It’s been three decades since Rosanne Cash released her landmark album, The Wheel. In celebration, Cash is commemorating its anniversary with an expanded, remastered deluxe edition, out November 17. The Wheel 30th Anniversary Deluxe Edition features the original, remastered album, along with a second live LP, including Cash’s Austin City Limits performance from July 26, 1993, and a rare recording of her appearance on the Columbia Records Radio Hour.
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Cash, who recently acquired and now owns all of her masters, is sharing The Wheel as her first vinyl release from RumbleStrip Records, the label she founded with her husband, co-writer, and producer John Leventhal.
The edition is available in multiple formats, including the original remastered vinyl LP, a deluxe 2-LP edition, and a 2CD deluxe edition. The live additions to the anniversary release also feature Cash’s cover of Lucinda Williams‘ 1988 song “Crescent City” from her Austin City Limits performance and a cover of the My Fair Lady song “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly” from the Columbia radio show. Cash and Leventhal will also support the album with a special run of shows in November 2023.
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Following the release of her seventh album, Interiors, in 1990, Cash relocated to New York City, where she has resided since. Recorded in the early ’90s and co-produced by Cash and Leventhal, The Wheel marked a new sound for Cash.
The Wheel was also a new chapter in Cash’s personal life. As her marriage to Rodney Crowell was ending, she was also starting a new relationship with Leventhal. Initially, Cash had written seven songs for the album and shared them with Leventhal, including the title track, along with “You Won’t Let Me In,” “Change Partners,” “Sleeping in Paris,” “From the Ashes,” “Roses in the Fire,” and “If There’s a God on My Side.”
“I told him they were ‘elemental’— full of references to the natural world: wind, fire, rain, moon, snow,” shared Cash in a statement. “I wasn’t even sure what I was talking about when I said it, but I had noticed that I was using a lot of nature metaphors, many of them violent. He sort of cocked his head, a little confused, and said, ‘Okay. But are they good songs?’”
Sessions around The Wheel also featured “a thrilling mix of truly gifted people,” according to Cash that included Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ Benmont Tench, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Bruce Cockburn, Steuart Smith, and Marc Cohn, among others. “John and I grew closer with every session, and by the end of the record we were a couple,” said Cash. “The music was both a revelation and the revelator.”
The two were married in 1995 and have worked on seven albums together, including Cash’s follow-up to The Wheel, 1996 release 10 Song Demos. Their working relationship continued through Rules of Travel (2003), Black Cadillac (2006), The River & the Thread (2014), and her most recent release She Remembers Everything in 2018.
Cash and Leventhal are also working on the music and lyrics for the upcoming Broadway musical Norma Rae.
[RELATED: Behind Johnny Cash’s Last Duet with Rosanne “September When It Comes”]
Produced by John Jackson and long-time manager Danny Kahn, who will oversee the archival releases and operations of the couple’s label, and mastered by Dan Millice, The Wheel 30th Anniversary Deluxe Edition is the first in a line of more releases by Cash as well as Leventhal’s debut solo album in 2024.
“It’s satisfying and sweet to reintroduce ‘The Wheel’ in this 30th anniversary year,” said Cash. “I can’t look back at that time and separate the music from love. What was true then has become more true and more alive every day since.”
The Wheel 30th Anniversary Track Listing:
Side 1
1. “The Wheel”
2. “Seventh Avenue”
3. “Change Partners”
4. “Sleeping in Paris”
5. “From the Ashes”
Side 2
1. “The Truth About You”
2. “The Tears”
3. “Falling Down”
4. “Roses in the Fire”
5. “Fire of the Newly Alive”
6. If There’s a God on My Side”
Side 3 – Live at Austin City Limits (7/26/1993)
1. “The Wheel”
2. “Seventh Avenue”
3. “I’ll Change For You”
4. “Crescent City” (Lucinda Williams cover)
5. “Sleeping In Paris”
Side 4 – Columbia Records Radio Hour (5/16/1993)
1. “Seventh Avenue”
2. “Roses In The Fire”
3. “The Truth About You”
4. “What We Really Want”
5. “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly” (from My Fair Lady)
6. “The Wheel”
Photo: Pamela Springsteen / Courtesy of Kid Logic Media
