John Prine was having such a good time, touring with a new wave of artists, enjoying his family and making people happy, he might not have made another record. But Fiona Prine knew it was time; she spoke with emerging uberproducer Dave Cobb.
Cobb, who’d been on a roll with award-winning and genre-defying albums for Jason Isbell, Chris Stapleton, and Brandi Carlile, seemed the perfect choice. Sensitive to songs but a fan of finding the soul in the recording, if anyone could midwife Prine’s first album in almost a decade and a half, Cobbs could.
The Tree of Forgiveness was magic. Whether the power-strumming opener “Knockin’ on Your Screen Door”; the minor-keyed and foreboding “Caravan of Fools”; the retro-whimsical “Egg & Daughter Nite, Lincoln, Nebraska 1967 (Crazy Bone),” with its barrel house piano and walking upright bass; or the yearning invitation “Summer’s End,” Cobb created temperate musical environs for the songs. Sensitive but not wimpy, it was a modern classic.
Prine had always been a favorite of SiriusXM’s Outlaw Country, and program director Jeremy Tepper wanted something special to launch Tree when it was released in 2018. No stranger to the network’s playlists, Cobb himself was a perfect pick to host a special dedicated to what would be Prine’s final studio recording. The 2020 Grammy nominee for Producer of the Year crafted a conversation with his friend that was like stopping by Arnold’s on meatloaf day. —Ed.
[John Prine sings “Knocking on Your Screen Door.”]
John Prine: Hi, this is John Prine. I’m here on SiriusXM. I’m talking about my new album, The Tree of Forgiveness, and I’m sitting here talking with the pal that produced this fine album.
This is Dave Cobb.
Dave Cobb: Hi! This is Dave Cobb. I’m here talking with John, hanging out!
Prine: Well, that was the opening song they just played, “Knocking on Your Screen Door.”
Cobb: You know what I like about your songs? There’s usually food in the lyric. [Laughing.]
Prine: You’re right. I have to have food! The promise of food somewhere in the song. I was cowriting with Pat McLaughlin and Dan Auerbach and Dave Ferguson. Dave Ferguson was the guy who got us all together in one room to write, and we were writing one song after another, and I said, “Hey, don’t you guys ever eat?” So we go get in the Cadillac and went and got a big bag of White Castle. Came back and wrote three more songs. There’s gotta be food somehow.
Cobb: Literally every time I hear your lyrics, there’s usually something about ham. This one has sweet potato pies. There’s always a theme, pretty much ties in with Arnold’s Diner.
Prine: Pretty much. Either going there or leaving there.
Cobb: It’s right on. Do they have meat loaf Friday there?
Prine: Again, I have a million neck ties at home, and each of them, I can tell you what restaurant I wore them to, because they got different sauces on the front. [Laughing.]
Cobb: Your signature cocktail. You should tell them about that, man.
Prine: I’ve turned everybody on to my favorite cocktail. It’s called a Handsome Johnny, and I named it kind of after myself. But I thought Handsome Johnny sounded kinda like a Rob Roy or a Manhattan. You know I kind of… Now, every bar you go to has a cocktail list, but twenty years ago when I started drinking Handsome Johnnies, people wouldn’t make you a Rob Roy or a Manhattan; they said it was old school. So, now they’ve come back around again. There’s actually a couple of bars in Nashville that have Handsome Johnnies that’ll be on your receipt.
Cobb: Tell them what it is.…
Prine: It’s Smirnoff Vodka, red Smirnoff, not blue. If you get too good a vodka, it kills the bubbles in your ginger ale. I use diet ginger ale because the other kind’s too sweet after a while. You don’t want to get diabetes from drinking! And in the wintertime, I drop a lime in it. Don’t squeeze it, just drop it in from about 6 inches above; in the summertime, a lemon …
Cobb: It’s gotta be six inches, right? Can’t be seven or eight, gotta be perfectly …
Prine: Yeah, right. Literally. You live long enough, you know what six inches is. [Laughing.]
Cobb: I think the record was also enhanced by KFC. You had a lot of KFC [Kentucky Fried Chicken] with your Handsome Johnnies.
Prine: One night, you guys asked me … We’d been eating that pretty good food, and you guys asked me what I wanted. I thought, “I’m really hungry for some fried chicken from KFC,” and everybody did a little dance. Yeah.
Cobb: Favorite of all time.
Prine: Let’s see, which song are we going to play now? Oh, “Summer’s End.” That’s one of my favorites.
Cobb: That’s my very favorite on the album I think.
Prine: Wow. I tell you, Dave, what I really liked about the way you and I work together and the ideas you had, you left a lot of space there for my songs. And then you put these … like that mellotron part on this. “Summer’s End” sounds like a bunch of, sounds like we hired a room full of strings, and everybody hit the right note at the right time.
Cobb: When I heard the chorus for the first time, that “Come on home …” lyric, it’s crushing. I remember Brandy Carlile coming in and singing that. You know, now it’s called the “Come on Home Song” ’cause of that chorus. It’s such a beautifully simple lyric, but it resonates.
Prine: I was never good at titling songs.… I always picked the wrong title. You should maybe let the audience pick the title ’cause they’re going to call the song “Come on Home,” you know. Keep fooling them. Keep ’em coming back.
[Prine sings “Summer’s End” then “Boundless Love.”]
Prine: Hi, this is John Prine, right here on Outlaw Country. On SiriusXM.
[Prine sings “Caravan of Fools.”]
Prine: Hi, this is John Prine, on SiriusXM, sitting here talking with Producer Dave Cobb about my new record The Tree of Forgiveness.
“Caravan of Fools,” I wrote with Pat McLaughlin and Dan Auerbach; none of us discussed what the song was about. To me, it’s about impending doom. Like when you start a song in a minor key, you’re already admitting that somebody’s sick or somebody’s about to die, you know? Happy songs don’t work in minor keys, you know, starting in E minor and say “we’re getting married in the morning.…”
Cobb: That’s a scary song, that “Caravan of Fools,” though.…
Prine: It is! Ominous. It’s so … the voice and guitar are so huge, I don’t know how you got it sounding that big. You must have put me in a shoebox or something.
Cobb: Pro-Tools. No, that’s that way you sing it. Man. There’s nothing hiding behind the curtain.
Prine: I thought it was really cool, over at Studio A. I didn’t really know that much about it, but when I walked in … It just felt right. I like really big areas; I like breathing in a corner, or being in the center of the room with plenty of room around me. That’s why I brought my Christmas tree down, ’cause when I found out we could turn all the little lights up and sing to the Christmas tree, that’s when things got …
Cobb: You did, didn’t you?
Prine: That’s when things got really warm in there! We got some really warm vocals. Jack Clement took me to—we cut something in the ’70s over at Woodland. That room had the same sort of feeling; you walked in and it was just cool. You could tell some really cool music had went on there, a lot of people had probably just hung around over at Woodland. There’s a couple of studios around town that have that feel, if they haven’t been torn down.
Cobb: The thing about Studio A is the guy who bought the place has a bunch of pictures. He’s done all this research, but there’s more pictures of the parties than there are the sessions. So I think it was pretty much a party palace.
Prine: Well, we did our share of parties.
Cobb: Yeah, yeah …
Prine: This is John Prine, I’m here on SiriusXM, sitting here with producer Dave Cobb about my new record The Tree of Forgiveness.
This next song has kind of a misleading title to it. I wanted to get the history behind the song; it’s called “Egg & Daughter Nite, Lincoln, Nebraska 1967.” Then, it’s also known as “Crazy Bone.” I was fishing North Central Arkansas, where I’ve been going since I was 14 years old. My buddy John Earl—John used to be the guitar tech for the Everly Brothers, me and him were sitting in a boat floating down a river, drinking cold beer, and the fish ain’t biting. So, John gets to telling me a shaggy dog story about when he was a teenager in Nebraska. He said they used to go hang out down at the roller rink on Thursday nights.
The boys called it Egg and Daughter Nite ’cause the egg farmers would come to town and drop their daughters at the roller rink, and the city boys—the big city of Norfolk, Nebraska—they were all wise, and kind of, you know, whatever boys and girls do. The farmers would go off and sell the eggs, come back and pick their daughters up later. And I just thought, “Egg and Daughter Nite,” that’d make a great name for a song.
So, I explained the story two years later to Pat McLaughlin, and I said, “Pat, how in the hell can I tell that in a song?” Pat said, “Easy.” He grabs his guitar, and goes, “If you’re stuck up in Alaska, you should be in Nebraska, on a Thursday when it’s Egg and Daughter Nite.”
I thought, “How come it takes me so long to tell the story when Pat can do it in two lines?” So we just attacked the song, and it’s actually true if you look it up, there was such a thing as Egg and Daughter Night. I thought my buddy made it up entirely just to pass the time on the river.
So, this is it. “Egg and Daughter Nite, Lincoln Nebraska.” I got the name of the town wrong, it should be Norfolk, but there’s a line that says “If they knew what you was thinkin’, they’da run you outta Lincoln,” and I didn’t want to change that line. This is “Crazy Bone.”
[“Egg & Daughter Nite Lincoln Nebraska 1967,” “No Ordinary Blue,” “God Only Knows” play.]
Prine: Hi this is John Prine, here on SiriusXM. We’re talking about my new album The Tree of Forgiveness.
Along about 1978, I was out in Los Angeles, talking to different producers to do what became my Bruised Orange record. I ran into Robert Hilburn, from the Los Angeles Times. Bob had been an early supporter, so I knew him pretty good. I asked what he was up to, and he said he was trying to write a book on Phil Spector; he was interviewing him every day. I said “How’s that?” He said, “Pretty crazy.” He says, “You want to go up and meet him?” I said, “Well, sure. I’d love to meet Phil Spector, but he wouldn’t know who I was.” And Bob says, “Oh, he was quoting ‘Donald and Lydia’ the other night.” I said, “You mean he knows one of my songs?” I couldn’t believe it.
So, I went up to his house. Sure enough, things were pretty crazy. Phil has a three piece suit on with a show girl under each arm; he’s got a gun, two bodyguards. One little swarthy guy, and another big guy that looked like Chewabaca that went everywhere … If Phil went to the bathroom, the bodyguards went with him. This is his own home.
We come in the door, and it’s probably oh, the middle of March, and he’s got a Christmas tree up. Now, I don’t want to say anything about that, because I have had a Christmas tree up too, but this was a live one. I said, “Phil, I like Christmas, too, but this is a fire hazard.”
Just then, his kids come down the steps in pajamas. He goes, “Who’s the king of rock and roll?” They both grab his legs and go, “You are, daddy! You are!”
Okay. This is how I arrive at Phil Spector’s house. [Laughing.] He shows his jukebox to us, and plays Wilbur Harris and “Kansas City” about fifty times. Later on in the evening, I call a cab and I decide, “This is fun and everything, but I better get out of here.” I’m heading for the door, and Phil’s walking me to the door. We pass by a piano. He sits down at the piano, hands me an electric guitar; it’s not plugged in. And we write a song in thirty minutes. “If You Don’t Want My Love.”
So, I went to Chicago, and recorded “If You Don’t Want My Love.” Six months later I come back, and I want to play it for Phil, so he can see how the song turned out. I go back up to his house, and we go through the same crazy stuff all over again. I’m leaving that night, I play the song, and I get my jacket; I’m heading for the taxi, and he sets at the piano again, hands me the guitar again, and we wrote half of the song “God Only Knows.”
I put it up with my unfinished lyrics. I brought it out a couple of times over the years because I really liked the chord progression on it. When I got around to doing this project, and I knew I was going in the studio with you, Dave, I thought it would be nice to finish this. So one night when I was holed up at the Omni, I wrote another verse and a bridge I took from the child’s prayer. And it all seemed to work. You liked it live, so … Really great playing—Jason Isbell played mandolin, Amanda Shires, really nice. Well, since we both got guitars, why don’t we play one, Dave?
[Prine and Cobb sing “The Lonesome Friends of Science.”]
Cobb: Man, if I wanted to play an old song, say ah “Freebird”… [Laughing.]
Prine: [Laughing.] Were you around when I did “Freebird?”
Cobb: “Hello in There,” that’s the one.…
Prine: OK, that’s really old. That was every chord I knew at the time. Someone taught me …
Cobb: Same key, wasn’t it?
Prine: “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out” had about seven or eight chords in it, so I took all the new chords I’d learned—and somebody’d taught me a B minor, and I thought that was just … I had to put it into a song. So, I put every chord I knew into it, and it came out as “Hello in There.” I didn’t even think about what order I was putting the chords in; I just kept playing them all over and over. Word just kinda fell out.…
John plays “Hello in There.”
Cobb: That’s the fancy chord right there.… That song kills me.
Prine: I like that one, the melody. I didn’t have any idea where I was driving to and I stayed on the road the whole way. And I was still really into giving names to my characters. When the guy’s wondering, he didn’t know what to do with himself, the wife sits around all day and stares at the screen door. So he’s retired, and he thinks he’ll call one of his buddies from work, well, I didn’t know what to call the buddy, so there’s this lady at 4 or 5 every afternoon, she’d call her dog in for dinner. And the dog’s name was Rudy. [Laughs.]
She’s across the street. I’m sitting there with my guitar, in my mailman outfit, waiting. And my wife didn’t come home from work till 6:00, and I’m going, “What can I call this guy?,” I hear “Oh Rudy! Rudy, come in!” And I thought, “That’s it! His buddy’s name is Rudy.” I used to keep a baby book with names. When I was writing. I’d pick up this old baby book.
Cobb: Get a baby book, you can write songs exactly like John Prine! That’s it …
Prine: That, and three chords! [Laughing.]
Hey, I’m still John Prine, and I’m still here on SiriusXM. Me and Dave Cobb been talking about [how] we worked together on my new record The Tree of Forgiveness. Dave, you did a beautiful job; I love this record. It sounds better and better every day. I can’t wait ’til we unleash it on the public.
This is the last song on the album. This had to finish the record, there was nothing we could follow this song with. I had a chorus, and the chorus went: “I’m going to get a cocktail, Vodka and ginger ale … Smoke a cigarette that’s nine miles long.”
Well, I had to quit smoking twenty years ago, because I lost half my neck to cancer—and the doctor told me, “You better quit smoking now.” I miss it every day now. I really loved smoking. I smoked from the time I was fourteen, till I … how old was I? Anyway, I smoked thirty-five years. A pack a day of Marlboro reds. I just miss it. I see somebody outside a restaurant, and they’re getting ready to fire it up. I’ll run over and stand next to them so I can smell that first puff that they’re taking. You know?
So, I thought, “How can I use this in a song, smoking a cigarette that’s 9 miles long? Where can I smoke?” I thought the only place I could possibly still smoke is heaven ’cause they’re not going to have “No Smoking” signs.… They’re not going to have no cancer! Why would they have heaven if they have cancer? So, I thought, “I might have to write a song about heaven in order to smoke a cigarette that’s nine miles long…” That’s how self-serving this song is.
Cobb: My favorite part of this song is the line your dad told you all the time. You say it, because you laugh every time you say it. That was my favorite thing about being in the studio, every time you told this one line of this song, you’d laugh. (Prine laughing.) We’ve probably heard it 50 times, and every single time …
Prine: My daddy had two pieces of advice he gave to me and my three brothers. He must have said this, if he said it once, he said it a thousand times. He’d say, “Buddy, when you’re dead, you’re a dead peckerhead.” [Laughing.]
I’ve got to use that in a song sometime, you know? And anyway, it’s a good song. And Fiona prodded me along to come up with this recitation; my wife Fiona, told me, “Don’t forget about your mom’s sisters. You gotta mention them in the song.” They’re all the reason we have a family reunion every year; it’s the reason I see all my cousins every year and we’re such a close family because of her eight sisters. They’re all gone now; the last one passed about 4 years ago.
But they were a real force of nature, these girls were. They grew up in Paradise, Kentucky, and basically never had nothing, married really good, colorful characters. We had a really good family reunion, I mean, a really great one! So, anyway, this song is “When I Get to Heaven.” Notice I don’t even doubt that I’m going. [Dave laughs.]
So anyone wants to come with me, just climb on board … woo woooo!
[Prine sings “When I Get to Heaven,” then “Paradise” plays.]
When Prine emerged with The Tree of Forgiveness, his first true collection of songs since Fair & Square, the critics scrambled to find new ways to praise the songs, the lyrical turns, the delicate balance of emotional transparency and hilarity. Pitchfork, Spin, Wall Street Journal, New Yorker, Relix, and PopMatters joined the more expected New York Times, Lone Star Music, Rolling Stone, and NPR in lavishing the ten-song collection with kudos.
As “of the moment” as ever, Prine was the toast of hipster artists—2010’s Broken Hearts & Dirty Windows: Songs of John Prine featured Drive-By Truckers, Justin Vernon, the Avett Brothers, Lambchop, Deer Tick, and Old Crow Medicine Show—while sharing stages with a checklist of Americana must-sees, from Jason Isbell, Sturgill Simpson, and Tyler Childers to Margo Price, Amanda Shires, and Sara Watkins. Even more than revering the classics, Prine was inspired by the younger artists.
The L. A. Times’ Randy Lewis took the occasion to look beyond the songs. The pair got together at Prine’s hotel during release week and discussed subliminal themes of death and the afterlife with delight. Whether unpacking his own creative process, praising Taylor Swift and a generation of young songwriters with “good, grounded ideas,” confessing how much he misses smoking, or laughing about Prine-ing up a song with lines like “fry me some pork chops” and “a heart like an old washing machine,” Prine kept the conversation light even as it addressed heavy things.
Once Lewis and Prine established trust, nothing was too silly or dishy—it was just true. Even the tale about a young Kacey Musgraves, fresh from Golden, Texas, trying to get Prine high reflects the playfulness that permeated this moment of Prine’s life. —Ed.
“The doctor in Houston said, ‘I can’t tell you your history of smoking did this to you. But wouldn’t it be a great time to stop?’ I said, ‘You know, you’re right,’” Prine said. “I had two little kids, they were 2 and 1 at the time. I thought, I’m lucky to be getting by with this cancer thing.
“So I gave it up,” he added. “But I never gave up thinking about it. When I see people in a bar fire up, I go over and stand next to them, or if they’re standing outside a restaurant, I just kind of stand near enough so I can get that initial blast.
“I thought, ‘Where in the hell can I smoke cigarettes? It’s not going to be anywhere down here.’ So I thought, maybe when I get to heaven I can smoke cigarettes,” he said. “That’s how I came up with the [lyrical reference to a] cigarette nine miles long and the rest of the thing.”
Prine was opening a window into his creative process that’s every bit as acute today as it was when he put out his 1971 self-titled debut album, still regarded as one of the most auspicious arrivals in pop music history.
“When I Get to Heaven” is among 10 new songs that address issues of aging and mortality, although Prine said it was a surprise to him when he sat back after the record was done and soaked in the new collection.
“I thought I had 10 songs I believed in,” he said with the permanent growl that’s been with him since he beat the cancer by sacrificing a significant part of the right side of his neck. “But I didn’t think any of them had anything to do with each other, or that there was any kind of theme running through the record.”
It shows up in songs as light-hearted as “When I Get to Heaven” and as darkly foreboding as “Caravan of Fools,” which he wrote with the Black Keys’ guitarist, singer and songwriter, Dan Auerbach, and one of his frequent collaborators, Pat McLaughlin.
“The only time I ever think about getting old is when I look in the mirror,” said Prine. “I feel pretty good about it, actually. I can remember other times in my life when I haven’t been this settled. It’s a really good feeling.”
Prine has plenty to feel good about these days. In the month since it was released, “The Tree of Forgiveness” has sold more than 70,000 total equivalent sales, according to the Nielsen sales monitoring service, and has garnered mostly positive reviews.
Prine said he thought another song he wrote with Auerbach, “Boundless Love,” was initially for Auerbach’s 2017 solo album, “Waiting on a Song.”
Then Prine decided to record it himself. “I called Dan and told him, ‘I’m going to have to John Prine this song up.’
“He said ‘What do you mean?,’” Prine said. “I said, ‘Well, there’s a part where the guy wants to come home and he asks [his woman] if she’ll make him some food. I said I’m going to make it ‘fry me some pork chops.’
“Then I replaced the second verse with ‘I’ve got a heart like an old washing machine/Bounces ’round till my soul comes clean.’ I said, ‘That sounds more like John Prine,’” he said with a laugh. “And I’ll be darned, those songs live, especially ‘Boundless Love,’ are really taking off. The crowd really seems to like it.”
As has been the case historically, Prine moves effortlessly among songs bursting with humor to others that resonate deeply and profoundly, such as “Summer’s End,” an impressionistic meditation on the passage of time, loss and forgiveness.
His career is now managed by his wife, Fiona. And Oh Boy Records, the label he set up more than 30 years ago, making him one of the first musicians to go independent, is being overseen by his son, Jody, since the death in 2015 of Prine’s longtime manager, Al Bunetta.
Prine’s long been a critical favorite, and early on caught the attention of esteemed peers including Kris Kristofferson, who was among the first to champion the erudite songs that allowed Prine to quit his day job as a mail carrier in Chicago.
John Prine has a number of ideas of what he thinks heaven might be, all of which are the focal point of one of 10 new songs on his first album of original material in a dozen years, “The Tree of Forgiveness.”
The veteran singer and songwriter, best known for such songs as “Hello in There,” “Angel from Montgomery” and “Sam Stone,” also is pretty well convinced of one thing he doesn’t expect to find should he make it past the Pearly Gates one day.
“Surely they don’t have ‘No Smoking’ signs in heaven,” Prine, 71, said with a grin and a gravelly chuckle on a cool afternoon this week at his Hollywood hotel, a couple of days before a scheduled appearance at the Grammy Museum on Wednesday as well as his concert on Friday at the Ace Hotel downtown.
“I really miss smoking cigarettes,” he said by way of explanation of the genesis of “When I Get to Heaven,” a strikingly humorous take on life after death. “I gave them up the night before I had my neck surgery.” (He underwent an operation 20 years ago to remove a malignant tumor.)
Bob Dylan also has sung his praises over the years, telling writer Bill Flanagan almost a decade ago that “Prine’s stuff is pure Proustian existentialism. Midwestern mindtrips to the nth degree. And he writes beautiful songs.”
He also has become a touchstone for a new generation of articulate and insightful country and Americana singer-songwriters including Miranda Lambert, Kacey Musgraves, Sturgill Simpson, Jason Isbell, Amanda Shires, Brandy Clark and Margo Price, among many others.
A number of them have shared concert bills with him, recorded one or more of his songs or, in the case of husband-wife team Isbell and Shires, sung harmonies with him on the new album.
In fact, one of the first things Musgraves did on arriving in Nashville from her native Golden, Texas, was to look Prine up at one of his shows and try to get him appropriately conditioned to hear a song she’d written about him.
“She and a friend of hers came to one of my shows,” Prine said, “and wanted to take me out to the parking lot and get me to smoke a joint with them.”
Then she played him her song, “Burn One With John Prine,” which describes her ideal for the afterlife: “My idea of heaven/Is to burn one with John Prine.”
“She’s really something,” said Prine. “I think she’s going to be really big. She seems to have that quality: She can do pop stuff too. I’m not sure how long she’s going to stay with country. Of course, country sells a lot of records now.”
He also expressed his admiration for an artist he otherwise might seem to have little in common with, one who is 45 years his junior, and compared with his status as a cult favorite of longstanding, she is arguably the biggest pop star in the world: Taylor Swift.
“Even her early songs, when she was just trying to appeal to other 18- and 19-year-olds, they were always interesting songs,” he said. “It was there. Whether or not you’re a fan or can relate to being an 18-year-old girl, right from the get-go she was fully formed, I thought.”
In fact, many younger songwriters are giving Prine renewed hope about the state of pop and country music.
“What I hear in their music is that it’s good,” said Prine, now considered one of the deans of the folk-rooted, singer-songwriter tradition. “I hear good songs with good, grounded ideas. I didn’t know if another generation was gonna come along like that.
“My music has been called so many different things over the years,” he said, adding with his Cheshire cat grin, “I figure as long as it’s selling, call it what you want.”
What started as a message board in the earliest days of AOL, when dial-up ruled the world and people first disappeared down highly specific rabbit holes of passion and discussion, became No Depression, the Sports Illustrated of alt-country and roots music. Eventually shuttering its print publication after its final run as a heavy-stock quarterly aligned to University of Texas Press, No Depression survived as an online publication supported by a dedicated community of writers, readers, contributors, and posters.
Like all things old-school, No Depression brought a specific thrill when held in-hand and read on paper. When a decision was made to create quarterly theme issues to explore facets of the music, whether culture, creation, or subject matter, editor Kim Ruehl assigned me a lengthy Q and A with Prine for an issue about politics. John Prine, whose songs about social issues always transcended the times they were written in, was the perfect candidate. In this sweeping conversation, he considered the reality of how people treat each other, the fact that so little social progress was being made, and the power of empathy and observation to show deeper truths. —Ed.
John Prine, the original “new Dylan”, has always written songs with a deep heart and strong empathy for the people who go unseen. Veterans ensnared in addiction, old people who are forgotten and alone, alienated women ignored in their marriage, strip-mining coal companies, and patriotism as First Amendment tourniquet are all part of the iconic singer-songwriter’s canon—and they’re all captured with a tenderness that heightens the commentary.
On the precipice of 70, the Chicago-born-and-raised Prine has always brought the political to the personal without stridency. Using his narrative story-songs to show instead of tell the way hypocrisy, cruelty, or indifference undermines our humanity, Prine has become one of America’s—and Americana’s—best loved artists. Having read at the Library of Congress, seen his self-titled debut inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, and continuing to headline major festivals and multiple nights at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium, Prine remains as vital today as he was when he was just a postman playing open mic nights in Chicago.
With the sudden death of long-time manager Al Bunetta in 2015, Prine ruminated about what he wants his music to yield going forward. Slated to release For Better or Worse, a second country duets album featuring Alison Krauss, Susan Tedeschi, Lee Ann Womack, Kacey Musgraves, and more this September, he’s turned Oh Boy Records and his career management into “the family business” with son, Jody Whelan, at the helm. This new order to his creative life has inspired him—and he’s looking at returning to the studio for an album of new songs in 2017.
After all the years and miles, Prine remains as topical as ever. For an aw-shucks guy with a candy heart, that was never the master plan. But, as Prine would tell you, “things become clichés for a reason,” and his songs likewise contain so much truth they continue to resonate across the decades.
In a recent conversation, Prine and I talked about how much he’s enjoying being back on the road. The Grammy winner also considered his legacy, how topical songs inform us, and why the Peabody Mining Co. is still mad about “Paradise.”
Holly Gleason: With the new album on the way, are there any plans that stand out?
John Prine: Going into [the Americana Music Association conference] week, we’re going to do my first album at the Station Inn, in sequence. We’re going to film it, which I think will be very cool. Most of the songs we play [regularly] anyway, but three or four, we have to learn.
HG: That first album is definitive. Do you ever look back and marvel?
JP: I wish I knew the guy who was writing those songs. I think that guy left. I haven’t seen him since he signed with a record company, when it all became professional. It takes a certain amount of innocence out of [the songwriting] when that happens—because you know you’re writing songs to be recorded. Basically, I’m the same guy, but the guy who wrote those first songs, he didn’t know if anyone was going to listen or hear them. He was just writing.
HG: Did you realize how much social commentary there was?
JP: I was always writing more observations. That was how I saw the way people lived. It was how it looked to me, how it felt, how it smelled. At a point, I stopped giving people names. There were so many characters it started to feel like a soap opera.
HG: But there was so much commentary.
JP: I didn’t know any better. Have you ever heard any stories about guitar players who listened to Chet Atkins and Les Paul? Les Paul, especially. They would dub parts over another, and layer things up. But you’d get some guitar player out there who didn’t realize [that’s what they’d done], and they’d think, “Well, if they can do it…” And [they’d] teach themselves how to play something that was actually multiple parts.
I didn’t know any better either. So I threw everything in. I went through the weight of the world and included it all when I was writing.
HG: Bob Dylan obviously set the standard, plus some of the other writers of that era.
JP: They were huge for me. If it wasn’t for Bob Dylan, on the strength of wanting to play Hank Williams songs for my father, I doubt I’d have wanted to write. But Dylan opened the door. No, Dylan built the door, opened it, and left the door open for a whole lot of us to walk through. He cut a path through that door and forward, and long after he’s gone, people will still be following that path.
HG: What was it about Dylan?
JP: I really liked his singing. I thought he phrased [things] real cool, a lot of thought went into how he did it. The way he sang really pulled you into the words, and what he was saying. That raised up what he was writing, too.
HG: And the politics of his work, did that inform yours?
JP: I didn’t consider myself very political—and I didn’t consider myself a folksinger. It was just the route I took, and clubs I played. But really, I liked country and rock and roll. What I learned to play was what my older brother taught me, that was a big part of the “style” I have now.
HG: You got inside some very heavy things, John.
JP: I wasn’t really looking for something to write about. I was interested in words—the sounds of words, and the way words worked off each other.
HG: So you’re going to sidestep the literary aspect of what you do.
JP: I enjoyed English when I had a teacher who knew enough to leave you alone and let you follow your imagination. If they wanted me to memorize verb parts, I hated that. But if the teacher wanted me to write dialogue for two characters on an escalator, I’d go to town. Get an “A,” ace that.
I wasn’t much of a reader. I got hooked on John Steinbeck, because of his shorter books—The Pearl, Cannery Row, Sweet Thursday. Then I gradually approached the longer ones, though I still haven’t read The Grapes of Wrath. I thought the movie was so good with Henry Fonda and all; I know the book’s always supposed to be better, but I can’t imagine how.
Stories and Characters
John Prine’s songs—whether written in his early 20s or somewhere in his 60s—have always been literary, always turned on the small details of regular lives, as well as the craggy-voiced baritone’s singular metaphors and images.
‘Angel from Montgomery’ became the postmodern torch singer’s go-to, based largely on Bonnie Raitt’s recording of it, where she wailed for escape from her mundane life: “Make me an angel that flies from Montgomery / Make me a poster from an old rodeo.”
Country fans know Miranda Lambert’s version of ‘That’s The Way the World Goes ’Round’, with its profession of being “naked as the eyes of a clown”.
Prine’s 45-year-old debut, John Prine, contains songs that became standards for a reason. They were miniatures of seemingly real situations, rendered with close portraits and a compassion that got listeners to lean in. […]
HG: If you weren’t trying to say something, are you surprised how topical these songs from John Prine remain?
JP: It’s amazing to me—particularly ‘Sam Stone’ and ‘Flag Decal’. If somebody had bet me money on their lifespan, I would’ve said three, four years. Vietnam was going to be over, and we wouldn’t need ’em anymore. But because of the way it all went down, the war didn’t just end. We brought the boys home in waves, and left some there … and as time has gone on …
HG: You mean everything in the Middle East?
JP: There’s no war—just sending people to “protect your interests.” You still get a ribbon if you get killed, but there’s no principle being fought for or protected. And when you get back, people don’t know what you were really fighting for, so it’s hard.
HG: Do people tell you their stories? Is that how you know?
JP: You can feel it, Holly. Just the reaction [‘Sam Stone’] gets in the show. It’s not nostalgia for this song; that sadness is right now. It’s something very real to the people who’re hearing it.
HG: In ‘Sam Stone’, there’s the matter of heroin, to cope with what can’t be shared.
JP: It’s a huge teenage problem now, even in the upper-class suburbs. And it’s so quiet, too. I only find out when I ask my boys. They’ve had friends OD, kids in well-to-do families who seem well adjusted.
I don’t know why people don’t get the idea heroin isn’t good for you. I’ve had friends try to talk me into it; encourage me. They only do it once a month—and they’re all dead or their lives are severely damaged.
When I was writing ‘Sam Stone’, I didn’t know too much about it then, but I thought, “Wow, heroin must be really fun or good, because why would they throw everything away for it?” People’d steal from their mother, forget about their kids, let their life go. They wouldn’t even look back.
HG: Was there a ‘Sam Stone’?
JP: It rhymed with “home”. But I knew the character. He’d just got back home from the service. I knew several of those guys, and they all ended up different ways, but it was never good.
I hung out with a fairly rough crowd as a teenager. There were certain things I just wasn’t there for. If they were gonna rob somebody or were hurting somebody. I didn’t see the point in that, so I just didn’t come around. But a bunch of us got drafted at the same time. Five of us went in on the same day; four went to Vietnam. Nobody came back the same. Even the ones who didn’t see combat—it was that thing of not knowing. Being over there, you could just go for a beer, and with the landmines everywhere, your friend could step on one, and that was that.
HG: You went to Germany.
JP: I felt as lucky as when I was a little kid. When the orders came down, one in 10 maybe didn’t go to ’Nam. In January of 1966, when I got called, LBJ had gone from 23,000 troops to a half million on the ground over there. So pretty much everybody who was drafted went.
They sent me to Louisiana for training, and I figured they were setting me up for a rice paddy somewhere. But when I took the aptitude test, I didn’t open the quiz book, just wrote A, B, C, D, A, B, C, D over and over—and it came back I was some kind of mechanical genius.
Somebody in Germany’s time must have been up, they needed that skill set. I was classified a heavy-duty construction mechanic. I always felt if I just went my way and walked down the street, if I didn’t lift the hood, I’d be okay.
HG: You wrote ‘Some Humans Aren’t Human’ on Fair & Square. Pretty straight commentary.
JP: You know, I thought the talking part was pretty mean [“You’re feeling your freedom and the world’s off your back / Some cowboy from Texas starts his own war in Iraq”]. Taking George Bush apart intelligently … but I’m not a mean person, and I don’t ever want to pick on one person like that. I like to let people draw their own conclusions.
I don’t want to hit people over the head, but give them something they’ve seen before, maybe in different colors. Or actually show them what they’ve seen, so they realize they’re looking at it.
Mister Peabody’s Coal Train
Prine does an exquisite job of “showing” in his song ‘Paradise’, also from his 1971 debut. For him, it was a tune about the place his parents came from. But the catchy campfire favourite also made a powerful environmental statement by holding a child’s memory against a landscape changed forever by strip mining.
The song’s lyrics place blame on the Peabody Coal Company for changing the landscape of large portions of Muhlenberg County, Kentucky. But, as Prine’s song says, the company was still in business.
When, in 2013, a pair of activists were arrested protesting at Peabody’s annual shareholders’ meeting—which had been moved to Wyoming to avoid scrutiny—the activists’ lawsuit against the coal company opened with a portion of ‘Paradise.’ Peabody Coal countersued two years later, trying to have Prine’s song removed from the suit.
JP: All I was trying to do [with ‘Paradise’] was tell the story about my mom and dad’s hometown. All I was saying was if you were there, this is what you would see. You’d see the World’s Largest Shovel, which tore up this little town. It was evidence of what was happening, you couldn’t miss it.
If they hadn’t made such a fuss, nobody would’ve even realized—or thought much about the song. But they went after me, and people started paying attention.
HG: They came after you again, too. You’ve just had a federal judge affirm your song.
JP: There was a federal lawsuit where they quoted a couple verses [as part of the complaint]. Peabody, when they saw my verses, they countersued and got so incensed. That’s what [Peabody] went after, not the infraction they were being sued for.
When the federal judge finally ruled [on Peabody’s complaint], he not only said my lyrics didn’t defame them, [but] they were the truth. He upheld the song, and even quoted ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ in the summary he wrote.
A few weeks later, Peabody declared bankruptcy.
HG: That song—like so many you’ve written—is as timely now as ever.
JP: I guess so. It was never the plan. But it’s [turning out that way] …
I’m gonna sing ‘Paradise’ at Yosemite in August for the 100th anniversary of the [National Park Service]. President Obama is going to give a speech. It’s a big deal. I’m honored to be part of it.
My wife, Fiona, is a really big fan of the President. They were born on the same day, the same year. She really wants to meet him, especially while he’s still in office, so this is my chance.
HG: You have empathy as a writer. It seems that’s where so much of your commentary ends up coming from.
JP: I’m opinionated as anybody. I see people and envision what they’re like, what they’re life is—and I might be totally wrong. But as a writer, I’m trying to come up with a good story. Those stories, I guess, show things.
But I like to say I work off raw imagination and good instincts. That’s why I usually turn down ideas to write songs for movies. It’s somebody else’s idea. I can’t come to the conclusion they might want me to.
HG: ‘Hello in There’ is old people who’re forgotten. As a young man, you saw that issue when it wasn’t something you and your audience would’ve been plugged into. Now, well, it’s not quite a crisis, but …
JP: I’m 69. Things in this world don’t change that much.… I see how we treat old people, just like we did then. My audience is about my age, so if they’re not thinking about themselves, they’re thinking about their parents.
HG: What’s to come?
JP: I write in little bunches, then I write a song that tells me which way a record’s gonna go. Fair & Square came together with ‘Taking a Walk’, about a guy who’s so isolated and lonely, he’s just out there walking. It wasn’t what the record was about, but it was the heart of it, I think, emotionally.
Right now, I don’t have that song. But the songs I’ve got are about relationships, not so much men and women, but more man-to-man—or person-to-person. I don’t know if I’m heading in the right direction yet, and I never approach anything thinking I’m gonna make a statement. I just let the songs come from my gut. That way I know they come from a pure place.
That’s really the best way to do it.
Having tagged in from Hilburn as the L. A. Times’ writer of record on “John Prine,” Randy Lewis understood better than most the impact of The Tree of Forgiveness’s 2019 Grammy triple. Not only did Tree receive a nomination for Best Americana Album, “Knocking on Your Screen Door” and “Summer’s End” were both nominated for Best Americana Song.
Fresh from being voted the Americana Music Association’s Artist of the Year, nominated for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and enshrined in the Songwriters Hall of Fame, the seventy-year-old Prine was receiving the same critical validation his friend Bonnie Raitt had received with Nick of Time. It had been thirteen years since his last true studio album Fair & Square, 2006’s Best Contemporary Folk Grammy winner, sandwiched between Steve Earle’s The Revolution Starts Now in 2005 and Bob Dylan’s Modern Times in 2007.
Prine had stayed true to the independent path he’d started walking in 1981, and The Tree of Forgiveness’s recognition was a validation beyond the music. Had Prine made a different decision, taken the money offered over the years or allowed himself to be subject to “input” from people who didn’t truly understand, it’s unlikely he’d still have the desire to make records at all at this stage of his career—let alone records as formidable as Tree.
When Lewis checked in on Prine, he found the artist’s wisdom tempered, as ever, by wonder. In a world of cynicism and self-interest, the award-winning critic found not only a man tickled by the recognition but also someone who still remembered everything about his Best New Artist nomination at the 15th Annual Grammy Awards in 1972.
Gratitude, love, and delight don’t always exude gravitas. Lewis’s instinct to assess what had been an outstanding year was also an opportunity to show Prine’s humility to the L. A. Times’ readers. With eleven nominations and two Grammys, Prine was as concerned about winning for Oh Boy’s team, especially Fiona and son Jody Whelan, as he was for himself.
The night before the Grammys, Lewis sat with Prine in the forward balcony of the Troubadour for a large portion of the Americana Music Association’s all-star tribute, witnessing firsthand Prine’s enthusiasm for the music community, fellow performers, and their love of his songs. Through a night of Bob Weir, Margo Price, Boz Scaggs and Sara Watkins, Iron & Wine’s Sam Beam, and Bettye LaVette, the vastness of Prine’s songs was on display.
Posting on the L. A. Times’ website on February 10, Lewis noted Dwight Yoakam’s choice to cover “Spanish Pipedream,” the irreverent power-acoustic song, “because [Yoakam] said it often perplexed regulars at a western bar called the Corral in the northern San Fernando Valley he played upon moving to Los Angeles from his home in Kentucky. Like many who preceded him, Yoakam said Prine’s songwriting provided him with a template and goal to aim for in his own development as a songwriter.” —Ed.
If you think the impact of a Grammy Award nomination, or win, ever fades, try asking John Prine.
The veteran folk singer and songwriter just collected three more Grammy nods from his latest album, “The Tree of Forgiveness,” yet he talks about his first nomination as though it were yesterday rather than 46 years ago.
“My first Grammy nomination? I was 24—I was nominated for best new artist of the year,” Prine said recently from a tour stop in Toronto. “To still be in the game now is just great.”
The Grammy love is just the latest expression of admiration and respect heaped on him over the last year. In September he was named artist of the year by the Americana Music Assn. and last month—on the same day—he was announced among the finalists for induction into both the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. (Prine didn’t make the Rock Hall, which announced new inductees on Thursday.)
The latter two organizations are recognizing the body of work Prine has amassed since emerging in 1970 from Chicago with an extraordinary debut album, “John Prine.” That collection contained several songs that not only have become cornerstones of his own repertoire, but have been famously interpreted by other artists, among them “Angel From Montgomery” (most famously by Bonnie Raitt) and “Hello in There” (Bette Midler).
The Americana honor focuses on his newest work, “The Tree of Forgiveness,” a work that was lauded by critics upon its release earlier this year. In addition to the Americana album Grammy nomination, two songs are vying for the Americana roots song Grammy: “Knockin’ on Your Screen Door” and “Summer’s End,” both written with his frequent songwriting collaborator.
“Screen Door” applies a humorous, devil-may-care veneer to a more serious theme about growing old alone, while “Summer’s End” is an achingly bittersweet portrait of someone trying to patch things up after a relationship has disintegrated.
Valentines break hearts and minds at random/That ol’ Easter egg ain’t got a leg to stand on
Well I can see that you can’t win for tryin’/And New Year’s Eve is bound to leave you cryin’
“The attention the record’s gotten has really knocked me out,” Prine said. “That wasn’t something that was totally expected—the fact that it wasn’t just an initial reaction when the record came out, but that it’s stayed throughout the year, I’m really grateful. It’s a good feeling to have when you’re 72.”
The latest nominations bring his total to 14. He’s won Grammys twice, both for contemporary folk album: “The Missing Years” (1988) and “In Spite of Ourselves” (1999).
In addition to the awards consideration, Prine also has earned a place of admiration among an entire generation of literate singer-songwriters. His name is consistently at or near the top of the list of influential songwriters cited by the likes of Miranda Lambert, Chris Stapleton, Sturgill Simpson, Jason Isbell, Margo Price, Brandy Clark and numerous others.
His unofficial fan club also includes such well-regarded peers as Bob Dylan and Kris Kristofferson.
As candid in his speech as in his songs, Prine typically displays his good humor in conversation as well. And at 72, having come through several rounds of treatment for cancer and still writing, recording and touring, he sees little reason to pull any punches when discussing his hopes about the Grammy Awards ceremony that will play out Feb. 10 at Staples Center in Los Angeles.
“There are a lot of people in Americana who have never won one before,” he said. “I don’t want to feel like I’m being a hog, but it really would be nice to win. For Oh Boy [Records, his own label] it would be really important. It would give the label a big boost. Oh Boy is still doing great for as long as we’ve been around.”
Prine started Oh Boy in 1981 primarily as a mail-order business. He was in the vanguard of musicians stepping away from the major label system to take greater control over their recordings. The label is now run by his son, Jody, while his wife, Fiona Whelan Prine, has been overseeing his tour bookings and career decisions since the death in 2015 of his longtime manager, Al Bunetta.
His nomination for the Rock Hall of Fame, a club that includes Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, put him in line to join one of his dearest, departed friends, Sun Records founder Sam Phillips—the man who, among other things, directed Prine to a cancer specialist in Texas three decades ago whom Prine credits with saving his life.
“I’d love to be at that party,” he said with a gravelly chuckle. “To tell you the truth, the nomination for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame totally surprised me. I had no idea that was coming. I know a lot of people like to say it’s enough just to be nominated. But I’ve been nominated for so many things, I’d like to get this one. I think it’s a long shot, considering I never had a No. 1 rock ’n’ roll record.
“I don’t know if it will come this year, my first time I’ve been nominated,” he said several days before the inductees were announced. “But it sure would be nice to get there while I’m still walking.”
John Prine always had empathy for women and the unrecognized fates they faced; his songs made that much clear. There was the shipwrecked housewife from a time when divorce was not something nice people did in “Angel from Montgomery”; the aging barfly looking for love and being left behind in “The Oldest Baby in the World”; the fat girl who only dreamed of love, because no one wants a heavyset young woman, in “Donald and Lydia”; and the pregnant teenager being sent away to have her baby in “Unwed Fathers.” They all demonstrated Prine’s ongoing compassion for women overlooked, cast off, and treated as if they have no real value.
That empathy sparked Tammy Wynette to record “Unwed Fathers” as the opening track to and first single from 1983’s Even the Strong Get Lonely, her twenty-fifth album. The Bobby Braddock cowrite set the perfect tone for a record that also included “A Slightly Used Woman,” “I’m So Afraid That I’d Live Through It,” “Still in the Ring,” “Even the Strong Get Lonely Sometimes,” and “Only the Strong Survive.”
When it appeared that Roe v. Wade’s Constitutional protection of a woman’s reproductive autonomy was under assault, Prine put his music into action. He enlisted Americana force Margo Price, whose hard bar-room country packed a rock intensity, and they recorded a simple acoustic guitar–forward version. Even more Appalachian than Aimless Love’s original, Price’s harmonies are starker and sweeter than the original, dialing up the harsh contrast between innocence of the child abandoned by the unwed father “who can’t be bothered, but runs like water through a mountain stream.”
Never one for proclamations, Prine let his actions speak with a single that called attention to the issue as well as benefitting the American Civil Liberties Union. According to indie retail site johnprine.bandcamp.com, The Living Room Sessions, recorded from May 16–18, with a Jason Isbell duet on “People Puttin’ People Down” as the B-side, donated four dollars per download, a meaningful portion of the sale price.
Making sure his intentions were clear, Prine spoke to Variety’s award-winning music editor Chris Willman not long after Alabama passed the Human Life Protection Act. Also known as the Alabama Abortion Ban and House Bill 314, the controversial act was passed by the Alabama Legislature, and Governor Kay Ivey signed into law the statute that would make any doctor who performed an abortion guilty of a Class A felony, punishable with life in prison. More than striking down exception clauses for rape and incest, the hope was that the Human Life Protection Act would be challenged, have its case taken to the Supreme Court, and ultimately upend Roe v. Wade.
Like “Paradise” and its lingering truth about the Peabody coal company’s impact on Muhlenberg County, “Unwed Fathers” offered a portrait of a young girl left by a boy and being sent off in shame to have a child without the neighbors seeing. People forget that, fifty years ago, that was a reality pre–Roe v. Wade. Prine was old enough to remember and willing to humanize the impact this legislation would have.
To Willman’s credit, he saw the importance of the issue and Prine’s gesture. Though Variety covers the broadest expanse of entertainment of any trade, a story for a one-off charity single—especially for an artist who’s not Lady Gaga, Bruce Springsteen, or Justin Bieber—signals a strong recognition of the elements at play. —Ed.
It figures the guy who wrote “Angel From Montgomery” would care about women in Alabama. Anyone who thought the fight against state abortion bans lacked male allies can look to John Prine, considered one of the best songwriters of his or any generation since his self-titled 1971 folk-rock debut. He was outraged enough to first set up an online auction benefiting the Alabama ACLU, then raise money for the national organization by recutting “Unwed Fathers” as a soon-to-be-released single with alt-country heroine Margo Price.
Was there any personal impetus for using “Unwed Fathers” to make a stand on state abortion bans?
I’m always concerned when our civil liberties are being attacked. I believe in our Constitution. We wanted to support the work of the ACLU and invite others to do the same. That song has always been about how women are the ones who carry, birth and sometimes are left with taking care of and raising children too. Now they want to take away their right to decide if or when they do that. Women should be the ones to make decisions about what affects their lives in such a big way. It seems pretty simple to me.
You sing this remake with Margo Price. It’s a powerful visual when she’s being outspoken about reproductive issues while nine months pregnant.
Margo and I sing “Unwed Fathers” as a duet onstage all the time. She was the perfect fit—and she is a woman who makes her own choices! I think Margo would stand up for what’s right whether she was pregnant or not. She is a woman who knows her own mind, and we love her and her family.
Your fan base skews progressive. (Jason) Isbell is a good example of an artist who still has supposed fans tweeting that they’re quitting him because of his liberal politics. So do you risk losing any?
I’ve been singing these songs for 50 years, so if fans hear something new in them now, I’d love to hear what it is they are hearing.
You’re being inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame June 13.
I’m delighted. It’s wonderful to be included in a club like that. It’ll be great to meet up with Tom T. [Hall, a fellow inductee]. We don’t get to hang out too often.
Is there a Tom T. Hall song you wish you’d written?
I love “Old Dogs, Children and Watermelon Wine.” Best setup for a song I’ve ever heard: “Sittin’ in Miami, pouring blended whiskey down …”
There was a gap of 13 years between your previous album of all-new material and “Tree of Forgiveness.” So maybe it’s foolish to already be anticipating the next one?
I’m writing, for sure. The success of “Tree of Forgiveness” was very surprising to me. I’m very happy my fans from the first record (in 1971) to the most recent are now bringing their children and grandchildren to my shows. That’s motivating me to write. Yeah, I’ll probably bake a new record in the next couple of years.
Things You Didn’t Know About John Prine
AGE: 72 BIRTHPLACE: Maywood, Ill. PREVIOUS JOBS: Army, mailman DISCOVERED BY: Kris Kristofferson BIGGEST FANBOYS: Bob Dylan (calls Prine “pure Proustian existentialism”), Roger Waters (“He lives on that plain with Neil Young and Lennon”) BEST TRIBUTE SONG: Kacey Musgraves’ “Burn One With John Prine”
When Bob Mehr drove from Memphis to Nashville during the days just after Thanksgiving 2019, no one would’ve guessed this would be John Prine’s last comprehensive interview. Longtime critic at the Commercial Appeal and author of the New York Times bestseller Trouble Boys: The True Story of the Replacements, Mehr had long been a contributor to MOJO, the acclaimed British music magazine.
Beyond Prine’s sense of irony and humor, it’s remarkable the consistency in so much of what he said over the years. In this retrospective reflection on half a century of music, Prine had the fullness of a career, the recent acclaim, and a sense of timelessness to much of his catalogue to inform his answers. He also had insight that unpacked record-business practices for what they were—as well as the common sense to bet on himself.
Interview done, Mehr returned home. Prine played two concerts in Florida, then a New Year’s Eve stand at the Ryman Auditorium with the Secret Sisters and Marty Stuart. In 2020, he played Sweden, then Norway, closing the run February 13 at Paris’s Café de la Danse.
To read Mehr’s interview is to see a man at peace with himself. Having gone through years of slight, years of wild acclaim, years of rocking hard, and years of battling cancer, Prine had found what seems like bliss: three wonderful boys, his Irish bride who was now his manager, making music, and finding an even broader audience. —Ed.
JOHN PRINE IS DEEP in thought, discussing the craft of songwriting, when suddenly his gaze is diverted to the big bay windows of his dining room. His eyes suddenly widen with excitement.
“It’s starting to snow,” he says, his voice rising. “Hey Fi! It’s snowing!”
It’s the start of the holiday season, and Prine is holding court in his Georgian-style manor in this quiet south Nashville neighborhood. The singer and his manager wife Fiona moved here a couple years ago, in part because their old house had become a stop on a country music celebrity bus tour. “You’d be carrying out your garbage and there’s people taking pictures with flash bulbs,” chuckles Prine. “Very glamorous.”
In a black sweater and slacks, with prodigious cheeks and twinkling eyes, Prine cuts a genial figure. He talks with his head cocked slightly to one side, the result of a neck cancer and surgery that threatened his voice and career two decades ago (he’s since survived a second bout of lung cancer). Sipping from a glass of iced tea, he ponders plans to stock the vintage Wurlitzer jukebox in the corner with a selection of Christmas 78s. “I gotta get it fixed first though,” he notes. “Last time I tried to use it, Elvis Costello was over for dinner, him and Joe Henry, and I tried to play them some Bing Crosby songs and the thing started pouring out smoke.”
In a previous life as a US army mechanic, the Illinois-born, Kentucky-rooted Prine might have took a shot at repairing it himself. As it is, songwriting proved a more persuasive calling than the military, or the mail route he famously trudged for many years. Discovered and championed by Kris Kristofferson while playing the folk clubs of Chicago, then signed to Atlantic Records, Prine launched his recording career in 1971 with John Prine: a collection of singular story songs that his longtime admirer Bob Dylan once hailed as “pure Proustian existentialism … Midwestern mindtrips to the nth degree.”
Prine’s most recent album, 2018’s Grammy-nominated The Tree of Forgiveness, testifies to enduring skills, although he admits “I write mostly out of fear now. I have to have a deadline.” More surprising, perhaps, is the growth of his audience, including a crop of acclaimed young artists—starring Jason Isbell and Kacey Musgraves—plus continuing support from the old guard, including Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant who, it turns out, Prine’s wife has just run into shopping in nearby Green Hills.
“Robert’s a fan of mine,” says Prine. “So is Roger Waters. A lot of the big English rocker guys from the ’70s like me. I don’t know why they weren’t fans in the ’70s. But I’m glad everyone’s come around.”
Me and my brothers were all born and raised in the Chicago area, but my parents were both from Western Kentucky. So there was country music playing in our house all the time: Roy Acuff, Hank Williams. Every night my dad would have the radio tuned to the local country station, or sometimes he could pick up WSM down in Nashville on weekends. He didn’t play music. He couldn’t sing either, but that didn’t stop him. (laughs) When he’d had a couple too many he’d stand on a chair or a table and sing The Wabash Cannonball.
Oh yeah. My dad had come up north for work, but he was deeply connected to Kentucky. I remember in second or third grade we were supposed to go home and ask our parents where we were from, what our heritage was. The kind of thing where kids in class would stand up and say they were Irish-German or Scandinavian or whatever. My dad, after he had a couple beers, said, “Remember, son: you’re pure Kentuckian, the last of a dyin’ breed.”
I was lucky just to finish high school. I promised my dad I would graduate and it took me five years to get out. I just didn’t hear what they were saying, y’know? I was a daydreamer. The only thing I would ace was if there was an English class or something where you didn’t have to hit a book, but just use your imagination and write. It seemed easy to me to write dialogue and situations that I thought of. I started writing songs to Carter Family melodies. But by the time I got done with the melody it didn’t sound like one of theirs. I was writing a lot up until I was about 16. Then I guess I got busy being a juvenile delinquent. I can’t remember having any serious ideas of becoming a songwriter then. I thought it was so far away that it was not anything you should even dream about.
Yeah, I did that for six years, before I got drafted in the army, then again after I got out. The pay was good, but the work was awful, between the elements and the dogs chasing you. Plus, I was low man on the totem pole so they gave me the worst mail route—it had over 500 houses on it, all with steps. I eventually whittled it down to 450—it took me four years to do that.
In boot camp, I was in in Fort Polk, Louisiana. They were training us to crawl through the swamps and kill the Vietnamese. We were all sure we were getting sent over there. Everybody got their orders and I’d say 85 percent of the guys went to Vietnam. When I got the orders for Germany, my father was really happy. Actually, so was I. That’s where I started playing and writing again. I had my mom and dad ship over my guitar and I’d play in the barracks.
I got back just before Christmas of ’67. So much had changed in that time, ’66 and ’67. When I went away most of my buddies that didn’t get drafted, they were greasers, with slicked back hair and leather jackets. When I came back they all had long hair and bell bottoms. I got married while I was in the army, married my high school sweetheart. So I was an old married man at 21. My buddies were still finding themselves when all that hippie stuff hit. I was never really a hippie. I was more like a retired greaser. That’s probably why I never got into writing songs about “let’s get together” or “we can save the world.” I was more of an observer of this new world, because I was kinda removed from it.
I thought there was a possibility they could be really good, or just plain awful. They were really different; they had nothing to do with regular songs. So I had mixed feelings. I was proud of them because they were mine, but I wasn’t sure they were gonna connect with other people. I do remember around that time, Bob Dylan was on the first “Johnny Cash Show.” When I saw the two of them singing together I thought the music I was playing and writing, it’d fit right straight in between the two of ’em. I thought, that’s exactly where I want to be.
It was just a little club in Chicago, not even 20 people in there when I got up. I wasn’t the type to heckle, but I’d had a few beers and wasn’t really impressed with what I was hearing, said so under my breath. Someone at the next table said, “Well if it’s so easy, why don’t you get up and do it?” So I said, “Well, maybe I will.” I got up and sang Sam Stone and the audience just sat there. They looked at me, looked at each other, looked at me again … seemed like an eternity. Finally, they started applauding. The owner of the club came up afterwards and offered me a job singing there. I couldn’t believe it. The thing I really remember was that I was more comfortable than I’d ever felt. I felt like that’s where I belonged.
That was huge. I mean, Kris was it. He was the biggest thing to come along in the way of lyrics since Bob Dylan. There was nobody in the place when Kris got there. I sang seven songs and got off the stage. Kris brought me a beer and asked me if I would get back up there and sing those same seven songs and anything else I had. He was interested in everything I’d ever written. That was enough validation right there.
Paul Anka had been hanging out with Kris the night in Chicago when he came to see me. I think Paul just saw the excitement that Kris had and thought, I should get in on this. Anka wanted to manage me and Goodman so he ended up buying us plane tickets to New York. I wasn’t gonna go but Goodman talked me into it. We got to New York and picked up a copy of the Village Voice at LaGuardia [Airport]. We look at it, and Kris is playing at the Bitter End; Carly Simon was opening. We took a cab on down there. Just as we got out, Kris and his band are walking down the street—they’d been at the bar next door between shows. Kris see us and says, “I’m gonna put you guys up onstage, you’re gonna do some songs tonight.” We didn’t know it, but the second show was for record company people. They were coming to see Kris ’cause he was the new world wonder. It was full of label people; Jerry Wexler was sitting down front. He came and talked to me after I got offstage. Asked me to show up at his office at Atlantic at 10 the next morning. I showed up; I had a record contract waiting for me. I hadn’t been in New York City 24 hours! If you’d put that in a movie people would have thought it was too corny.
It was before my first record came out. Me and Goodman were back in New York doing press and getting our pictures taken. Kris was in town and he said to come over to Carly Simon’s apartment: “I got a surprise for you guys.” We’re over there about a half hour and there’s a knock at the door. It’s Bob Dylan. Nobody had really seen Bob anywhere for a while. I sang Far From Me off my first album; when I got to the chorus Bob started singing along. The record wasn’t even out! It almost stopped me in my tracks. I found out later that Wexler had sent him an advance copy. Dylan said when he first heard my voice he thought I’d swallowed a Jew’s harp. (laughs)
Things happened pretty fast for me, so I was still finding my way musically. I took a full band out for the Common Sense tour, a band I wasn’t ready for. But [Cropper’s] production was such that I had to take some kind of band to perform the songs. But every gig was like torture for me. Now it’s a different thing—I’m uncomfortable without my band.
My contract with Atlantic was a five-year contract for ten albums of self-written material. Every six months I was supposed to put out a record. In retrospect, the whole singer-songwriter thing was mainly a way for labels to get publishing on some really great songs. They promised all these songwriters, “Oh, you’re going to be a big recording artist.” They’d put a couple of records out, then ignore them or they’d drop them, but they’d own the publishing forever. They still have the publishing on my first album, and it’s almost 50 years. You’d think I could get it back by now.
Bruised Orange did really well and Asylum was happy. So I decided now I want to make a noisy record—a live record with a band, and I want all the noise to stay. I didn’t want to use Dolby on the thing. I was big into being anti-Dolby at the time. (laughs) It was suggested I go to Memphis and talk to Knox Phillips and Jerry Phillips at the Phillips Recording Service.
We would go into the studio at six every evening and play till six in the morning. We did that five nights a week for a good three months. Eventually, Sam drove by one night and saw the lights were on and came by to check out, see who was in his studio. The way Sam told it my voice sounded so awful he thought he’d stick around and see if he could fix it. (laughs) And so he produced a couple things: Saigon and How Lucky Can One Man Get.
It was crazy and incredible all at the same time. Sam was like a fire and brimstone preacher. He didn’t ever talk about the music, he talked about the way you did things. He would speak in parables. It was a total experience. I didn’t know he hadn’t produced anyone in years and years. He’d turned down McCartney! Said he didn’t want to do the Beatles. Whatever roads I went down, to actually cross paths with him, I wouldn’t give it up for nothing.
I was spending all my time here when I wasn’t on the road, and my marriage was falling apart [in Chicago], so I figured I’d move down here. I got in with some good people, like Roger Cook, who I wrote Love Is On A Roll with and that went to Number 1 [Country] for Don Williams. Then I wrote Unwed Fathers with Bobby Braddock and Tammy Wynette cut that. One day, I heard those songs back to back on WSM and I thought, Man, I have arrived. I’m gonna go out and buy a Cadillac and I did. (laugh) As far as my own career, I was getting fed up with the majors. I told my manager Al Bunetta, Let’s start our own record company, let’s just sell records to the people who come see us. I thought it would be more honest that way. That’s why we started Oh Boy. A lot of people figured we were shooting ourselves in the foot. But the ’80s were terrible—when I heard Warner Brothers dropped Van Morrison, Bonnie Raitt, and Little Feat, they dropped a bunch of them in one month, I thought, What’s going on? This is crazy. Why would I try and get another major label deal?
In areas where we had busted through to playing concert halls, we were back in the clubs in the mid-’80s. But as long as I was having a good time on the road and sold the records to fans, I thought that was enough. We had two albums, Aimless Love and German Afternoons; they both did good for our core audience. By [the early-’90s], we got an offer from Columbia, a good-sized offer, like half a million bucks, which I turned down. I figured if there was that much interest we should kick it up ourselves, which is when we did The Missing Years. We were making a concentrated effort to make a record that could compete. I didn’t have to be an island and just make music for my fans. That’s where [Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers bassist] Howie Epstein came in to produce. He pulled that record out of me like a dentist with a sore tooth. We were recording at Howie’s house in the Hollywood hills. I was singing in the bathroom; there were microphone cables up and down the hallways. We were cutting one instrument at a time, one song at a time. A song would take us over a week, sometimes two or three weeks. But, boy, when he played stuff back to me I couldn’t believe how good it sounded.
I was more worried about just living and seeing my kids grow up, honestly. I couldn’t sing for about a year afterward, just didn’t have the power. I remember finally booking a show in Johnson City, Tennessee. I figured it was far enough in the sticks that if it didn’t go well people wouldn’t hear about it for a while. (laughs) About 800 people showed up, and I made it through the show. Afterwards, I stayed and shook hands with everybody that came out. I didn’t know how much I’d missed it. That was the night I realized I can go back out and do this again.
Seems I can’t do any wrong these days. About five years ago, I was thinking about, not retiring, but just kicking back, doing fewer shows. But ever since I brought out [The Tree of Forgiveness] we’re doing everything we can just to keep up with it. It’s still selling after 18 months. I’m getting a lot of young kids coming to the shows, and in turn they’re going back and listening to my old stuff.
Everything I was doing all those years on the road, I thought I was just doing to get enough money to pay the bills, to put one foot in front of the other. But it’s all coming back to me now in the best way possible. I always believed in what I was writing, but I never expected a bigger audience. If you’re out there day after day, going around playing the same places, you pretty much think you’ve reached your audience. But there’s more people finding my music every day. So I feel extremely lucky, I really do.