Heidi Newfield photo by Erick Anderson, courtesy of Curb/Asylum Records.
Oct. 16, 2008 — Heidi Newfield’s first single as a solo artist, "Johnny And June," has pushed her into country music’s Top 10, and it has an interesting tie to her previous life as a member of Trick Pony.
On the band’s debut album in 2001, Heidi and her fellow musicians — Ira Dean and Keith Burns — brought in Johnny Cash to do a new version of his song "Big River." In that process, Heidi got to know Johnny and his wife, June Carter, and that played a role in writing "Johnny And June."
"Having an opportunity to sit with Johnny and June and listen to them, their banter back and forth, the way they interacted with each other, those are things that I got to experience that I couldn’t read in a book or experience in a movie," Heidi told the national radio show GAC Nights: Live From Nashville. "They were just like any of the rest of us. They had their dark days, there’s no doubt. They had a ton of obstacles to overcome — meeting at the wrong time in their lives, being married to other people, building a friendship, especially one on the road where it’s just a three-ring circus out there — but they were a magnet and steel. They eventually had to be together."
"Johnny And June" not only celebrates the relationship of the Cashes, it also pays homage to the Man in Black’s music. Among the song titles that get namechecked in Heidi’s single are "Ring Of Fire," "I Walk The Line" and "Jackson," a song that won a Grammy after it was recorded by Johnny and June.