This album reminds me of oatmeal and being at the breakfast table, looking out the front windows. Some music is like that; it instantly takes you back to wherever you were when you first heard this and where I first heard this was during my mother’s Johnny Cash phase when she played Johnny Cash every morning while we were getting ready for school.

I didn’t particularly appreciate Johnny Cash at the time but he kind of grew on me because I would listen to the words of his songs and think about the things he was singing about. He seemed to have had a sad, tough life, but he didn’t seem sad to me. Just matter of fact and very real somehow, as if he knew that he had survived and life is what it is.

I can’t tell you whether or not I like Johnny Cash. When it comes to Johnny Cash, liking him is somehow beside the point. I grew up on him and am grounded somehow into his music and his world of images and I know that I will listen to him for the rest of my life in the same way I know that I will probably fix my mother’s dressing recipe every Thanksgiving for the rest of my life and I will continue to like the color red and I will be my daddy’s girl whether my daddy is around or not.

Johnny Cash is like that. Liking him is superfluous emotion.