Glance at them under the lights and there’s no mistaking the rock ’n’ roll dynasty behind Gibson’s latest signature guitars.
Even if you never saw Johnny Cash driving his beloved brimstone SJ-200 back in the 1950s, it’s hard to miss the Man In Black’s moniker snaking up the neck of this recreation in inch-high mother-of-pearl letters.
Meanwhile, for the avoidance of doubt, the J-185 released in tandem also salutes country’s first family with a stern upper-case ‘CASH’ punched into the pickguard.
Decades back, when she was starting out as a young songwriter, and ambivalent about her father’s long shadow, you sense Rosanne Cash might not have signed off on such a family affair.
Now, as a formidable artist in her own right, and with four Grammy awards and a fistful of chart-topping singles, the 69-year-old tells us she was glad to partner with Gibson’s master craftspeople and join the dots between her past, present and future.
How did it feel to recreate your dad’s famous Gibson SJ-200 model?
“Well, in the beginning, I thought, ‘Do I really want to do that?’ You know, did it seem like encroachment on something that was iconic? And then my husband John [Leventhal] and I talked about it, and I said, ‘In this point in my life, it’s not like I’m a kid and just starting out and trying to co-opt something.’
“It just made sense. My dad and I are the only father and daughter in the Nashville Songwriters Hall Of Fame. And I thought, ‘Well, this is something like that.’ The generations go on, and we have a family business.”
Was the original SJ-200 a familiar sight around the house as a kid?
“Oh yeah. It was like, ‘Oh, that’s my dad.’ That guitar is inseparable from my idea of who my father is. I think the original is in the Country Music Hall Of Fame And Museum now.”
Would Johnny typically play acoustic more than electric guitar at home?
“Oh my God, yeah. My dad never played electric. And he had no sense of being territorial about his guitars when we were kids. You were always welcome to play his guitars. In fact, there’s a tradition in country music where an older musician – in order to give respect to a younger musician – would give them his guitar. So I remember my dad gave Bob Dylan one of his guitars.”
Back in the day, Johnny came up with that SJ-200 pickguard himself. Was he more of a designer than most people realise?
My dad loved to take photographs and do crazy little drawings. His visual sense was well developed and it really matched him, with the long jacket he wore
“That’s interesting. He did have an eye for design. He loved to take photographs and do crazy little drawings. His visual sense was well developed and it really matched him, with the long jacket he wore. He was very conscious of that.”
Are you pleased with your new signature J-185?
“Really pleased. John and I, we went back and forth. Even with the pickguard. That was really important to me. The pickguard on my dad’s Gibson has sharper edges, it’s a little angular – and I really didn’t want that. I wanted this to be more like waves. I thought having curves for the pickguard would be more feminine.
“That’s obviously just the most cosmetic thing. The J-185, it was a really good size and shape for me. It’s not as big as my dad’s guitar, and it’s not as visually assertive, you know? My dad’s guitar, it’s dramatic and it comes towards you. I just wanted something more subtle all around.”
It’s a jumbo shape, but has a shallower body depth. Why did that appeal?
“Because I’m only 5ft4in [laughs].”
Were you closely involved in choosing the SlimTaper neck profile?
“Yes, but John had a lot of suggestions. He’s a great musician and knows the provenance of guitars, and the difference between varying years. I mean, I wanted to go crazy and do a lot more mother-of-pearl. And John was like, ‘No, you’ll get tired of that.’ And he was right. But those tech descriptions – depth, length, all of that – those were his suggestions.
“The combination of Sitka spruce and flame maple was also John’s suggestion. He wanted to go for the more resonant woods. So all of that was a discussion between me and him, and Peter Leinheiser [senior director of entertainment relations] and Robi Johns [senior product development manager] at Gibson.”
Are you the kind of musician who doesn’t worry so much about nuts and bolts but knows a good guitar when you hear and feel it?
“Yeah, I’m definitely more intuitive. I don’t have the technical knowledge that John has – or Peter and Robi – but I have my Martin signature model, so I knew the size that suited me, and the feel of it.
“When you talk about all of this, you go back and forth, and then the guitar is actually made and it comes and you open the case – and it’s so beautiful. Then you’re so worried about how it’s going to sound because you never know if the sound and appearance are going to match. But then it sounded so great. I was so happy to hear it.”
Have you played your J-185 on stage yet?
“Oh yeah, and it was fantastic. My sound man loves how it sounds out front. The musicians I play with – particularly Kevin Barry, the other guitar player in my band, he’s just obsessed with it. It just fits, you know? It’s just that feeling of it fitting me exactly. It’s a really well-balanced sound. It can cut through and yet it’s really warm, and that’s a hard trick to pull off.”
The pickguard is based on the name tag on your father’s military uniform, isn’t it?
When we were designing the new guitar, Robi and Peter wanted to put ‘Cash’ on there somewhere
“I’ll tell you that story. When my dad died, I inherited his little antique desk that was in his office. I went through the drawers and there was this white patch, a little bigger than a credit card, and sewn into it was the name ‘CASH’. It had been on his Air Force uniform and he’d saved it for all these decades, which was so touching. So I took the patch to a tailor, who sewed it on my strap and I used that for years.
“But one night, I had a dream that I showed up at the gig and somebody had taken the strap. I woke up shaking, I was so alarmed. I went to soundcheck that day and told my soundman, ‘I have to take this strap off the road.’ And he said, ‘Oh thank God, I worry about it all the time.’
“So then, when we were designing the new guitar, Robi and Peter wanted to put ‘Cash’ on there somewhere. Not nearly as big as on my dad’s fretboard – I didn’t want it like that. But they wanted to subtly put my name in.
“We were talking about fonts, and I said, ‘Well, the one that makes the most sense to me is the one on the strap.’ So I took a lot of pictures and they copied the font as close as they could – and that’s what they put on the pickguard.”
Do you believe that guitars have songs in them?
“Well, this J-185 is new – so it’s gonna have my songs in it. I do think that sometimes when you get an older guitar, whoever played it before, there’s something of that person in there and the songs they wrote on it. There’s something very mystical about that.”
What was it about the acoustic guitar that called to you as a teenager? What could it do that the electric guitar couldn’t?
“I think I just liked the organic feel and warmth of it. And the gentleness, depending on how you play. I’m a huge rock ’n’ roll fan, too, so Sister Rosetta Tharpe playing electric guitar was one of the greatest things ever for me. I even tried it when I was young and starting out. But I was never an electric guitar player.”
But the acoustic could be dangerous in the right hands, too, couldn’t it?
“Oh yeah – ‘this machine kills fascists’, you know?”
Were the songs from your classic 1993 album, The Wheel, written on acoustic?
“Oh yeah, all on acoustic, maybe a couple on piano. There’s no rhyme or reason to when my songs come. And I think if there was, then it wouldn’t be songwriting, it wouldn’t be a creative act; it would be something else that had a formula. I mean, there are ways to get yourself in the space of writing and thinking out structures of songs.
“Like with The Killing Fields, I knew what I wanted to write about, I knew I wanted it to be in the structure of an Appalachian narrative ballad, with no choruses. And I knew what the first verse was. Then it was a matter of months of turning it over in my head, sitting down with it, or getting an idea while I’m taking a walk.”
Is it too early to ask about your solo album due later in 2025 – and if your J-185 will be part of those sessions?
“It will be involved. And it’s not too early, although we’re not done yet. But I do find the songs that John and I are writing together – and the songs that I’m writing on my own – have a more acoustic feel to them. They’re kind of grounded in a dark folk sensibility and swampy, too.”
How different were you and your father as players?
They came to our house to film, and me and my sisters had to sit carefully on the sofa in our dresses, and I thought, ‘This is awful, I hate this. I don’t want anything to do with this’
“I can play barre chords and my dad couldn’t. And you know what’s interesting is that my dad had a strum that was identifiably his, and in the early days he would put a matchbook cover under the strings to get that kind of deadened strum. But when I learned to play, I learned from the Carter women. So my strum style is more of a Carter scratch than a straight strum like my dad had.”
Was there a moment you realised he was more than just your dad?
“No, I always knew he was famous. Because he was famous by the time I was conscious of that kind of thing. One of my earliest memories is of a television show coming to our house. It was called Here’s Hollywood.
“They came to our house to film, and me and my sisters had to sit carefully on the sofa in our dresses, and I thought, ‘This is awful, I hate this. I don’t want anything to do with this.’ So I was always conscious that he was part of the world, that people knew who he was. And I resented that at the beginning – I think like any child would.”
Was there ever a thought of doing something else with your life, or was the call of music just too strong?
I wanted to be an archaeologist, a librarian, a nurse. I wanted to write novels. I avoided music for a long time
“Oh no, I thought of doing many other things. I wanted to be an archaeologist, a librarian, a nurse. I wanted to write novels. I avoided music for a long time. But then I started writing poetry when I was in my early teens, and then I wanted to put the poems to music, so I was a songwriter first.”
Has that famous surname opened doors, or have you worked twice as hard for the success you’ve achieved?
“Well, in some ways, yes. It was a big shadow to crawl out of. I felt in the beginning like, ‘Don’t ask me about my dad. I’m me. I’m sui generis’ – which, of course, nobody is. And then it took me a while to grow into an acceptance of my own legacy and what my dad has given me. I wouldn’t say ‘curse’. But it’s a blessing and an obstacle at the same time.”
- The Rosanne Cash J-185 in Heritage Cherry Sunburst is available now. See Gibson for more details.
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