do

If Jesus came from Mississippi
If tears began to rise
They’ll have to go back to the beginning
In this world of strange design

Writer/s: JOHN B LEVENTHAL, ROSANNE CASH
Publisher: DOWNTOWN MUSIC PUBLISHING LLC
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

World Of Strange Design

Cash told Uncut magazine about this song: "I was allowing my madness to run riot, free – associative staff," she said. "I thought if I was really in that dense, weird, wonderful South and looking out for a minute – how might my world be, how might it look? Well... Jesus would come from Mississippi. I was able to tap into some madness."

Rosanne Cash - 50,000 Watts

Rosanne Cash - 50,000 Watts Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: The River & the Thread
Released: 2014

50,000 Watts Lyrics

It’s a hard road but it fits your shoes
Son of rhythm, brother of the blues
The sound of darkness, the pull of the oak
Everything is broken and painted in smoke

But there’s a light on Sunday, a new design
The sound of the whistle, those radio wires
Love in your future, I’ll wait for you there
Put 50000 watts of a common prayer

[Chorus]
50000 watts of common prayer
50000 watts of common prayer

To be who we are and not who we were
A sister to him, a brother to her
We’ll live like kings without any sin
Redemption will come, just tune it all in

But there’s a light on Sunday, a new design
The sound of the whistle, those radio wires
Love in your future, I’ll wait for you there
Put 50000 watts of a common prayer

50000 watts of common prayer
50000 watts of common prayer

My common prayer
Your common prayer
50000 watts of common prayer

Writer/s: JOHN B LEVENTHAL, ROSANNE CASH
Publisher: DOWNTOWN MUSIC PUBLISHING LLC
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

50,000 Watts

This song is about the Memphis radio station WDIA, which advertised itself as "50,000 Watts of goodwill." Cash told Uncut magazine that it is one of her favorite tracks on The River and the Thread because, "It feels like a heart-opener, looking into the future with so much hope, and knowing everything will be all right."

Rosanne Cash - This Has Happened Before

Rosanne Cash - This Has Happened Before Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Right or Wrong
Released: 1980

This Has Happened Before Lyrics

This Has Happened Before

It was only after penning this ballad that Cash felt she could write proper songs. She recalled to American Songwriter magazine: "When I was 18, I had gone on the road with Dad. I was trying to make my songs rhyme and trying to muddle through on the forms of songs I had inherited. Then, I wrote 'This Has Happened Before'; I remember working so hard on that song and realizing that it didn't have to fit all those forms I was trying to force on it; that was the moment that I felt like could do this."

Rosanne Cash - The Sunken Lands

Rosanne Cash - The Sunken Lands Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: The River & the Thread
Released: 2014

The Sunken Lands Lyrics

Five cans of paint in the empty fields
The dust reveals

The children cry, the work never ends
There’s not a single friend

Who will hold her hand in The Sunken Lands?

The mud and tears melt the cotton balls
It’s a heavy toll
Oh oh

His words are cruel and they sting like fire
Like the devil’s choir
Oh oh

But who will hold her hand in the sunken lands?

The river rises and she sails away
But she could never stay
Oh oh

Now her work is done in the sunken lands
There’s five empty cans

Writer/s: JOHN B LEVENTHAL, ROSANNE CASH
Publisher: DOWNTOWN MUSIC PUBLISHING LLC
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

The Sunken Lands

This song provides details about Rosanne's family's life, centering on her father John's mother Carrie; the title comes from the area where her father grew up in Arkansas. Roseanne told the UK newspaper The Sun: "I began thinking about the lives of women back then like my grandmother. She picked cotton. The men picked cotton but the women picked cotton and kept charge of the kids. Her husband was not very nice."

She added: "My grandmother had a hard, hard life but she never became bitter. She was a very cheerful woman and had fortitude like I can't imagine."