To June This Morning - Ruston Kelly And Kacey Musgraves
LCM Song Of The Day: ‘To June This Morning’ - Ruston Kelly and Kacey Musgraves
The latest official music video from ‘Johnny Cash: Forever Words’ (released in April on Legacy Recordings) finds newlyweds Ruston Kelly & Kacey Musgraves turning a love letter that Johnny Cash wrote to June Carter Cash into an all-new ballad.
It was filmed at the remains of Johnny and June’s home at Old Hickory Lake in Hendersonville, Tennessee. Ruston originally started composing “To June This Morning” as a teenager, based on a love letter that Johnny had written to June as she descended the kitchen stairs one morning in 1970, eight months pregnant with their son John Carter Cash. Years later, when Ruston was asked by John Carter to contribute to this album, he asked his then-fiancée Kacey Musgraves to record the final version with him.
The video begins with Willie Nelson & Kris Kristofferson’s contribution to ‘Johnny Cash: Forever Words,’ called “Forever/I Still Miss Someone.” A thematic prologue to both the album and the video, “Forever/I Still Miss Someone” features two of Johnny’s old friends and collaborators: Willie plays the melody to one of Johnny’s songs ("I Still Miss Someone") while Kris recites one of the final poems Johnny ever wrote, called "Forever." Says John Carter Cash, “To me, the essences of the tracks "Forever/I Still Miss Someone" and "To June This Morning" are both of hope. My father wrote the poem "Forever" weeks before his passing. "To June This Morning" has the same hope; the words were written in February of 1970, one month before my birth. Together they represent Dad’s enduring hopes, the beauty of faith and the belief in all the good to come...even in the face of his own mortality."
A collaborative album of Johnny Cash’s unknown poetry, lyrics, and letters now set to music by an astounding array of contemporary artists, ‘Johnny Cash: Forever Words’ was released on Friday on Legacy Recordings, a division of Sony Music Entertainment. The release has been met with a number of high profile features including CBS This Morning, the NY Times, Rolling Stone, NPR Weekend Edition, Associated Press and much more.