If you saw the listing for “The Folsom Prison Experience” and thought to yourself, “Eh, sounds like another tribute band,” you would have thought wrong. Very wrong.
When you come to this show, you’re not walking in as a mere concert-goer. You’re walking in a hardened criminal. You’re doing hard time. Maybe you held up a liquor store or broke a man’s jaw in a bar fight. Maybe you stole a car and led the cops in a high-speed chase down Highway 169 before crashing into a telephone pole. Maybe you shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.
Whatever you did, you’re stuck in Folsom Prison now, and as luck would have it, the one and only Johnny Cash has come to entertain you for a night.
That’s the idea behind Jay Earnest’s latest Johnny Cash-related project. Earnest, whom you may have seen helming The Church of Cash band — a tribute band that channels the music legend’s catalog — ups the ante quite a bit with “The Folsom Prison Experience,” which is Friday at the Mayo Clinic Health System Event Center.
The stage looks like a prison. Actors dressed as prison guards roam around the building. A voice over the loudspeaker is in character, calling out names of ticket holders. And the audience plays the most important role: They are the inmates.
For audience members who want to truly embrace that role, “inmate attire” is available to purchase online or at the show.
Earnest says he wanted to replicate the actual historic concert as closely as possible.
“We did a lot of research for this particular day, what Johnny Cash was going through. We heard some accounts from his band, what his band remembers from that day. There’s no video of this show; there’s only still camera shots. And obviously, there’s the audio recording.”
Johnny Cash’s Folsom Prison show is one of the great moments in music history. Cash was inspired to write his classic hit “Folsom Prison Blues” while serving in the U.S. Air Force Security Force. And after watching the film “Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison,” he penned a song based on his perception of what life might be like serving a life sentence there.
The song became popular with prison inmates, many of whom wrote to Cash asking him to perform at their prisons. So that’s what he did.
The Folsom Prison concert wasn’t his first prison gig. He’d played several others and realized an opportunity to revive his struggling career might be waiting for him at Folsom.
Cash played two shows at Folsom. The best pieces from both made it onto what has become Cash’s most famous recording. During the performance, you can hear inmates cheering and Cash banter with them. The performances were a tidal wave of energy, the kind of show you listen to and wish you’d been there (just not as an inmate).
Earnest says turning the show into an experience was the only way to do justice to history.
“When the person comes into the building, you’re transported back to 1968, so it’s semi immersion, if you will,” Earnest says. “There’s guards walking around, and they’re interacting with the audience. But the audience are now inmates at Folsom Prison. So the guards that are walking around in the foyer are saying things like, ‘Hello inmate. Make sure you get a good seat for Johnny Cash. I heard him warming up today, and he’s gonna sound real good.”
A good chunk of the audience arrives to “The Folsom Prison Experience” already in character.
“I would say maybe 30% of the people that walk into our show are already dressed as inmates,” Earnest says. “They got the denim on, or they have shackles on their hands, or they have orange stripes, or white and black stripes. And they come as a group and they’re already like a prison gang. Or maybe a whole family of them come in — like a family of eight — and they’re all dressed like inmates. They got the assignment, they read reviews and said, ‘Hey, this is really cool.’”
Another immersive aspect takes place while people are arriving and waiting for the show to start. Attendees can scan a QR code that will call up questions such as, “What’s the name of your gang? What are you in for?”
“Those responses get transmitted backstage where we have a microphone for the PA system for the whole place,” he says. “So while some of the actors are setting up the stage, I could say, ‘Attention, inmates: Robb from Mankato has just entered the prison, and we want you to give him a real Folsom round of applause.’ And you’re sitting in your seat looking around and thinking, ‘Did they just say my name?’”
Earnest says the idea for “The Folsom Prison Experience” was born during a conversation with a friend who owns a venue in St. Cloud. After a Church of Cash show several years ago, they kicked around the idea of re-creating the Folsom Prison show.
A great idea, he thought, but one no one had time for.
Until COVID hit.
“We thought this is our opportunity to write ‘Folsom Prison,’” he says. “And that’s how it all came to be. When you think about it, this has never been done. There’s a tribute act for everything. I’m in a tribute act. I understand that tribute act world. But with this particular show, it’s different. It’s not quite a musical. Musicals have songs that progress the plot. I think we’re what you might call a tribute drama. We’re taking the tribute show to the next level. We’re bringing a historic day to the audience through a quality tribute act, and we’re bringing in great actors to bring the parts and this day back to life.”