Renew Records, BMG’s newest recordings imprint launched in 2020, has announced the never-before-released Johnny Cash live album At The Carousel Ballroom for October 29.

The album was recorded on April 24, 1968, at the historic Carousel Ballroom in San Francisco (since renamed the Fillmore West) a week before the release of Live at Folsom Prison, one of the most illustrious and influential albums in music history.

The collection will feature new essays by Johnny and June Carter Cash’s son John Carter Cash, Starfinder Stanley, The Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir, and Widespread Panic’s Dave Schools, as well as new art by Susan Archie, and a reproduction of the original Carousel Ballroom concert poster by Steve Catron. The release marks the latest entry in the Owsley Stanley Foundation’s ‘Bear’s Sonic Journals’ series.

An American icon, Johnny Cash is widely considered to be one of the most influential American musicians, singers, songwriters, and performers of the 20th century. Throughout his nearly fifty-year career, Cash has sold over 90 million albums and continues to this day to occupy a commanding position in music history.

BMG is proud to represent the music catalog of the House of Cash. In 2018, BMG published the book Johnny Cash at Folsom & San Quentin, a powerful portrait by legendary photographer Jim Marshall.

During the concert, as he prepared to perform his soon-to-be classic ‘Cocaine Blues’, Johnny Cash offered an introduction that is fascinating in its matter-of-factness: "Here's another song from the show we did at Folsom prison. It's in the album that's out next week."

Nobody at the Carousel Ballroom could have known that the casually referenced live album would add a wholly new chapter to the story of Cash's redemptive rise that's so extraordinarily documented on At Folsom Prison and At San Quentin.

Adding another layer of singularity to the recording is the sonic touch of Owsley Stanley, the live sound pioneer and 60s counterculture icon known as the architect of The Grateful Dead's "Wall of Sound." While seemingly an unlikely pairing with Johnny Cash, Stanley delivers a mix that's been described as "probably the closest to what it actually sounded like to be in the audience for a Johnny Cash show in 1968."

Featuring Cash entirely on the right channel and the Tennessee Three all on the left – a decision even Starfinder Stanley, Owsley's son, admits is "a bit weird until your brain adjusts" – he sets the listener right between Johnny and his band as if they were center stage at the Carousel that evening.