Church of Cash at History Theatre (July 31, 2026)

Church of Cash Setlist

0. — Set 1 —
1. Folsom Prison Blues¹
2. Tennessee Flat Top Box¹
3. I Walk the Line¹
4. Bonanza (Jay Livingston & Ray Evans cover)
5. Sixteen Tons (Merle Travis cover)
6. The Ballad of Ira Hayes (Peter La Farge cover)
7. Jackson (Billy Edd Wheeler cover)
8. Too Smart to Know, Too Dumb to Care (Jay Ernest cover)
9. The Ballad of Boot Hill¹
10. I Won’t Back Down (Tom Petty cover)
11. Get Rhythm¹
12. Ring of Fire (Merle Kilgore cover)
    
    — Set 2 —
13. Orange Blossom Special (Rouse Brothers cover)
14. Solitary Man (Neil Diamond cover)
15. There Ain’t No Good Chain Gang (Ed Bruce cover)
16. I’ve Been Everywhere / Country Boy
17. Girl From the North Country (Bob Dylan cover)
18. These Boots Are Made for Walkin’ (Lee Hazlewood cover)
19. Man in Black¹
20. A Boy Named Sue (Shel Silverstein cover)
21. Folsom Prison Blues/I Walk the Line/Riders in the Sky
    
    — Encore —
22. We’ll Meet Again (Vera Lynn cover)
    
    ¹ Johnny Cash cover

A tribute band may seem like an easy thing on the surface. All the music is known, just learn it and play, right? But the more famous the original, the higher the expectations from audiences that you “get it right”. Hitting that sweet spot of bringing the artist alive while never being in full mimicry mode is actually a small needle to thread. Over at the History Theatre in Saint Paul, it was going to be a full evening of country rock with the Church of Cash playing the music of Johnny Cash. The band formed in 2010 in Honolulu with frontman Jay Ernest. After relocating back to his native Minnesota in 2011, he has slowly and steadily built the band into one of the preeminent Johnny Cash tribute bands in the world. It includes a pair of albums, including 2021’s Flowers for June, the band being voted Best Tribute Band by the Midwest Country Music Organization, and even inducted into the Minnesota Music Hall of Fame for the work in preserving Cash’s legacy. In the last few years, that reach has gone global with regular tours throughout Europe. We last saw Church of Cash at Le Musique Room in May 2024, where Dave noted Ernest’s fantastic voice and that “If you were to close your eyes, you could easily be convinced that the Man in Black was alive and well”. High praise and an absolute must for a top quality Cash performance. When I found out a little before doors opened that there would be an intermission, I knew we were going deep on The Man in Black’s huge catalogue.

The band arrived as a quartet (vocals/guitar, guitar, stand up bass/electric bass, and drums/vocals) and started with Folsom Prison Blues, a perfect way to get the audience locked in and excited. Dipping between those big hits and the deeper cuts was a good bit of sequencing. The band was hitting all the right notes, and that voice was pretty spectacular. When Ernest actually dropped an octave for the final verse of I Walk the Line, he left the audience stunned in the best possible way. Our guitarist nailed the classic parts here and all evening, and those are as seminal to the songs. Cash’s version of the theme song for Bonanza, which was unsurprisingly not chosen for the TV show, was so very Cash. Weaving the story of the band and Cash was clever, and the introduction to The Ballad of Ira Hayes reminded us what an advocate Cash was. The song also let Ernest nail that spoken Cash style, and he really inhabited that vibe. Too Smart to Know, Too Dumb to Care was a Church of Cash original, but fit the bill well. The drummer, Jonathon TeBeest, was doing some largely unheralded work with some great back up vocals as needed throughout. Ring of Fire again let Ernest hit all the low notes and he was made for this (side note, Ernest does a train whistle noise that has to be heard to be believed). It was a perfect end to the first set and the crowd rolled out for intermission, with a small swarm at the merch table in the lobby.

The second set started with Orange Blossom Special and had Ernest on not one, but two harmonicas, and was a fiesty kick off. Solitary Man was a Neil Diamond cover from the late career American recordings, and was a good reminder that the same material in different artists’ hands can lead to some very different results. There Ain’t No Good Chain Gang let TeBeest and Ernest play that outflow song of Waylon Jennings partnered with Cash. This kicked off a section of Cash collaborations, including his Bob Dylan partnership on Girl From the North Country and these songs were highlighted by the complementary vocals of Ernest and TeBeest. An imagined version of Cash singing These Boots Are Made for Walking was a lot of fun and that stand up bass hit a bullseye. We got a small plug for the Folsom Prison Experience, a theatrical recreation of the 1968 concert, before going  back to the music with Man in Black. Ernest made the joke he was tired of singing and came back to Folsom Prison Blues with the crowd singing as the start of a medley for the audience and was the big finish. But of course, the encore was upon us and they were quickly back for We’ll Meet Again, and Church of Cash had made the two hours sail by and those songs truly ring.