You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece

till the story of how they were made.

My name is Tao Lin.

Cheryl Crowe is a singer-songwriter from Missouri.

She's released 10 studio albums, sold over 50 million records and has won 9 Grammys.

In April 2019, Cheryl Crowe released a new version of her song Redemption Day, which was

first released on her self-titled album in 1996.

This new version features vocals from Johnny Cash, who recorded a cover of the song that

was released posthumously in 2010.

And in this episode, Cheryl Crowe breaks down how it all came together.

There is a train that's heading straight to heaven's gate.

To heaven's gate.

The story starts in 1995.

Hi, I'm Cheryl Crowe.

So Redemption Day was really inspired by having made a trip to Bosnia and having performed

for the troops over there and really just having been witnessed to what war can do to

not only communities, but the countryside and to the psyche of a country.

Camp Linda was the host of a very special guest, Cheryl Crowe.

One of today's hottest musical artists visited the camp to kid the soldier something special

to write home about.

I was really struck by not only what I'd seen, but also by what I was seeing on TV, which

was mostly coverage of what was going on in Rwanda simultaneously.

...