What starts as a Johnny Cash tribute show becomes something much bigger when the audience walks through the theater doors and suddenly finds themselves inside Folsom Prison in January 1968.
Taylor and Kelly sit down with Jay Ernest, lead singer of Church of Cash and co-creator of the Folsom Prison Experience, to talk about the unlikely path that took him from playing music in the corner of an Irish bar in Honolulu to touring internationally and building an immersive theatrical production around one of the most legendary live recordings in music history.
Along the way, Jay shares what it takes to turn a creative idea into a sustainable business, why strong branding becomes more important as a business grows, and the ambitious plans he and his team are already working toward next.
From an Irish Bar to Church of Cash
Jay has been a professional musician for roughly 30 years, but his career performing Johnny Cash songs began almost accidentally.
While living in Hawaii and touring with the band Go Jimmy Go, Jay started picking up solo gigs at an Irish bar in Honolulu. He played everything from country and Irish music to songs from the 1980s, but something noticeably changed whenever Johnny Cash entered the set.
People stopped what they were doing and listened.
Customers began telling Jay how much his voice sounded like Cash, which was especially meaningful because Jay had grown up listening to the music with his father. When he decided to learn more Johnny Cash songs, he quickly realized he already knew most of them.
That discovery eventually became Church of Cash, which Jay formed in Honolulu in 2009.
When Jay returned to Minnesota the following year, he rebuilt the band in the Minneapolis area and started from the ground up. Church of Cash played Tuesday nights at the Whiskey Junction, sometimes earning just $35 to split between five musicians. Those regular performances gave Jay the opportunity to build confidence as a lead singer, expand the band’s catalog, and develop the chemistry that would eventually take them far beyond Minneapolis.
Over time, the shows grew from local bars, legions, casinos and clubs into national tours. By 2015, Jay had begun touring Europe, where Church of Cash developed a loyal following and regularly sold out shows.
What started as another creative outlet had become Jay’s full-time career.
Turning a Tribute Show Into an Immersive Experience
The idea for the Folsom Prison Experience came from Jay’s eventual business partner, Tom Pickard, who repeatedly suggested recreating what it would have felt like to witness Johnny Cash’s famous 1968 performance at Folsom Prison.
For years, they were both too busy to pursue it.
Then 2020 changed everything.
Instead of treating the sudden pause in touring and live events only as a loss, Jay and Tom saw an opportunity to finally develop the concept. They researched the original Folsom Prison performance through books, accounts from guards and musicians, photographs, recordings and historical information surrounding Johnny Cash.
From there, they built what Jay describes as a dramatic tribute show that sits somewhere between a concert and a musical.
The key difference is perspective.
Audience members are not simply watching someone recreate Johnny Cash’s performance. They are invited to become the inmates who were sitting inside Folsom Prison that day.
Creating the Experience Before the Music Starts
The immersion begins almost immediately.
Guests arrive to find prison numbers waiting for them. Guards move through the aisles interacting with audience members, joking with them and treating them like inmates. Information gathered from guests can even make its way backstage and become part of prison-style announcements over the PA system.
Then the performance begins without the traditional theatrical cues audiences expect.
Instead of a dramatic curtain opening, performers begin setting up equipment as if the original recording is about to happen around them. The transition from pre-show to show is intentionally subtle, helping the audience stay inside the world Jay and Tom have created.
The production is rooted heavily in the history of the original event. Jay estimates that roughly 75 percent is factual, while other elements come from related events, prison experiences or moments from Johnny Cash’s history that fit the setting.
The goal is to keep audiences firmly planted in January 1968.
That commitment reaches its peak when Jay finally walks to the microphone and delivers the introduction audiences already know from the legendary recording: “Hello, I’m Johnny Cash.”
For Jay, the energy at that moment is one of the best parts of the entire show.
When Your Brand Needs to Catch Up With Your Business
As the Folsom Prison Experience gained momentum and began reaching larger audiences and venues, another challenge became clear: the brand needed to communicate how different the show actually was.
Calling it a Johnny Cash tribute did not fully capture the experience. At the same time, explaining an entirely new entertainment concept in a sentence or two was difficult.
That challenge eventually brought Jay and Tom to Moxie Creative.
The goal became creating what Taylor describes as the “show before the show.” Before someone ever bought a ticket or stepped into a theater, the website needed to communicate the atmosphere, scale and quality of the production.
The visual direction leaned into a cinematic, movie-poster-inspired feeling that could introduce visitors to the world of Folsom Prison from the moment they landed on the site. Moxie also carried that direction into the show’s printed program, giving guests a piece of the experience they could take home.
Jay says the transformation reflected something many growing businesses eventually experience: sometimes the product outgrows the website that originally helped launch it.
A DIY website can be exactly what a new idea needs at the beginning. But once the business grows, that same website can start underselling what customers will actually receive.
The Folsom Prison Experience needed a brand that looked as strong as the show felt.
Taking the Folsom Prison Experience on the Road
Today, taking the production on tour means moving a 17-person crew across the country.
Jay and Tom have learned that growth is about more than simply booking as many shows as possible. Travel routes, distance between venues, payroll, transportation and scheduling all affect whether a tour makes sense.
That has led the team to favor shorter runs and regions where multiple cities can be reached efficiently, particularly the East Coast. Recent performances have taken the show through cities in Georgia, Tennessee and South Carolina, with additional runs planned throughout the Northeast.
The ambition does not stop there.
Jay is also developing a storyteller-style production with Johnny Cash’s daughter, Cindy Cash, using stories, music, home videos and other personal material to share another side of Johnny Cash’s life. He has also begun exploring an even larger dream: creating a multi-day Johnny Cash celebration in Nashville.
For someone whose Church of Cash journey began playing small Tuesday night gigs for a few dollars, the scale is dramatically different. The mindset behind it, however, has stayed surprisingly consistent.
Keep Dismantling the Barriers
When Taylor asks what Jay has learned from turning big creative ideas into reality, his answer is simple: learn how to dismantle barriers.
Every ambitious idea creates reasons it might not work. Some barriers are financial or logistical. Others come from the outside world. Many are the ones people put in front of themselves.
Jay’s approach is to keep finding the next solution and moving forward.
That persistence took Church of Cash from meager beginnings to international tours. It turned a pandemic-era idea into an immersive production touring theaters around the country. And now, it is pushing Jay toward creative projects that would have sounded almost impossible when he first discovered people liked hearing him sing Johnny Cash in an Irish bar in Honolulu.
Tune In and Get Inspired
Hear Jay’s full story, learn what goes into creating the Folsom Prison Experience, and get a behind-the-scenes look at what happens when creativity, business and a really big idea come together.
