As one of the most celebrated artists of all time, Johnny Cash’s legacy continues with the release of Forever Words (Expanded Edition), via Legacy Recordings. This release, produced by Cash’s son John Carter Cash, contains the original album that came out in 2018, plus eighteen new songs – all with lyrical content drawn from Cash’s poetry and other writings, and music written and performed by various artists.
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The new songs in this expanded version are being released in four “waves”: the first, on October 23, featured tracks from Elvis Costello & The Imposters, Ana Cristina Cash, Hard Working Americans, and Shawn Camp. The second wave, on December 11, includes songs by Marty Stuart, John Popper, John McEuen, Jamey Johnson (featuring Jerry Douglas and Sam Bush), and Brandon Robert Young and Clare Bowen. Future waves are planned for February and April 2021.
During a call from their Tennessee home, Young explains how he and Bowen ended up contributing a track, “Little Patch of Grass,” to the album: “John Carter Cash and his wife Ana [Cristina Cash] have become dear friends of ours over the past five years,” he says. “From time to time, we would write together. One day I was out at the Cash property with John Carter and he mentioned this project that he was working on [with] a bunch of different artists and featuring poetry and lyrics that his dad had written, and he wondered if we’d like to be involved. Of course, it was shocking in the best way. I said, ‘Absolutely.’”
Young recalls the thrill of sitting at the kitchen table in the Cash cabin, looking through binders of Cash’s lyrics, poems, unfinished songs and other writings. These materials, Young says, “were in a pile or file cabinet or safe – nobody had ever seen [them] before Ana and John Carter essentially unearthed them.” Even with so much to choose from, though, he says it was obvious what he and Bowen should pick for the words to what would become “Little Patch of Grass.”
“The song that we ended up finishing together really just jumped out to us,” Young says. “It was a poem called “Little Patch of Grass” that John had written to June [Carter, his wife] from September 1982. It was handwritten, and at the top it said, ‘To June, with all my love, John.’ And the date. The lyric really felt in a lot of ways like a sister song to Johnny’s [1970] hit “Flesh and Blood.” That’s a song I’ve always loved.”
Cash’s words, about finding a sense of home with another person, spoke to Bowen and Young, who married in 2017. “When the song was originally penned, I think Johnny and June were spending a bunch of time in their apartment in New York, and being in the city, you hear it in the lyrics that he wrote: it’s a very hard place to be, especially if your heart belongs in the woods,” says Bowen.
This sentiment also resonated with Bowen because of her own background: “I grew up in the middle of nowhere in Australia,” she says. “I think when you’re in the middle of a city that never sleeps, it’s so beautiful, but if your heart belongs to the woods, finding your home in a person and wanting to go to your favorite place with them, that’s all we need.”
Once they had decided on which words to use, Young says, “Clare and John Carter and myself put it to music, and it was incredible. We got to go to the Cash cabin and John put a band together and we got to record it there. It was pretty magical.” The resulting song ballad is sweetly romantic and gentle.
Although Bowen and Young agree that this was an amazing process, they also say they felt an immense sense of responsibility for making sure the song turned out well. “It was one of those things you really wanted to make sure you took great care and do John Carter proud and do his father proud,” Young says, adding that he’s always been a huge Johnny Cash fan.
Bowen adds that she and Young also had a personal reason for wanting to work hard on “Little Patch of Grass”: “The other really beautiful part of it – and probably the more grounding part for us – is that John Carter and Ana are such dear friends of ours,” she says. “You’re finishing the song that one of your best friend’s father wrote, so there is the whole family aspect to the record. What a gift to be given.” Being picked to do so, Bowen says, is a “really great honor.”
“When I moved to Nashville [from Connecticut] twenty years ago with just an acoustic guitar and an empty Mead notebook, if you had told me I’d get to finish a song that Johnny Cash started, I would have told you, ‘You’re nuts!’” Young says with a laugh. “It is truly a magical experience that I could have never imagined.”
Young has gone on to release several EPs and singles, and has shared stages with John Hiatt, Emmylou Harris, and Buddy Miller. He met Bowen when she moved to town for her role as Scarlett O’Connor on the hit musical-drama television series Nashville. Mirroring their relationship, he played her romantic interest in that show’s final episode. Bowen, lauded for her singing on Nashville, went on to release a self-titled debut album in 2018.
There is a certain symmetry in the fact that Bowen and Young, as a happily married artistic couple, created a song that pays tribute to one of the music world’s great love stories. “My whole life opened up when I met Brandon,” Bowen says, “and I know from things that John Carter has told us that Johnny and June really found themselves in each other. That’s something that people search for their whole lives.”
Now, Bowen and Young look forward to continuing their acting and music careers together – and they agree that working on the Forever Words album has definitely helped them grow as artists. “Any time you’re exposed to something new, I think it greatly influences the art that you can then make in the future,” Young says. “I think for Clare and I, being allowed to work on words from Johnny Cash that came straight from his heart will absolutely affect us profoundly as we move into new creative ventures.”
