Country Singers Bring Johnny Cash’s Poems to Life on Upcoming New Album

Longtime Johnny Cash fans are about to get some very special new music. A forthcoming project, Johnny Cash Forever Words: The Music, sets the poems of Cash to music.

John Carter Cash confirmed the news to Rolling Stone recently and revealed that the project was inspired by Brad Paisley's collaboration “Gold All Over the Ground,” where he came up with the music to the song as well as sang it on his latest album Love & War. Cash calls Paisley's session the "precursor to this project."

In addition to Paisley, Chris Cornell, Jamey Johnson, Jewel, T Bone Burnett, Dailey & Vincent and Kacey Musgraves and Ruston Kelly are also featured on the forthcoming album. In an interview with Kentucky Country Music, Johnson spoke about his work on the album.

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"John Carter has a good number of poems that Johnny wrote. I say poems because they don’t have music to them," Johnson says. "He's working on an album where he's pairing up these songs with songwriters from our day to finish up these Johnny Cash songs. One of them that I know he's most proud of and you can't get it anymore – he's got Chris Cornell having finished one of these songs and then recorded it. I'm excited for it to come out. I got to do a couple of them."

The posthumous collaboration with Cash will stand as one of Cornell's last recordings before he took his own life in May of 2017

Paisley previously called his posthumous collaboration “absolutely one of the most meaningful things I’ve ever had the privilege of being a part of” in a video he posted to social media.

No release date has been announced for Johnny Cash Forever Words: The Music.

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