How Johnny Made His Songs Ring True.

Hint: Guts. Second hint: Still guts.

“Go home and sin and come back with a song I can sell.” Sam Phillips

“You’ve got a song you’re singing from your gut,” Johnny Cash once said, “and you want that audience to feel it in their gut, too.” He spent a lot of years trying to connect this way. Some songs did it better than others, probably the most…