Cash regains her voice, with some added depth

Rosanne Cash opened her concert Tuesday at the House of Blues with “44 Stories,” a song from her fine new album, “Rules of Travel.” She indeed has dozens of tales to tell -- from the two-year voice problems that left her unable to speak, let alone sing, before reemerging with this album, to the recent death of her stepmother, June Carter Cash, and the health problems of her father, Johnny Cash.

But she only obliquely alluded to all that. Introducing 1981’s “Seven Year Ache,” a song she said she wrote “when I was exactly half the age I am now,” the 48-year-old added, “It’s nice to know that girl is still out here working today.”

That sense of quiet, determined dignity marked the show as she let the songs -- drawn from throughout her career and informed by real heartache and emotional evolution -- largely speak for themselves. She’s a strong songwriter with a knack on a par with Nanci Griffith for investing familiar formats with blood, sweat and tears, and here it was fleshed out by invitingly sympathetic support from a six-man band led by her husband, guitarist John Leventhal, who also produced the new album.

Key was the stoic, joyful acceptance of life’s imposed changes in “September When It Comes,” forceful and moving even without her father there to sing the verses as he does on the record.

In the encores she transitioned from personal to political with the same stern grace, offering the antiwar/pro-humanity pleas of Bob Dylan’s “License to Kill” (incorporating paraphrases of John Lennon’s “God”) and John Fogerty’s “Who’ll Stop the Rain?”

The real magic Tuesday, though, was that she was up there at all. The confident joy of being back on stage after her voice-related ordeal radiated from her every pore, telling the only story she really needed to tell.