Last Wednesday, SPACE Gallery on Congress Street hosted their second annual Johnny Cash night. Local musicians, including Christopher Terret, Jessie Pilgrim and The Bonfire, and Caleb Aaron and the Thrill Pills covered some of Cash’s best-known hits and the work of Bob Dylan and Shel Silverstein. SPACE’s walls were decorated with Johnny Cash artwork and the gallery slowly swelled to well over 50 attendees, some of whom proved that you actually can headbang to anything.
Terret and his guitar opened the show with some of Cash’s softer hits, and played Merle Travis’s “Dark as a Dungeon,” a ballad about coal miners. “It’s not just about coal mining,” Terret said “I think it says something about the barbaric nature of capitalism, and about when the thing you do becomes the thing that you are. It’s very dangerous.” Some of Cash’s big musical themes included prison and as Terret called it, “trembling before god.” Cash, who played for prison audiences, was the perfect theme for the four-venue, New England wide event sponsoring prison literacy programs.
The organizer for the event, Jen Harrington, got involved when she organized a Frank Black tribute to benefit the Nave gallery in Massachusettes. She had some friends who volunteered with prison literacy programs, and with the economy being what it was, Harrington threw herself into organizing the four-city, Johnny Cash tribute fundraiser. “The last people people think of are the prisoners,” she said, “people who’ve done bad things. The representatives here really care about rehab.” The program supports prison literacy and rehab in part by bringing donated books to prison libraries and by funding a prisoner newsletter, “The Call,” which features inmate work in their own voices.
Harrington quickly connected with organizers in Portland, Providence RI, and New Hampshire, who helped her find venues, like SPACE, sponsors including Band in Boston and The Rhode Island School of Design, and book local bands and musicians for the event. “Everything in my life just clicked, clicked, clicked,” she said. “The main idea was keeping our overhead down, so everything was volunteer: the photographers, musicians and graphic designers. Everybody volunteered their time. It was pretty amazing.” The variety of spaces and musicians gave each event its own uniqueness. “Each location had a different character,” she said. “Our Sommerville show was our most successful. The line stayed halfway down the block until 10:30, and some people didn’t get in.” So far, Harrington and the volunteers have raised over $3,000 for the literacy program. She hopes that more than just donations have been raised. “I hope this means we’ve raised awareness about the issue.”
After Terret left the stage, Jessie Pilgrim and The Bonfire, and several “special guests,” as Cash did many duets over his long career, really picked up the show after a long setup, with “Let the Train Blow the Whistle” and Bob Dylan’s “Girl From the North Country.” Pilgrim even had the brass for “Ring of Fire” realizing early on that “it would have sucked without it.” As it was, The Bonfire did not “suck” as they continued with Shel Silversteins’ “A Boy Named Sue” and were joined by Panda Bandit’s lead singer Will Etheridge for his theatrical re-enactment of “25 Minutes to Go.” Pilgrim’s girlfriend joined the stage to impersonate June Carter and finish the set with “It Ain’t me Babe” and some of Cash’s final pieces, “When the Man Comes Around,” and “God’s Gonna Cut You Down,” which had the entire band singing gospel style, clapping their hands in time.
Caleb Aaron and the Thrill Pills concluded the evening with a set that include a stand up bass and had people dancing by the stage. The Thrill Pills played “Walk the Line” and other cash tunes including “Guess things just happen that way,” “Big River” and “Cry, Cry Cry.”
The Cash final show at SPACE appears to have been a great success, in line with the success Harrington and others have had with the other shows. Here’s hoping that Cash night with make a third appearance next April.