FOLSOM50: OREGON PRISON TOUR

Danny Wilson and Tracy Schlapp created Folsom50 with their band Luther's Boots to commemorate Johnny Cash’s legendary prison concerts. Performances resonate with Cash’s belief in reinvention, his own redemption — a biographical thread that ran through all of Cash’s catalog. Cash empathized with the plight of the incarcerated and in doing so, remembered the forgotten through his music. The strains of his lyrics acknowledge human darkness, frailty, and the light found in redemption. The Cash prison concerts recognized a contract between performer and audience that is dignified through mutual respect. This idea resonated with the project creators as a larger framework for Cash’s musical and social/political legacy. 

The 2018 season featured songs from the At Folsom Prison live recording which were styled by Luther’s Boots with an ear to contemporary audiences. The second season, Flip the Record opened with a new set of songs that started with the early Sun Studio sessions and followed the line to the American Recording sessions produced by Rick Rubin.

While he was playing Cash in prison, Wilson was writing his own songs. Wilson proposed to record the songs he wrote during the Oregon Prison Tour and perform them inside for the third Oregon Prison tour and Regional Arts & Culture Council awarded him a project grant. January 2020, Luther’s Boots packed their gear into the Shady Pines Media studio to record Darkened Road Ahead. The album debut was planned for March 10 at Columbia River Correctional Facility. A few days before the show, one of the “Boots” was quite ill and it was prudent to reschedule for April 15. Soon after, Oregon Department of Corrections announced closing the prisons to all volunteers in order to protect the Adults in Custody from Covid-19. A live stream of the album’s debut was recorded and distributed to play in the prisons (link above). Luther’s Boots will reassemble in 2023 and hit the road.