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BRIAN CHILSON
7th & Thayer • Little Rock • (501) 375-8400
MONUMENT: To WPA administrator William Dyess.
CASH MONEY Continued from page 8
was done for. “I got to looking and said, if we don’t do something, our whole town is going to dry up and blow away,” he said. “We looked at our strong points, and our weak points. The bad points are that our school closed and everything was just deteriorating and falling apart. The good part was the history and Johnny Cash.” Sims said that not many people in Dyess realize how much the Cash legacy could mean. In Sims’ office, he has a three-ring binder filled with the names of fans who have visited City Hall. “Most of them are from overseas. Germany, England, Spain. We’ve even had some from Vietnam,” Sims said. “It’s just unreal the amount of people who show up to look at [Cash’s home]... they don’t know a lot about Dyess history, but that’s what we want to tell them while they’re here.” By the time you read this, the official lineup and ticket prices for the August benefit concert at ASU’s Convocation Center will have been announced at an April 14th press conference. Some of the names that have been reliably kicked around so far are George Jones, Kris Kristofferson, and Johnny Cash’s children Roseanne and John Carter Cash, with artists like Kid Rock and others mentioned as interested in appearing at the Cash Music Festival in coming years. All proceeds will go toward preserving Dyess and the Cash Legacy — including the planned museum. Sims hopes it can bring a spark of hope back to his little town. “You’ll see cars coming through all the time with out of state tags, but none of them stop because there’s nothing open,” Sims said. “Hopefully within the next year or so, we’ll have something. Right now, they can’t spend any money. That’s what we want them to do.” www.arktimes.com • APRIL 13, 2011 27