Finding Freedom Through Failure

There’s no love lost between Rosanne Cash and Nashville, though the singer-songwriter finds she still has to set the record straight about who walked out on whom. After nearly a decade of making country hits, Cash met a rude reception with her 1990 album “Interiors,” a dark, personal study of an unraveling relationship. That rejection triggered some serious changes in her life, including a move to New York, where she lives with her husband, John Leventhal, the co-producer (with Cash) of her current album, “10 Song Demo.”

The mother of three daughters, Cash, 41, also had a book of short stories, “Bodies of Water,” published by Hyperion this year, and she’s on a concert tour that brings her to the Coach House on Wednesday and McCabe’s on Thursday and Friday. The daughter of Johnny Cash and his first wife, Vivian Liberto, Rosanne grew up in Ventura and lived in Los Angeles in her 20s when she studied acting. In a recent interview, she talked about her D-I-V-O-R-C-E from country music, writing and the legacy of her father.

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Question: Do you consider yourself at all a country artist anymore?

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Answer: It depends on which definition you’re going by. If you’re going by the ideological country definition, if you’re going by what’s on radio, no, I’m not part of that. If you’re going by something that’s rooted in the past and something I wove into a hybrid kind of mix, then yeah, of course.

But I don’t buy into the iconography, I never did. . . . It’s like a damn religion, you know. When I put out “Interiors” the country marketplace didn’t want it and didn’t understand it, and they transferred me willingly to the pop division of the record label. And then there was all this stuff about how I turned my back on country to seek stardom as a pop artist, which was bull---. I was just following the thread of my own unconscious creative leanings, and it became as if I had turned my back on Christianity for Hinduism or something.

Q: What do you mean by iconography?

A: There is this whole iconography about being a country artist, to buy into the value system and the look and the way your past is rooted, the way relationships keep on this kind of old keel and women playing the role of victim even if they’re pretending to be tough. I still see this total thing of buying into victimization and really old role models. And I don’t buy it.

Q: Were you resentful when “Interiors” was not accepted?

A: A little, yeah. A little. It’s odd because up to that point I had been making these country-rock records. “King’s Record Shop” had four No. 1 records, it went gold. And then I make a record like “Interiors,” which I think is much closer to the roots of country folk, and it’s completely rejected. So I was bewildered. So then I had certain expectations once they transferred me to the pop division, but . . . I found myself in a few years’ period of commercial failure and great introspection, which was really wonderful.

Q: How did commercial failure affect you artistically?

A: Best thing that ever happened to me. It made me question everything. It was great. I really got to sort through the threads and see what was important to me, what I wanted to write and what I wanted my future to be about and what kind of records I wanted to make, the whole thing. I reexamined everything.

Q: How did you come to write a book?

A: It’s a lifelong goal, since I was 9 years old. In college I started writing fiction and I’ve been writing it for 20 years. It’s always fed my songwriting--”7 Year Ache” started as a very long story. . . . And other songs have started that way. And then I just really wanted it to be something that was on its own, not just something to feed the songwriting.

Q: What’s it like to be in the literary world?

A: So nice. I don’t worry about what I look like so much. It’s also very adult. There’s not all of this frantic kind of obsession with trendiness and the next five minutes. It’s just kind of quiet. People who read books are a little bit different.

Q: Is it hard to explore some of the dark areas you reach in your writing?

A: It’s just a matter of learning how to come back. I think that artists and writers in general, we have more than our fair share of alcoholics and drug addicts and suicides and mental illness, because artists go to those places and they don’t know how to come back. Nobody taught them how to build a bridge. I became aware of that in my early 30s and consciously set out to create bridges for myself to come back. . . . Because I had kids, I wanted to be really present. I wanted to be a working artist and a present mom.

Q: How important is music to you now?

A: It’s essential to me, it always has been. I still feel as passionate about music as I did when I was 14. I still feel as inspired. It so enriches me. I feel so blessed that this is what I get to do, that the work I get to do in this world is where my passion is.

Q: What role has your father’s legacy played in your life?

A: Probably not the role that people would think. People assume that he had some great influence on me becoming a singer. I don’t see that so much as I see learning my respect for the English language and my love of literature from him. And also how he manages group energy, when he relates to an audience. What role he puts himself in, how timeless he is when he does that. Just seeing his back, his profile in the light, there’s this kind of solitude and timelessness about him that’s so profoundly moving to me. It’s like he could be a medieval minstrel.

* Rosanne Cash plays Wednesday at the Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano, 8 p.m. $23.50. (714) 496-8927. Also Thursday at 10:30 p.m. and Friday at 8 p.m. at McCabe’s, 3101 Pico Blvd., Santa Monica. Sold out. (310) 828-4403.