Sheryl Crow - Redemption Day

First performance: 04/11/2019

Coverinfo

Bruce performed the song only once: 
 
 
2019-11-04 Hulu Theater At Madison Square Garden, New York City, NY 
 
Bruce performed the song together with Sheryl Crow during Stand Up for Heroes:
Bruce, Jon Stewart and John Oliver once again performed at the 13th annual 'Stand Up for Heroes', an evening of comedy and music, presented by the Bob Woodruff Foundation and the New York Comedy Festival. This year, Bruce guests during Sheryl Crow's set to duet on her song "Redemption Day" before performing his own set of dirty jokes and acoustic classics, stretched to five songs. Other performers are Crow, Frédéric Yonnet, and a national anthem by Chloe Flower, as well as comedy sets by Stewart, Oliver, Hassan Minhaj, and Ronny Chieng.
 
with Sheryl Crow: REDEMPTION DAY/ BOBBY JEAN / I'LL WORK FOR YOUR LOVE / I'M ON FIRE / DANCING IN THE DARK / LAND OF HOPE AND DREAMS 
 
 
 
© All credits to the original photographer.
photo :  Debra L. Rothenberg 
 
 
   

Songinfo

Sheryl Crow wrote this song and recorded it on her 1996 self-titled sophomore album. It was covered by Johnny Cash. Sheryl Crow's original was a politicized song about national redemption. Cash's cover transformed it into a tune about personal redemption. "Having Johnny Cash record one of my songs was my biggest accomplishment as a songwriter," Crow told Southern Living magazine. "Talk about bringing weight to a song. He owned it. Afterward, he called me and asked if I liked his version and quizzed me about why I wrote 'Redemption Day.' But we never got to sing it together. He died three months later." Sheryl Crow wrote the song after visiting Bosnia with Hillary Clinton in 1995. "I really experienced something I'd never seen before, which was what it looks like to be in a war-torn area and meet people who had suffered through that," the singer explained to Rolling Stone Country. "Part of [Clinton's] goal was to speak to the women and children in those villages. The moment we went into Bosnia, the whole genocide was happening in Rwanda and we sat back and watched it, yet Bosnia seemed to be kind of a stronghold in Europe and we needed the military presence there. I came home really struck by the question of why we invest in some countries, and other countries we don't." Sheryl Crow re-recorded the song in 2019 for her Threads album, pairing her and Cash's vocals together with a new, piano-driven arrangement.
 
 
 
 
 
 

Other cover versions

It was covered by Johnny Cash on his posthumous American VI: Ain't No Grave album. Sheryl Crow told Reuters that when recording the song, Cash frequently called her on the phone to gain insights into the lyrics. "If he was going to sing a song, it was going to be a part of his molecular makeup," she said. "He was going to deliver it as if he wrote it. The questions that he asked and his concern for whether I would like what he was doing, it was just really humbling." The song was one of the last things Johnny Cash recorded before passing away.
 
 
  

Bruce on the artist

Lyrics

I've wept for those who suffer long
But how I weep for those who've gone
Into rooms of grief and questioned wrong
But keep on killing
It's in the soul to feel such things
But weak to watch without speaking
Oh what mercy sadness brings
If God be willing
There is a train that's heading straight
To Heaven's gate, to Heaven's gate
And on the way, child and man
And woman wait, watch and wait
For redemption day
Fire rages in the streets
And swallows everything it meets
It's just an image often seen
On television
Come leaders, come ye men of great
Let us hear you pontificate
Your many virtues laid to waste
And we aren't listening
There is a train that's heading straight
To Heaven's gate, to Heaven's gate
And on the way, child and man
And woman wait, watch and wait
For redemption day
What do you have for us today
Throw us a bone but save the plate
On why you waited 'til so late
Was there no oil to excavate?
No riches in trade for the fate
Of every person who died in hate
Throw us a bone, you men of great
There is a train that's heading straight
To Heaven's gate, to Heaven's gate
And on the way, child and man
And woman wait, watch and wait
For redemption day
It's buried in the countryside
It's hidden in the shells of night
It's everywhere a baby cries
Freedom
Freedom
Freedom
Freedom
Freedom