A small town, an old car and a box of eight-track tapes from a pawn shop led to a love of Johnny Cash and a chance to perform his music around the country.
Eric Hofmanis is a guitarist and singer for “Johnny Cash: The Official Concert Experience,” coming Feb. 17 to the Genesee Theatre. The concert gives fans a chance to see the late country music legend perform once again, he said.
“Fans will get to see Johnny Cash perform with a live band again,” he said.
Thanks to state-of-the-art projection, audiences will see clips of Cash performing on his TV show, which from 1969 to 1971, with his vocals extracted.
“That’s one layer. Another layer is a live band with singers such as myself will play his songs as well and honor some of his biggest hits in our own way,” he said. “Interspersed between that, we have never-been-told-before stories from his son, John Carter Cash. He will tell stories about some songs and how they were written and stories from his childhood and the things that they did. On top of that, there will be stories from Johnny Cash himself. Visually, it’s utterly stunning. It’s visually phenomenal.”
The show progresses through Cash’s life, he said, with the six-piece band performing along with his image.
“We perform with him everything from the early Sun recordings up until his last days, one of the last songs he ever wrote, ‘When the Man Comes Around.’ It’s a very poignant song,” Hofmanis said. “We basically timeline through his entire life.”
That includes all the hits, like “Ring of Fire,” “Folsom Prison Blues,” “Sunday Morning Coming Down,” “Man in Black” and of course, “I Walk the Line.”
“It really does cover an amazing cross-section of his career,” he said. “A big part of the joy for me is watching peoples’ faces. You see the wonder in peoples’ eyes when it starts. You see their faces transform when they look up and see Johnny Cash’s face. You see people crying, especially when Johnny Cash is (talking). Then we’ll go into ‘A Boy Named Sue’ and you see the happiness in their eyes.”
They also throw in classic country songs by artists like The Statler Brothers, Carl Perkins and June Carter Cash. Playing guitar with the band is Debbie Horton, the only woman to ever play guitar onstage with Johnny Cash. She played “Big River” with him once and will tell the story at the concert, he said.
Cash in a box
Hofmanis grew up in New York City and moved to a small, rural town in central Florida when he was 15. It was an immense culture shock.
He was already a musician by then with a love for old cars. Armed with a 1970s-era Lincoln Town Car and a new driver’s license, he would visit pawn shops to purchase old eight-track tapes, which was the only thing his car would play.
“We’re in the South, so mostly all you could find was Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley and ‘60s and ‘70s country greatest hits,” he said. “As a musician, I was never biased to anything. I would listen to anything and I would make myself learn anything.’”
On one fateful day, he wandered into a pawn show and spotted a box of eight-track tapes and on top of the stack was Johnny Cash’s “Any Old Wind That Blows.” It was covering more well-known albums by Cash, including “At San Quentin” and “Man In Black.”
“At the time, I was kind of a goth kid … and I was like, wait, this is up my alley,” he said. “I took the whole box.”
He drove for hours and hours listening to those eight-tracks, soaking up the music of Johnny Cash.
“It was such a difficult move, in those formative years, being this New York kid moving to this small town but I look back from where I am now and think, ‘Would this have happened if that didn’t happen?’” he said. “As hard as that was … it’s like one of those things – trust the path. It’s like this tour. I’m just completely grateful.”
Audiences will enjoy the show because it’s a chance to see and hear Johnny Cash in concert, he said.
“It’s the closest you’ll ever get to seeing him, because you are actually seeing him,” he said. “It’s not somebody impersonating him, you’re actually seeing him there. All the footage has been completely restored digitally. And you’re seeing him with a live band. It’s a show that’s never been done before.”
Johnny Cash: The Official Concert Experience
When: 7:30 p.m. Feb. 17
Where: Genesee Theatre, 203 N. Genesee St., Waukegan
Tickets: $35-$59
Information: 847-263-6300; geneseetheatre.com
Annie Alleman is a freelance reporter for the News-Sun.
