I'm the sparrow on the roof.

I want so much to touch those things in my life and in my work.

And I just keep looking for the veil to be lifted, even in a fraction of a moment.

You know, I'm always looking for that.

That's my religious desire.

I'm the rainbow in the dirt.

Mystical is one of the unexpected words the singer writer Roseanne Cash uses to describe her father, Johnny Cash.

But it also applies to this daughter's mind and spirit.

So I will love it for you in stories of the kings.

She's a mother of five, a lover of language and of physics who surprised herself by becoming a performer.

She's lost her voice for a stretch of years and head brain surgery.

The legacy of Johnny Cash weaves throughout a conversation with her.

So does his death in 2003 and the black Cadillac album she created from that same period

in which she also lost her mother and her stepmother, June Carter Cash.

The songs that emerged like all of her music these days are full of life in the raw

and of some form of time travel.

That's a phrase Roseanne Cash likes and gives new meaning.

I'm Christa Tippett and this is on Beying.

Man first and the miles between

I will look for you in more feeling and dreams.

I sat down with Roseanne Cash in 2011 backstage at Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis.

She arrived with her longtime manager Danny Khan and her husband, the musician and producer

...