
I have been to a ton of music get-togethers but the folks you meet at a Johnny Cash event are the best hands down. I kid you not. We used to call them Cash Bash events and we would meet once every two years. You get to know them real well before you attend if you go to the Johnny Cash Chat room at www.johnnycash.com. This time around the curator of the museum, Bill Miller, may have out done himself. Bill and his lovely wife Shannon, always go first class for the rest of us.

Then there’s the Cash family. Not a stuck up person among them. We’re all there for the same reason - Happy Birthday Johnny! And then, and I save the best for last, there are the dyed in the wool devoted Cash fans from all over the world. Oh man these are some great folks. No matter where you come from, from anywhere in the world, you will find an uncanny bond to people you never met before. John and June can do that - still to this day! So many stories, so many favorite songs, and you learn why others find them favorite too.

Many folks can tell you when and where they were when they heard certain songs on the radio and how it stopped them dead in their tracks. We celebrate Johnny Cash with his family and closest friends, we always have. Johnny and June belong to the world and this celebration won’t only be star studded but full of world travelers as well. It doesn't matter if you are a blues fan, a rocker, a country fan, or even opera. Johnny touched all of us where we live, in our homes, where we work, and in the honky-tonks where we get wild for one reason or another. There’s an album that touches all of us too. It might be Bitter Tears, San Quentin, one of the America releases, or God only knows what may have stuck with you over time. But my guess is that you know exactly what I am talking about no matter what the album title. And lyrics that come to life: “We got married in a fever, hotter than a pepper sprout” or “There’s a lot of strange men in cell block ten but the strangest of them all” and then of course John’s devotion to God and country. Who can forget that. So we get together and we listen to what others that we have never met have to say about a man we all knew. Johnny Cash is having a birthday party in Nashville, Tennessee and you are invited. February 28-March 2 It’s cool to be there.