For better or worse, Rosanne Cash tends to attract a lot of attention simply for being the daughter of the late country legend Johnny Cash. A less ambitious person might have been content to, well, cash in on the family name.

But over the years, Cash has doggedly made her own way in the music world, producing numerous chart-topping singles, capturing a Grammy and winning critical acclaim for her musical artistry.

With her latest album, Black Cadillac, Cash again proves she is more than Johnny's daughter. She is a songwriter who created a potent treatise on grief and loss ("Now it's a lonely world/ guess it always was") that is decidedly for grown-ups.

Tomorrow night, Cash performs at Concord's Capitol Center for the Arts in a benefit show for Child & Family Services of New Hampshire. She spoke with us last week from her home in the Chelsea section of Greenwich Village.

Monitor: Your show here in Concord is a benefit for Child & Family Services. Is there special meaning for you in doing shows and benefit work?

Cash: Oh, absolutely. I love to do what I can to focus on children. I work here with the Young People's Chorus of New York City. It's a chorus that helps out some kids in some very, very difficult circumstances. This is tremendously important work to me.

You continue to get great response to Black Cadillac, the album you completed after the deaths of your mother Vivian, your father Johnny and your stepmother June. Did you expect that the album would connect with people as much as it has?

Well, I don't know that it has made a huge impact, but it did seem to resonate with people. This is different music - not stuff that is going to make the Top 40 or appeal to teens. As I write, I am never thinking about, you know, the marketing. It's never, let's make a country record, let's make a rock record. On that album, I used eclectic sounds that fit for me, everything from Appalachian-influenced music to elegiac New Orleans-style sound.

Your album dealt with grief both acute and enduring. You have talked about having an ongoing relationship with the dead. Does that process of grieving end? Evolve? Change?

After parents die, you end up with these internalized parents, and they can become very large. You make the choice to relate to the best characteristics and traits of those you've lost, not the worst. That's a liberty you're allowed to take.

You had to deal with a world that wanted - almost insisted - on grieving right along with you when your father died.

I felt very intruded upon. It felt like everybody wanted to co-opt my grief. I became very fierce about protecting myself. Those were rough waters to navigate - there was so much public stuff right after - music, photos. The movie [Walk the Line]. An onslaught. I remember carefully passing by newsstands, trying to brace myself. You couldn't shut it out.

But as you began to write about those losses, you spoke to the more universal - the loss, the stages of life - and didn't focus on that intrusion. You were able to kind of reclaim your family as your family - not the public figures. Is this what you thought you might be writing as you hit your 50s?

No! And I'm glad I didn't know the subject matter ahead of time. It would have been scary to know that period was coming. And honestly, I hope I never have to write quite like that again.

You were very publicly against the war in Iraq before everybody else was; you are also vocal about issues such as gun control. Has there been difficulty for you in being willing to be so vocal?

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