via pitchfork
Many years ago, rock/country legend Johnny Cash hooked up with and signed to, super producer/hit-maker Rick Rubin’s American label and began recording and releasing the American Recordings series of albums. The albums, produced by Rubin were raw, gritty, and stripped-down to their musical basics, featuring original tracks as well as splendid covers. Four of these albums were released prior to Cash’s 2003 death, and another, American V: A Hundred Highways, emerged posthumously. And on February 26, Cash’s birthday, American/Lost Highway records will release American VI: Ain’t No Grave, the final volume in the series.
Rick Rubin produced this record, as he did all the others, and has enlisted number of musicians to help, including Matt Sweeney and Smokey Hormel, to play on the album, and Scott and Seth Avett of the Avett Brothers guest on the title track. As per usual Cash covers a whole lot of other people’s songs including Sheryl Crow’s “Redemption Day”, Kris Kristofferson’s “For The Good Times”, Tom Paxton’s “Can’t Help But Wonder Where I’m Bound”, Bob Nolan’s “Cool Water”, Ed McCurdy’s “Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream”, J.H. “Red” Hayes and Jack Rhodes’s “Satisfied Mind”, and Hawaiian monarch Queen Lili’uokalani’s farewell song “Aloha Oe”. The album will also feature a new, original Cash song called “I Corinthians: 15:55”.