More news from the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival Oct. 17-26: Buzzy documentary “Nerdcore Rising” is screening, and genre hero MC Frontalot will be in the building and possibly performing somewhere around town. And banjo virtuoso Bela Fleck is coming with the documentary “Throw Down Your Heart: Bela Fleck Brings the Banjo Back to Africa.” It picked up the audience award at SXSW. He’ll probably perform, too. Other docs showing include “Garrison Keillor: The Man On The Radio In The Red Shoes,” “Is You Is … A Louis Jordan Story” and “A Journey Through The Blues: The Son Seal Story.” See the complete schedule at www.hsdfi.org.
It’s shaping up to be the season of Cash. In addition to “Johnny Cash Remixed,” an album that pairs 20 Sun-era Cash vocal tracks with in-ternational producers, which we’ve previously reported will be released on Oct. 14, three more Cash-related releases have already been released or will be shortly.
On Tuesday, Shout! Factory put out “The Johnny Cash Christmas Specials 1978 and 1979” on DVD. In the 1979 broadcast, Cash fea-tures his father, Ray Cash, and older brother, Roy Cash, in a visit to the Dyess farm where he grew up. Folks like Tony Orlando, Billy Gra-ham, Tom T. Hall and Andy Kaufman also guest star.
On Oct. 7, Anchorless Records releases “All Aboard: A Tribute to Johnny Cash,” featuring punk and alt-rock covers of JC by the likes of Ben Nichols, the Dresden Dolls, MxPx and the Gaslight Anthem. All proceeds go to the Syrentha Savio Endowment, a non-profit that pro-vides financial assistance to women who can’t afford the expense of fighting breast cancer.
Then on Oct. 14, Columbia/Legacy releases the two-disc, one-DVD box set “Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison: Legacy Edition.” It fea-tures previously unreleased songs and a new documentary film that includes footage from inside the prison.
Make plans, literati. The Frank Stanford Literary Festival runs Oct. 17- 19 in Fayetteville. The festival, which honors its Arkansas-born namesake, a renowned poet who killed himself at age 29, includes a screening of the experimental, autobiographical “It Wasn’t a Dream, It Was a Flood,” three panels and a reading of Stanford’s 15,000-line epic poem “The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You.” Find the com-plete schedule on typomag.com/frankstanfordfestival.com.