The Johnny Cash Roadshow – a spectacular tribute to the Man in Black – is coming to the North East next week. The Johnny Cash Roadshow will play Consett’s Empire Theatre on February 9th and the Customs House, South Shields, on February 12th.
Aiming to be a “a concert crossed with a theatre show”, the Roadshow will – as well as playing Johnny Cash’s best-known hits – feature narration and a screen showing footage of the Man in Black’s life and career. The Roadshow manages to fit around 40 Johnny Cash songs into each gig.
Fronted by English songwriter and musician Clive John, who looks and sounds uncannily like Johnny Cash, the band also features a brass section, as well as the ‘Carter Sisters’ (Louise Masters and Amanda Stone) providing backing vocals on some shows.
Clive John said, “We do between 130 and 160 shows a year. We’ve played all over the UK and Ireland, all over Europe and we’ve got a show coming up soon in California as well.”
The Johnny Cash Roadshow also has the endorsement of the Cash family. Clive said, “We were doing a show in Altringham. The manager of the venue came down to the dressing room before the show and said there was a lady in her early thirties at the box office who’d like complimentary seats. He said this lady, who had a deep southern accent, claimed she was Johnny Cash’s granddaughter.”
“I thought it was probably someone pulling my leg, but I said yes anyway and sure enough (it really was her) and I met her during the interval. She said, ‘Oh my Gawd, you’re just like my grandpa!’”
“She’s emailed me lots of times since and we had a photograph taken. I was over the moon; I was honoured that somebody from the Cash family liked the show.”
The show will feature songs from each period of Johnny Cash’s career. Clive said, “I try to get it all in.”
“I especially try to give people an essence of what it would have been like to go to a Johnny Cash show in the late 60s/early 70s because that’s when he was at his prime, but we do all the obvious ones – I Walk the Line and Folsom Prison Blues – and we go all the way up to the last songs such as Hurt.”
“All the decades are in there. We try to do something from every decade from the 50s through to the end.”
For a full interview with Clive John of the Johnny Cash Roadshow, click here.
The gig at Consett’s Empire Theatre will begin at 7.30 pm on the 9th. Tickets start from £20 and can be booked by calling 01207 218 171 or visiting www.leisureworks.net. For information about the South Shields concert, please go to www.customshouse.co.uk or phone 0191 454 1234.
