Black is Back

After the runaway success of Dylan Fest last February, Merrill Piepkorn knew he was onto something. Not long after the tribute concert sold out the Fargo Theatre, the president of the Prairie Airwaves production company found himself inundated with avid suggestions for his next endeavor.

Country artists dominated a majority of the pitches, as the Highwaymen and Merle Haggard were lightly considered for homage, though none seemed quite right.

“Then I thought to myself,” Piepkorn explained, “why not do Johnny Cash, the Man in Black? I always talk to a few people about it first before we go all in, and when I started talking to people, all of a sudden, guys are rolling up their sleeves and showing me their Johnny Cash tattoos on their shoulders. So there's Johnny Cash tattoos all over town! This is when I knew I had something."

With that affirmation, he set about curating the musicians. Some of the selected performers were players Piepkorn had first met during his heyday as a coffee shop and barroom musician in the early ‘70s, while he leaned on his younger co-producers to seek out newer local talent. "One of the reasons I liked Dylan Fest and I like Black is Back is that it's brought me into contact with a new, younger generation of musicians,” said Piepkorn. “[They’re] really fun, great people to work with. They're eager to participate in this.”

Altogether, sixteen acts will hit the stage to interpret the wide and varied catalogue of Cash’s music. While the folk stylings of acts like BOOTS and Amanda Standalone are obvious choices to commemorate the Man in Black’s country roots, the addition of high-energy acts such as the Ska-Skank Redemption and the harmonious arrangements of the Bison Arts Group, an ensemble of a dozen students from NDSU’s choir department, are sure to make for a unique set of inspired tributes.

While Cash was not an artist to be pigeonholed as a one-genre performer - he holds the rare distinction of being inducted into the Country Music, Gospel Music, and Rock and Roll Halls of Fame - his repertoire may take some surprising turns on Saturday. Piepkorn is quick to point out that “it's not a Johnny Cash imitation show or impersonation show,” adding with a laugh, "if you don't like one act, just wait six or seven minutes and you'll like the next one."

While the show doesn’t have any headlining acts per se, Piepkorn is particularly excited to bring Sherwin Linton to the stage. Linton, a singer and guitarist who holds a Ripley’s Believe it or Not World Record for having perfect attendance for every show he’s been booked for in his nearly sixty years of performing live, is a bonafide country star with several hit singles to his name. A born entertainer, the Black is Back concert is but one of the 200-some shows he estimates that he’ll have played this year.

While those credentials are impressive enough, his decades of writing and performing found him orbiting in some of the same circles as Johnny Cash, eventually befriending the Man in Black. Though the two had met first in 1958 in Minneapolis when Sherwin found his way backstage after Cash’s set at the Armory, and their paths crossed several times throughout the ‘60s, it wasn’t until the 1970s that the two became close.

“In 1971, I did a live album tribute to him at the South Dakota State Penitentiary and some Minneapolis studio brought their equipment down there and recorded it, and it was called 'Hello, I'm Not Johnny Cash,'” recalls Linton. “I did a lot of my original songs and then about a 25-minute tribute to him, kind of a running dialogue story of his life [with] a lot of songs integrated in between all the stories that I'd told about him. He liked it real well, wrote me a nice letter, said it was the nicest tribute anybody ever paid him on a record, and he had me on his show several times.”

During Cash’s performance at the South Dakota State Fair in 1976, he went so far as to call Linton on stage, symbolically taking off his boots for Linton and telling him that he could fill his shoes.

Shortly after Cash’s wife, June Carter, passed in 2003, his brother Tommy, whom Linton had also befriended throughout the years, asked Linton to give Johnny a call and give a little encouragement during his grief, insinuating that he may not have too many more opportunities to talk to him.

“So I did, and I talked to him for about fifteen, twenty minutes, and I told him thank you for what he had done for me and for so many people,” Linton said. “I told him that I felt that many people found the Lord because of his testimonies and that many people would feel that if a man like Johnny Cash can bow down and worship the Lord, then maybe they should, too. Part of his last words to me were, 'how you doin', Sherwin?' and I said, 'fine.'

'You still singing my songs?'

'Well, surely I am.’

He said, 'keep on singing 'em, Sherwin. Nobody does 'em any better than you.' I don't repeat that very often because it sounds like I'm bragging or something. A very nice visit I had with him, and it was a short time after that he passed away. He left the world with an awful lot of music and a lot of songs full of philosophical and spiritual messages."

Though Cash’s profile dipped in the ‘80s and ‘90s, he released a haunting rendition of Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt” in 2003, just months before he died. That song, a selection from his final ‘American Recordings’ album series, as well as the 2005 biopic of his life, ‘Walk the Line,’ rekindled his popularity among a new generation of fans.

Dan Christianson, guitarist for Ska-Skank Redemption, recalls his introduction to Cash’s music as such. “I remember I was in 7th grade, up early watching the morning music videos on VH1, when the video for "Hurt" came on. It was one of the first times I can remember getting goosebumps from listening to a piece of music. At 10 years old, it's maybe hard to wrap your head around all of the emotions that song and video touches. It was like nothing I had seen before and it was very moving.”

Cash’s legacy, more so than most 20th century songwriters, endures so strongly for several reasons. “He remains relevant because his lyrics and storytelling were just so good,” explains Christianson. “Nowadays I think the word "country" means a lot of different things to people, but the common characteristics of a good song and great storytelling are the same across the board. Johnny was a master of that. He has such a large body of work that has a lot of authenticity and purity that still inspires so many artists and songwriters.”

Having followed Cash’s career since he first heard the “Hey Porter”/”Cry! Cry! Cry!” 45 from Cash’s earliest Sun Records recordings, Sherwin Linton claims that a lot of Cash’s legacy comes from the authenticity of his art.

“He didn't depart from his own style. He had a certain knowledge of how he could be best recorded and sold on a record, even though his voice might not have been as pretty to some people as a Roy Orbison or a Frank Sinatra or whoever. He had a voice that was very identifiable, and he had a way of sincerely delivering the lyrics. More than anything, I would say he's the real folk hero of the 20th century”

IF YOU GO:

Black is Back

Sat. Nov. 13, 7 p.m.

The Fargo Theatre 314 N Broadway

Tickets available at Tickets 300.com or 300 Broadway