Johnny Cash Called the Outlaw Hymn That Tom Waits Wrote for Him One of the “Greatest Spirituals” He Ever Heard

When Johnny Cash was working on his 81st album, American Recordings, producer Rick Rubin suggested commissioning a group of handpicked songwriters for the album. A resurgence of Cash’s career, American Recordings stripped back any heavy production, leaving him behind with a guitar and lyrics. To capture the sound in its rawest form, the album was recorded between Rubin’s living room and Cash’s cabin in Tennessee.

Along with five tracks written by Cash, the album also featured a collection of songs written by an eclectic blend of artists, including Cash’s former stepson-in-law Nick Lowe (“The Beast in Me”) and Glenn Danzig (“Thirteen”), along with a cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Bird on a Wire” and Kris Kristofferson’s 1972 song “Why Me.”

Tom Waits was also asked to contribute a song, a gospel-tinted track about redemption, “Down There by the Train.”

There’s a place I know where the train goes slow
Where the sinner can be washed in the blood of the lamb
There’s a river by the trestle down by sinner’s grove
Down where the willow and the dogwood grow

You can hear the whistle, you can hear the bell
From the halls of heaven to the gates of hell
And there’s room for the forsaken, if you’re there on time
You’ll be washed of all your sins and all of your crimes
If you’re down there by the train

There’s a golden moon that shines up through the mist
And I know that your name can be on that list
There’s no eye for an eye, there’s no tooth for a tooth
I saw Judas Iscariot carrying John Wilkes Booth
He was down there by the train

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Of Waits’ contribution, Cash said, “That is one of the greatest spirituals I’ve ever heard.”

Once out of his hands, Waits said Cash “changed some stuff around” on the song, which was expected. “That’s normal,” said Waits. “Eh, I do the same thing when I do somebody else’s tune. You really have to, you try it on, and when it’s a little tied in here, it doesn’t quite close over this, you cut it or you make it fit. You wanna make it sound like yours.”

Cash also called American Recordings a “dream album” that he wanted to do for years. “I remember talking to Marty Robbins 25 years ago about this,” recalled Cash. “I even had the title for 25 years, Johnny Cash Alone. That’s really what I wanted to call it, although the title is American Recordings. I’ve stripped it down to just me, now that I play a little rhythm with my thumb.”

Describing the album, Cash said there were themes of redemption and reflecting on the good and evil sides of himself. “The way I see this album, it’s like showing the worst, evil side of me and then maybe a little of the good side-whatever that is,” he said.

Before Cash’s death in 2003, he went on to work on three more albums with Rubin—Unchained (1996), American III: Solitary Man (2000), and American IV: The Man Comes Around (2002). Rubin also worked on two posthumous albums of earlier recorded material with Cash, American V: A Hundred Highways (2006) and American VI: Ain’t No Grave (2010).

“It took somebody who had the vision, who knew my work,” said Cash on working with Rubin. “He knew everything that was wrong with it. He could see it a lot clearer than I could. 

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