RIP John Prine

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schlanky
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RIP John Prine

Post by schlanky »

The first time I ever heard of John Prine was from the head of the English Dept at a small liberal arts college in central Alabama when I was about 10. His son was my best friend.

Norman (the dad) was into music and was always teaching us songs, or at least the parts he remembered. Norman didn't play; he just sang. He took us camping at Cheaha State Park and he taught us "The Accident" and "Dear Abby." Norman had the Sweet Revenge album and we listened to that a bunch.

As I got older, I listened to Prine and searched out the albums. Jon Carter got me into John Prine Live that I still consider Prine's best album.

I saw Prine a bunch from the late 80s into the late 90s. I saw a few shows on The Missing Years tour.

A few years ago, my mother bought me really good tickets to a show in Birmingham as a Christmas present. I hadn't seen him in a really long time and knew he had voice problems related to surgeries. My wife went with me. She tried to back out last minute because she really didn't know him.

He was phenomenal. Just fucking amazing. The songs he wrote at a young age are the songs he grew into. His age gave them more authenticity.

My wife tells me most stuff I listen to (including DBT) is too country. She loved Prine. He played Unwed Fathers that night and she was all in after that.

Prine's words were simple and his rhymes sometimes too easy, but there was always something deep just waiting for you to find it.
Last edited by schlanky on Tue Apr 07, 2020 10:43 pm, edited 7 times in total.
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Zip City
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Re: RIP John Prine

Post by Zip City »

RIP
And I knew when I woke up Rock N Roll would be here forever

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cortez the killer
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Re: RIP John Prine

Post by cortez the killer »

Dammit!

RIP
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chuckrh
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Re: RIP John Prine

Post by chuckrh »

RIP

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Sterling Bigmouth
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Re: RIP John Prine

Post by Sterling Bigmouth »

I think the first time I heard John Prine was in college. I have no recollection of the context, but apart from maybe DBT I’m not sure there’s anyone’s music I’ve fallen in love with faster. I went out and bought his first album a few days later. The 1st time I saw him live was in 2017 with Jason Isbell, and again last year with Sturgill Simpson (I still can’t believe how incredible he was at that age). I’d hoped for so long to catch a solo show of his, but I guess that’s one wish that’ll go unfulfilled. With all due respect to Bob Dylan, Townes Van Zandt, etc., I don’t think there’s ever been nor will there ever be a songwriter like Prine.
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schlanky
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Re: RIP John Prine

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Let the outside air in

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schlanky
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Re: RIP John Prine

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Let the outside air in

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schlanky
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Re: RIP John Prine

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Last edited by schlanky on Wed Apr 08, 2020 1:08 am, edited 2 times in total.
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schlanky
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Re: RIP John Prine

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Let the outside air in

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schlanky
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Re: RIP John Prine

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Let the outside air in

211poundsofpork
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Re: RIP John Prine

Post by 211poundsofpork »

R.I.P.
One of the greats. Definitely will never be another songwriter like him, ever.

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roland
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Re: RIP John Prine

Post by roland »

Damn.

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Clams
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Re: RIP John Prine

Post by Clams »

schlanky wrote:The first time I ever heard of John Prine was from the head of the English Dept at a small liberal arts college in central Alabama when I was about 10. His son was my best friend.

Norman (the dad) was into music and was always teaching us songs, or at least the parts he remembered. Norman didn't play; he just sang. He took us camping at Cheaha State Park and he taught us "The Accident" and "Dear Abby." Norman had the Sweet Revenge album and we listened to that a bunch.

As I got older, I listened to Prine and searched out the albums. Jon Carter got me into John Prine Live that I still consider Prine's best album.

I saw Prine a bunch from the late 80s into the late 90s. I saw a few shows on The Missing Years tour.

A few years ago, my mother bought me really good tickets to a show in Birmingham as a Christmas present. I hadn't seen him in a really long time and knew he had voice problems related to surgeries. My wife went with me. She tried to back out last minute because she really didn't know him.

He was phenomenal. Just fucking amazing. The songs he wrote at a young age are the songs he grew into. His age gave them more authenticity.

My wife tells me most stuff I listen to (including DBT) is too country. She loved Prine. He played Unwed Fathers that night and she was all in after that.

Prine's words were simple and his rhymes sometimes too easy, but there was always something deep just waiting for you to find it.
Nice write up Schlanky. RIP Mr. Prine. :(
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beantownbubba
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Re: RIP John Prine

Post by beantownbubba »

RIP :cry:
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bovine knievel
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Re: RIP John Prine

Post by bovine knievel »

This sucks.

RIP John
******************************************************
Prine on loneliness...


Prine seeing Stevie Wonder...


Prine was a mailman...


These should bring a smile to your face. He was funny without ever really trying. You will be missed, Mr Prine. 8-)
“Excited people get on daddy’s nerves.” - M. Cooley

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pearlbeer
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Re: RIP John Prine

Post by pearlbeer »

It is really hard to lose John Prine, particularly during these times. His unique ability to empathetically describe the human condition is unparalleled. It seems to me that he approached each song, and life in general from a position of kindness. Losing John Prine last night, it felt like all kindness was removed from the planet. His music changed my life. This is such a hard loss.

Please enjoy this article. I think most on 3DD will appreciate it - a look at John Prine from a songwriters perspective. I hope one day, when I move along, people will think of me as 'He was the guy you hoped he would be.' Hard to imagine a better compliment on a life well lived.

The scientific nature of the ordinary man
Is to go on out and do the best you can



https://americansongwriter.com/john-prine-guy-hope/
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Iowan
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Re: RIP John Prine

Post by Iowan »

He was one of the best. Maybe the best. Who knows. The world is a lesser place without him.

jr29
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Re: RIP John Prine

Post by jr29 »

He was my guy. He and Petty. I go through spurts with other people who are, perhaps, greater than both of them, but they are my guys. They both showed this kinda sensitive kid from rural west Tennessee that you can be a good ole boy and a shit kicker without a bunch of the nonsense that comes with being a good ole boy and a shit kicker.

"Summer's end's around the bend just flying".........
That line was on his last album and it has been ripping me apart all week.

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cortez the killer
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Re: RIP John Prine

Post by cortez the killer »

jr29 wrote:They both showed this kinda sensitive kid from rural west Tennessee that you can be a good ole boy and a shit kicker without a bunch of the nonsense that comes with being a good ole boy and a shit kicker.
This is great, jr29!

Duality of the shit-kicker thing.
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Iowan
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Re: RIP John Prine

Post by Iowan »

jr29 wrote:He was my guy. He and Petty. I go through spurts with other people who are, perhaps, greater than both of them, but they are my guys. They both showed this kinda sensitive kid from rural west Tennessee that you can be a good ole boy and a shit kicker without a bunch of the nonsense that comes with being a good ole boy and a shit kicker.

"Summer's end's around the bend just flying".........
That line was on his last album and it has been ripping me apart all week.
Hell yeah.

jr29
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Re: RIP John Prine

Post by jr29 »

schlanky wrote:
One of the most profound songs I've ever heard and I'm not sure it'd make my top five Prine songs.

John A Arkansawyer
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Re: RIP John Prine

Post by John A Arkansawyer »

I did not know that John Prine was on the first season of Saturday Night Live and I had never seen this performance.

The sooner we put those assholes in the grave&piss on the dirt above it, the better off we'll be

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Clams
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Re: RIP John Prine

Post by Clams »

From Kurt Vile's instagram
It’s impossible to express how much we really needed John Prine in this world.
How much I needed him.
John’s music hit me hard in my 20s and it just got deeper with age... sort of the way his newer records break your heart a little more every time they come out... in the last several years he was probably my biggest influence... certainly the only legend I’ve met so down to earth (even if i mighta got a little awkward from time to time)... that’s cuz John cut clean thru to the human heart in song and in life.
Everyone from Springsteen to Steven King is paying tribute. But I gotta say I think I was his biggest fan. Yup, he has that effect on people (we all feel this way). I’m lucky to have finally met him and played some shows with him, even sat in on his set a few times... Recently I got to drag him into the studio to record one of his songs (thanks Ferg!)... I’m so grateful to have been able to get to know him just a tiny bit. A few years before this we went to nashville to see John perform at the ryman for his 70th bday and I stood outside his dressing room like an awkward teen in my late 30s... my wife Suzanne said it was “awkward in the heart” to watch, haha. Another time John got convinced to let me sit in on a song at hardly strictly bluegrass festival in SF. But then I realized my set with Courtney ended in the middle of their set and their stage was on the other side of the park... after the last note of my set I jumped onto the back of a golf cart with four bottles of beer, we sped off and I got to Prine’s stage just in time to be introduced. I swiveled onstage like a spinning bobble-head and managed to not forget the words to my verse, brains flying. Later I opened for John in philly and he met my dad backstage, my dad talked with John about “paradise” (which John wrote for his dad) and workin on the railroad... later John said “oh yeah Kurt’s dad, Charlie Vile, salt of the earth...” that’s John Prine for ya, straight down to earth. We’ll all miss him so much. Love forever to Fiona and the Prine family and Eileen. They should know I would do anything the oh boy family asked. "Shine your light... move it on... you burn so bright... roll on, John"
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schlanky
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Re: RIP John Prine

Post by schlanky »

This one has been stuck in my head all day.

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pearlbeer
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Re: RIP John Prine

Post by pearlbeer »

Love each other, Motherfuckers!

SXDX
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Re: RIP John Prine

Post by SXDX »

Great write up by "Mr Shires" on Prine

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/09/opin ... sbell.html

A few years ago, my wife, Amanda, was touring in Scandinavia with John Prine, and when they arrived in Sweden she saw him write “songwriter” on his customs form as his occupation. “When did you decide that it was OK to write ‘songwriter’ on these forms?” she asked him. “Today,” he told her. “I usually put dancer.”

John Prine was not a dancer. He was a songwriter and one of the best that ever lived, but he did love to dance. He danced around his house in Nashville with his wife, Fiona, danced in the driver’s seat of his beloved Cadillac and danced offstage every night, twirling an imaginary pocket watch. Once while performing onstage with John, I noticed him glance down past his Italian driving shoes to check the digital clock on the floor, and he saw me notice. He leaned in and whispered, “I wish we had more time.”

When John developed squamous cell cancer on his neck in 1998, his doctor told him he might never be able to sing again. John told him, “Doc, you’ve never heard me sing.” He didn’t consider himself to be much of a singer; his honest delivery had always been what mattered most. Cancer and the subsequent treatments left John with a low whisper of a singing voice, but one that, if anything, aligned even more perfectly with the hard-won wisdom of the characters he created.

John was in his early 20s when he wrote “Hello in There” from the perspective of an old man sharing an empty nest with his lonely wife. Hearing him sing the song after decades of hard living and surviving numerous illnesses brought new meaning to the lyrics, now delivered by a man who had caught up with the character he created. John always said when he grew up, he wanted to be an old person.

John was known for his ability to tell stories that related universal emotions through the lens of his gigantic imagination. He constructed what Bob Dylan called “Midwestern mind trips” from the tedium of the everyday, and he was a master at concealing the work involved.

His songs sounded like they’d been easy to write, like they’d just fallen out of his mind like magic. He was praised for his dry humor and loved for his kindness and generosity. John had the courage to write plainly about the darkest aspects of the American experience in songs like “Sam Stone,” about a drug-addicted Vietnam veteran; “Paradise,” about the devastating effects of strip mining on a Kentucky town; and “The Great Compromise,” about his disillusionment with his country. Among his peers in the legendary Nashville songwriting community of the 1980s, his songs were the gold standard.

Of all the things I love about John’s songwriting, my favorite is the way he could step so completely into someone else’s life. John had the gift and the curse of great empathy. In songs like “Hello in There” and “Angel From Montgomery,” he wrote from a perspective clearly very different from his own — an old man and a middle-aged woman — but he kept the first-person point of view. He wrote those songs and the rest of his incredible debut album while a young man working as a letter carrier in Chicago. “Angel From Montgomery” opens with the line “I am an old woman/named after my mother.”

I remember hearing his 1971 recording of this song for the first time and thinking, “No, you’re not.” Then a light bulb went off, and I realized that songwriting allows you to be anybody you want to be, so long as you get the details right. John always got the details right. If the artist’s job is to hold a mirror up to society, John had the cleanest mirror of anyone I have ever known. Sometimes it seemed like he had a window, and he would climb right through.

After John faced a second bout with cancer in 2013, it seemed as though he was playing in extra innings — but he made the most of every bit of it. When Amanda — a fiddler and one of John’s favorite people — and I went into the studio to play and sing on his final album, 2018’s “The Tree of Forgiveness,” we were amazed by the beauty of the songs he’d written after more than 50 years of writing music. John was still razor sharp and he still had a story to tell. On the subsequent tour he played to the biggest audiences he’d ever drawn. He turned 72 that year.

But John’s work wasn’t just about his own music. In 1984, he and his longtime manager Al Bunetta and Dan Einstein started the independent record label Oh Boy Records. In the mid-’80s the major labels seemed like the only game in town, but Oh Boy succeeded against the odds. It released John’s albums along with records by Kris Kristofferson, Dan Reeder and Todd Snider, and it’s still finding new talent and operating with its artists’ best interests in mind.

He was a mentor to me and to my wife, who even helped him work on his songs sometimes, in between playing pranks on him while they were on tour. John saw her as a brilliant songwriter in her own right, and if John said you were a great songwriter, you knew it was true.

And there was more to John’s life than music. John and Fiona Prine had a beautiful relationship, loving and balanced and kind. Fiona understood John better than anyone else. After Amanda and I were married, Amanda started asking all the couples we knew, “What’s the secret to staying together?” John and Fiona gave the same answer, and it was the best one we’ve heard so far: Stay vulnerable. John remained vulnerable in love and in his work. He never played it safe.

When I was a baby, my 17-year-old mother would lay me on a quilt on the floor of our trailer in Alabama and play John Prine albums on the stereo. Forty years later, my daughter would call him Uncle John as he bounced her on his knee. My wife and I would sing his songs with him in old theaters or sometimes in his living room. In the summer, we’d all eat hot dogs with our feet dangling in his swimming pool. Now he’s gone and my heart is broken.

This week, John Prine danced off this stage and onto the next one, and I like to think he’s somewhere sharing a song and a cocktail with all the friends he outlived.

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bovine knievel
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Re: RIP John Prine

Post by bovine knievel »

Mr. Shires! Perfect :lol:
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SXDX
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Re: RIP John Prine

Post by SXDX »

bovine knievel wrote:Mr. Shires! Perfect :lol:
I believe thats what John used to call Jason. :D

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Beaverdam
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Re: RIP John Prine

Post by Beaverdam »

The last sentence of Isbell’s article/eulogy is particularly touching.

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schlanky
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Re: RIP John Prine

Post by schlanky »

My beer post of the evening is that Cooley could sing the hell out of "Far From Me." It sounds a lot like a song Cooley would write.
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