A new Johnny Cash album isn’t all that looks back at the iconic singer’s legacy. A new music video featuring his granddaughter puts fans in the house where he wrote so many of his hits.
Grace June Cash — daughter to John Carter Cash and his wife Ana Cristina Cash — comes upon the Cash family cabin in the new, black and white video for “Hello Out There.”
- “Hello Out There” opens Cash’s new Songwriter album, a never-heard-before, 11-song project recorded in 1993.
- John Carter Cash says his father wrote it about the Voyager spaceship around the launch. It dates back to at least the early ’80s.
- Marty Stuart plays guitar on the new song.
- Grace is Cash’s youngest granddaughter at 6 years old.
The ever-prescient lyrics are delivered over a marching rhythm and piano chords. Immediately, we see Grace June Cash coming up to the old home and finding artifacts like the singer’s bible and his wife June Carter Cash’s banjolin.
Easter eggs pop up in nearly every scene. Family fishing poles and an 1890s Steinway piano were once used by Johnny and June. There is also his old Ampex tape recorder and a Martin Parlor guitar that little Grace looks over and runs her fingers across.
Eventually she moves outside and at the end you get a look at the physical resemblance between the little girl and her grandmother, whom she never met.
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Songwriter came from demos cut at LSI Studios in Nashville in 1993. The songs were stripped back to just his vocals and re-produced with select musicians including Stuart, drummer Pete Abbott and (on “Spotlight”) the Black Keys Dan Auerbach.
Vince Gill also adds backing vocals to a musically lighthearted and lyrically hopeful “Poor Valley Girl.” It was written about June Carter Cash.
Billy Dukes is a Senior Editor and Executive Producer of Video Content at Taste of Country. He specializes in country music interviews, trend analysis and the Secret History of Country Music. Additionally, Billy covers Yellowstone, 1923 and related television shows through the Dutton Rules podcast. To date, he’s written more than 13,000 articles for Taste of Country and produced over 3,000 videos for the Taste of Country YouTube channel.
