Close to 120 patrons showed up to the Snow Lake Motor Inn on the evening of Saturday, July 29 to see AR Cash and Ashley Robertson perform their Johnny Cash/June Carter tribute show. They weren’t disappointed!
Not only does Aaron Prociuk (aka AR Cash) have the high hair, gravelly voice, and swagger of Johnny Cash, but he has something else… a finely tuned sense of the “Man in Black” and a wide-ranging knowledge of the dates and events that formed the famous singer-songwriter’s life and career. Ms. Robertson also shone in her performance as June Carter, while also displaying intricate knowledge of this historical figure.
The duo’s repertoire contained a number of the Cash classics such as “Walk the Line,” “Jackson,” “Boy Named Sue,” and “Folsom Prison Blues.” However, the show was also packed full of more obscure tunes like “Give My Love to Rose,” “I Was There When it Happened,” and “So Doggone Lonesome.” The duo also managed to sneak in some great songs by Merle Haggard, Dolly Parton, Kris Kristofferson, and George Jones.
At the beginning of the show Prociuk told the crowd that his work as a tribute artist had recently been nominated for an award. After the Snow Lake show, he and Robertson were going to take a bit of R&R before heading down to Nashville for the awards presentation.
In between sets, Prociuk revealed that he grew up in a Ukrainian family setting in East St. Paul, Manitoba. He was inspired by the music of Johnny Cash after seeing the 2005 movie Walk the Line.
“I figured if Joaquin Phoenix could teach himself to sing and play for that movie… why couldn’t I?” he asked rhetorically. Judging by his performance that night and the reception from the crowd, he got very good at it.
When asked how he nailed down his impersonation of Cash, Prociuk stated, “I sang the songs everyday travelling in the car, for a long time, and you get the phrasing down when you do that,” he said. “I try to pay attention to detail. I also own every Johnny Cash Columbia album from 1958 right up to the 1990s.”
Prociuk is so much a student of the “Man in Black” that he built his own amp and guitar in order to accurately emulate Cash’s sound. He chuckled as he related how, when visiting Nashville’s Johnny Cash Museum, he pulled the curator aside and corrected him on several inconsistencies, including how they were missing a crucial event from the life story of Cash – when he dragged a mic stand across the stage in the Grand Ole Opry and smashed all of the footlights.
Although the couple said they felt somewhat hindered by the absence of their band, The Rebels, this certainly didn’t dull the Snow Lake audience’s approval. Gratitude was shouted and whistled… there was even the odd “rebel yell.” As luck would have it, the duo was gracious enough to come out for a third set (they normally do two) and even revisited the stage for an encore once that was done.
