Wholesome prison blues

Thomas Gabriel plays Cavan Townhall Theatre October 23

The eldest grandchild of legendary country singer Johnny Cash, Thomas Gabriel is set to tour Ireland, including a date here in Cavan, at the Townhall Theatre, October 23.

It will be Gabriel’s fourth time touring Ireland, but his first playing Cavan and a number of other so-called backwater venues, from Manorhamilton and Kilcar, Colooney to Kilkee.

“The people there have always been really good to me,” says Gabriel of his past trips across the Atlantic. “I’ve always had an affinity to Ireland, with its people, the music there.”

Born to Kathy Cash, one of four daughters Cash had with first wife Vivian Liberto, Gabriel grew up for the most part on the road with his grandparents - Johnny and June Carter Cash.

As grandson to the legendary Cash, becoming a musician has meant that Gabriel has had to live under a great weight of other people’s expectation. Most musicians don’t have such a heady legacy to live up to.

“It’s like anything else, and if your grandfather or father were farmers, or owned a store, it’s understandable you’d have a connection with that. So it was more a matter of this is what you do, rather than this is what you should do,” he tells The Anglo-Celt.

Gabriel used to refer to touring as part of Cash’s entourage as the “fish bowl”.

The nomadic lifestyle of a travelling musician wasn’t the “most stable” either, remarks Gabriel on reflection.

Gabriel’s voice is stereotypical Southern, dripping with distinctive Tennessee twang. But his image, easily mistaken at first glance for a TV typecast biker or possibly a hardened bouncer, salt and pepper beard and leather vest, doesn’t chime with his softness of tone.

The dichotomy immediately engenders interest, enough to tap through a few quick Googles. Gabriel’s debut release ‘Long Way Home’ (2018) crops up, as does 2020 single ‘Right Side of the Dirt’. Look away, and Cash himself can be heard, riding high in his pomp, ‘The Man in Black’ circa 1965, amid Gabriel’s distinctive vibrato.

Cash, Gabriel says, was always a “huge influence” in his life. Not just musically, but for his “insight and wisdom” also.

“He was a poet, an author, he could recall thousands of songs, a memory for music you wouldn’t believe.”

He was further influenced by his grandfather’s “manner”. For good and for bad, Gabriel had other less common traits in common too.

By age 11 a precocious Gabriel had begun playing guitar. But by age 13 he’d begun abusing alcohol, and it wasn’t long after that Gabriel began dabbling in narcotics.

Resignation

Cash had attempted to steer Gabriel away from a life in show business. In spite of his burgeoning addiction issues, Gabriel took up a role in law enforcement, becoming a police officer, a job that lasted eight years before drink and drug abuse overtook his uniformed code of morality and caused his resignation.

The common misconception is that hailing from such a dynasty would open doors. Instead Gabriel admits that people would often try to take advantage of the fact he was Cash’s grandson, leading to broken relationships, and growing frustration, both with himself and those around him.

A lengthy arrest record soon ensued. A string of assault charges and no more excuses saw Gabriel then spend several years behind bars, lying on a cot in an unforgiving 7x12’ cell, his every move monitored, and freedoms curtailed.

“Addiction is a long and lonely battle with yourself. It’s easy to be in addiction and know what you’re doing is wrong,” muses Gabriel. “But what’s not so simple is overcoming that demon inside you that tells you: ‘You need it’.”

Back on the outside, Gabriel slipped into a familiar spiral of self destruction once again. Down, and feeling all but defeated, lying alone in a dingy hotel room with his bike parked at the foot of the bed, the phone rang. It was Gabriel’s mother, telling him there was a man who wanted to talk.

Redemption

The voice on the other end of the line was that of producer Brian Oxley, a lifelong Cash fan, who’d recently purchased the singer’s former farm in Bon Aqua, Tennessee. Oxley had been researching Cash and his family, and read about how Gabriel himself had been struggling.

So he reached out. Remarkably he managed persuade Gabriel into making his twenty-second attempt at entering rehab.

A year later, the paving on Gabriel’s road to redemption was laid when he began working with Oxley on his first independent album, ‘Long Way Home’.

It led Gabriel to becoming a counsellor. He was good, as most addicts usually are. But the calling to return to music never left him.

In 1995, Gabriel recorded what was then his first EP at his grandfather’s studio. Influences included early Metallica, Anvil and Venom, but his writing always honed closer to an American Country note.

“He didn’t think I should pursue music,” says Gabriel of the advice given to him by Cash. “But he did say, ‘Come back to it one day’.”

So in October 2018, 50 years after Cash’s now legendary live performance at California’s Folsom State Prison in California, Gabriel followed in those hallowed footsteps, playing two shows for prison inmates there with guitarist Derek Toa. He performed some of his own music, songs written while he had been incarcerated, and mixed in some of Cash’s classic hits.

Cash’s performance revived the maverick country star’s career. It revitalised Gabriel too.

The music Gabriel has written, and of which he is most proud of, is reflective. It’s a journey told as much as lived. This is his story.

The pandemic helped Gabriel keep clean and sober, and he channelled that time to himself into his most recent album, ‘The Treehouse Sessions’, released in 2021.

At his shows Gabriel plays only a handful of his grandfather’s songs. It’s an ode to greatness, rather than to capture a legacy for his own set list purposes.

Growing up, he says the Cash songs everyone knows were “just songs” and that it took years for Gabriel to fully appreciate the meaning, and how much they mean to his grandfather’s legions of fans.

Playing them now, he adds, “brings me closer to him”.

“People miss him. I miss him. It just so happens that I have a similar voice, but I don’t want to walk in his footsteps. Nobody can. I can only do me.”

Songs & Stories with Thomas Gabriel, Growing Up Cash, is at Townhall, Cavan, October 23.

Tickets €22 + service charge available online from www.townhallcavan.com or 049 4380494.