{"id":15761,"date":"2020-06-01T00:11:16","date_gmt":"2020-06-01T07:11:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/?p=15761"},"modified":"2020-05-31T11:08:47","modified_gmt":"2020-05-31T18:08:47","slug":"john-prine-an-appreciation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/john-prine-an-appreciation\/","title":{"rendered":"John Prine: An Appreciation"},"content":{"rendered":"
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John Prine. Illustration by Mandy Newham-Cobb.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Prine in the 1970s.<\/p><\/div>\n

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John Prine was a gentleman songwriter whose love for life shot through his music like light beams. He was the middleman between hope and despair, an ambassador of song who brought comfort and companionship to his legions of fans through the warmth of his voice, a perfect vehicle for the portraits of desperate characters he worked into the hearts and minds of many disenfranchised souls. For 50 years, he entertained, enlightened, humored, and inspired us with tales of old folks, lonely misfits, childhood paradise, and burned-out rodeo queens. He was able to achieve in a five-minute country song what most authors of fiction set out to in a 300-word novel. Like Woody Guthrie, Prine was a timeless journeyman who reported on the human experience with deceptive simplicity. He made us laugh, cry, think and feel deeply, and gave breath to singular singers like Bette Midler (\u201cHello in There\u201d),\u00a0 Bonnie Raitt (\u201cAngel From Montgomery\u201d), Johnny Cash (\u201cParadise\u201d),\u00a0 and George Straight (\u201cI Just Want to Dance With You\u201d), through the power of his words and the unique eccentricities in his mind. He was the embodiment of three chords and the truth.<\/p>\n

But Prine\u2019s songwriting alchemy was especially conjured when he delivered a set of solo acoustic songs. \u201cWhen I would be opening for John,\u201d recalls Prine\u2019s longtime friend and brother in song, Chip Taylor (\u201cWild Thing\u201d), \u201cone of my favorite things to do after I finished with my show was to go in the wings and watch him. I\u2019d just listen to those songs. He would do them a little different every night. It was like going to the best kind of church. It did what church is supposed to do, raise your spirit, make you a better person and have reverence for the human spirit. Just sitting there listening to John Prine, I\u2019d be having one of the most beautiful experiences of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Born and raised in the Maywood, Illinois, Prine came onto the Chicago folk scene as the seventies singer-songwriter movement gained momentum. Artists like Prine, Jackson Browne, and Bruce Springsteen cropped up around the country, all hailed as \u201cthe New Dylan,\u201d as Dylan himself hid out, trying to escape the dubious \u201cvoice of a generation\u201d tag given to him by the public. If anyone ought rightfully lay claim as Dylan\u2019s successor, Prine\u2019s songwriting prowess earned him the honor. But he was so much more. He was a Dylan\u2019s peer, a fact immediately evident to Texas songwriting legend Kris Kristofferson, whom Prine partially credits credits for his early success. Late one evening in 1971, through the friendly persuasion of Steve Goodman, Kristofferson walked into a small Chicago pub to see Prine, who the year before caught the ear of local critic Roger Ebert, who penned a review for the Chicago Sun Times\u00a0<\/em>titled \u201cSinging Mailman Who Delivers a Powerful Message in a Few Words.\u201d Prine was so special, he inspired an oft brutal film critic to write a glowing review of his show. It seems anyone who stumbled onto Prine was immediately drawn in by the eminent magic of this incomparable songwriter. \u201cBy the end of the first line,\u201d Kristofferson later recalled, \u201cwe knew we were hearing something else. It must\u2019ve been like stumbling onto Dylan when he first busted onto the Village scene.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kristofferson promptly invited Prine to open for him at the Bitter End in New York City. That evening, Dylan producer Jerry Wexler was in attendance. The following day, he signed Prine to Atlantic Records. Prine\u2019s country-tinged self-titled debut vocally hearkens The\u00a0Freewheelin\u2019 Bob Dylan<\/em>, and features some of his most beloved songs,\u00a0 including \u201cAngel From Montgomery,\u201d \u201cHello in There,\u201d \u201cParadise,\u201d and \u201cFar From Me,\u201d a song Prine has said Dylan knew and played for him at Carly Simon\u2019s home in the early seventies. The album also includes Prine\u2019s iconic \u201cSam Stone,\u201d a commentary on the post-traumatic stress and drug addiction prevalent in soldiers who returned from Vietnam. The album made a lasting impact on Dylan, as he revealed Prine as one of his favorite songwriters in a 2009 Huffington Post<\/em> interview. \u201cPrine\u2019s stuff is pure Proustian existentialism,\u201d Dylan noted. \u201cMidwestern mind trips to the nth degree. And he writes beautiful songs. I remember when Kris Kristofferson first brought him on the scene. All that stuff about \u201cSam Stone,\u201d the soldier junky daddy, and \u201cDonald and Lydia,\u201d where people make love from ten miles away. Nobody but Prine could write like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

On more than one occasion, Dylan pointed to the song \u201cLake Marie\u201d from Prine\u2019s 1995 effort,\u00a0Lost Dogs + Mixed Blessings,\u00a0<\/em>as his favorite. While Prine\u2019s catalog is filled with classics, \u201cLake Marie\u201d may just be his greatest. The song feels like an impressionistic painting depicting fragmented memories as Prine throws out a parlor trick, using film noir imagery to tell this story of the lakes and a murder. Then comes and the gut punch\u2014the narrator\u2019s grief over the death of his relationship brings the song to its climatic finish. Twenty years ago Prine began using the song to close his show complete with Rocky Horror Picture Show<\/em>-style participation from his devout audience.<\/p>\n