Rosanne Cash and her music have been gone from Nashville and the country mainstream a good deal longer than they were here. Two decades ago, give or take, she set her course for New York and a more uptown, jazz-tinged and introspective sound that’s found a better fit in the Americana world. Perhaps symbolically, her return to Nashville this week will be at a pair of events connected to this weekend's Americana Music Festival: an appearance at the Americana Honors & Awards ceremony 6:30 p.m. Thursday at the Ryman, and a signing of her new memoir noon Friday at the downtown Sheraton on Union Street.
But her earlier presence still echoes, and certainly not only because she shares a surname emblazoned on block-lettered bumper stickers and T-shirts. From her star-making 1981 LP Seven Year Ache to last year’s country-covers concept album The List — her most popular record in 22 years — she did, and does, her own thing with intelligence. And it shouldn’t come as a surprise that at this point in her life and career she’s got considerable perspective on the relationships between where she comes from, who she is and what she’s chosen for herself. Enough for a memoir — titled with supreme self-awareness Composed — and an interview in which she discusses some of the difficult choices she made for her book, her music and her career.