Disease has clarified things for Prine
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
Steve Morse
THE BOSTON GLOBE
Plenty of people were supposed to be "the next Dylan." John Prine commands as much respect as any of them.
Prine’s body of work speaks for itself: song portraits such as Angel From Montgomery (a staple in Bonnie Raitt’s shows) and Hello in There (Bette Midler has covered it), the social commentary of Sam Stone (about a Vietnam War veteran) and the more lighthearted poke of Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore.
Yet it has taken Prine all these years to finally feel grounded.
The 58-year-old Chicago native, who divides his time between Nashville, Tenn., and Galway, Ireland, is a cancer survivor who delights in life and is happily married to an Irishwoman who bore him two sons, now 9 and 10.
"I was 49 when I had my first kid. For me, I didn’t know I had a center. I thought I was just born a certain way and had to make do with it," he says of his prior life. "The kids just grounded me, and everything feels normal now.
"The sky has been bluer and everything has been brighter since the cancer. I have my own pot of gold. I have a great family life."
Prine will release a new album, Fair & Square, today — his first record of new studio material in nine years. The long delay, he says, is partly because of radical neck-dissection surgery (which caused his voice to drop an octave) and partly because of his busy family life.
"I used to just write on a whim," he says. "I’d walk around all day goofing off and wouldn’t write until lightning struck. Now I get up at 6:15 and I’m too tired to stay up later than 11 or 12 at night, so I had to make appointments with myself to write."
Those must have been fruitful appointments because the new compact disc is stellar. He moves easily from the bluegrass rock of Glory of True Love to the Hollywood satire of Crazy as a Loon, the fingerpicked gem Long Monday (with alt-country star Mindy Smith on harmony) to the Galway tribute My Darlin’ Hometown, with folk-country queen Alison Krauss joining on vocals.
Though happily hitched, Prine hasn’t lost his irreverence.
"Thankfully not," he says.
He proves it in sendup songs such as Taking a Walk (about a woman who isn’t glad to see him: "I felt about as welcome as a Wal-Mart superstore," he sings) and Other Side of Town (about the futility of arguing with someone who has her mind made up: "My body’s in this room with you just catching hell / But my soul is drinking beer down the road a spell").
The protest song Some Humans Ain’t Human pillories people who are self-righteous about religion and takes a swipe at President Bush: "You’re feeling your freedom and the world’s off your back / Then some cowboy in Texas starts his own war in Iraq," Prine sings in that devastating drawl of his.
Above all, Prine is rejuvenated by the concert stage.
"I couldn’t sing at all for a while after the surgery, but gradually my energy came back," he says. "And because my voice has dropped, I’ve had to sing a lot of the older songs in different keys. But it has made them seem brand new to me."
Disease has clarified things for Prine
Moderator: SMLCHNG
From CreativeLoafing.com:
http://www.atlanta.creativeloafing.com/ ... ature.html
Prine Is Back
After beating cancer, the songwriting legend returns to form
BY STEVE FENNESSY
A week ago Thursday, if you were at Hartsfield-Jackson airport waiting on a flight, you might have seen a man with a head full of bushy hair that's gone gray. He would have looked to be pushing about 60, and might have rocked a bit when he walked. He held a cell phone to his ear for a while, and while he was talking, you might have noticed he kept looking over at the electric trash compactors that turn magazines and coffee cups into mulch. And you'd no doubt notice his grin, which is big and easy and maybe even a little goofy, which is one of his favorite words.
The man is John Prine, and he was on his way to Asheville, N.C., to open the tour supporting his latest album, Fair & Square. It's been nine years since Prine released a record of new material. For his fans, who are an impassioned bunch, the wait has been somewhat frustrating, only partially alleviated by Prine's semi-regular touring schedule. He plays weekend shows throughout the country for part of the year while he writes new songs.
Or doesn't write songs, as the case may be.
Prine's approach to songwriting can most generously be described as relaxed. He's said before that he'd gladly put down his pen if somebody offered him so much as a hot dog. But in the nine-year period since his last CD of new material, Lost Dogs & Mixed Blessings, Prine's had to deal with distractions a lot bigger than hot dogs.
In 1997, he was diagnosed with cancer in his neck. He beat it, but the surgery and radiation dropped his voice an octave and left it even more gravelly than usual. He had his hip replaced. In 2001, he took a spill in Ireland and busted his elbow. But the biggest distraction has been his two sons, who are now 9 and 10, the children of his third marriage.
"For 49 years, it was kind of a quirky world for me," he says by phone from Hartsfield. "I'd go wherever I wanted, get up whenever I wanted to. I'd been married twice before, but I never had any children. The children, they tell you when to get up, when to go to bed. It threw me for a loop - a good loop."
Until his children were born, Prine's songwriting depended as much on serendipity as focused effort. "I would just wait until lightning struck. It'd be 4 in the morning and I'd write a song and go back to sleep." He chuckles. "I was never busy before when lightning struck. I was just walkin' around waitin' for a storm."
In his youth, Prine explained (when he visited the Library of Congress earlier this year at the invitation of America's poet laureate Ted Kooser), he was often subject to "spells," as he called them, where it would seem like he was looking down at the room from above. Such spells brought on emotions that led to songs. The best songs, he said, took about as much time to write as they did to sing.
Today, with two kids to chase after, a summer house in Ireland, the responsibilities of running his own record label, and the challenge of maintaining his health, Prine has to fit in his muse when he can.
"In order to write a record, I had to make an appointment with myself," he says with another chuckle.
But his fans can rest easy: Fair & Square, which will be released April 26, is a return to form. Look no further than "She is my Everything," about his wife, Fiona, in which Prine rhymes "Copenhagen" with "eggs and bacon." Or "Some Humans Ain't Human," the last song he wrote for the record. In it, he blasts George W. Bush's Iraq war.
"I don't particularly like protest songs myself because they don't last very long," he says. "Soon as you mention anything about current events, it puts a time limit on the song. But in this case, I started feeling like the stuff that the administration was doing - from the Dixie Chicks on down, the way they came down on anybody saying anything about Iraq - I thought this was pretty crazy. Anyway, I got the feeling if I didn't say something that that would be a 'yes' vote for Bush. So I wanted to make it clear if a bus should hit me tomorrow morning, I wasn't a Republican."
At his shows, Prine even took one of his first songs out of retirement, the self-explanatory "Your Flag Decal Won't Get You Into Heaven Anymore." And last fall Prine took part in Vote for Change, the coalition of musicians who tried to mobilize voters to vote Bush out of office. Some of his fans didn't appreciate their guy wearing his politics on his sleeve.
"You think you know who you're playing to. Not that I'm trying to please everybody, but I was surprised that as many people would get as p*** off as they did. In the same letters, they said they'd been following the music for 30 years. You wonder what songs they've been listening to."
Prine laughs again.
"So if nothing else, I feel like I've cleared the board and reminded 'em where I'm comin' from."
Oh, and one more thing - Prine says his next album should come a bit quicker this time around.
"I'm gonna try and do one in three years. You can write that down."
http://www.atlanta.creativeloafing.com/ ... ature.html
Prine Is Back
After beating cancer, the songwriting legend returns to form
BY STEVE FENNESSY
A week ago Thursday, if you were at Hartsfield-Jackson airport waiting on a flight, you might have seen a man with a head full of bushy hair that's gone gray. He would have looked to be pushing about 60, and might have rocked a bit when he walked. He held a cell phone to his ear for a while, and while he was talking, you might have noticed he kept looking over at the electric trash compactors that turn magazines and coffee cups into mulch. And you'd no doubt notice his grin, which is big and easy and maybe even a little goofy, which is one of his favorite words.
The man is John Prine, and he was on his way to Asheville, N.C., to open the tour supporting his latest album, Fair & Square. It's been nine years since Prine released a record of new material. For his fans, who are an impassioned bunch, the wait has been somewhat frustrating, only partially alleviated by Prine's semi-regular touring schedule. He plays weekend shows throughout the country for part of the year while he writes new songs.
Or doesn't write songs, as the case may be.
Prine's approach to songwriting can most generously be described as relaxed. He's said before that he'd gladly put down his pen if somebody offered him so much as a hot dog. But in the nine-year period since his last CD of new material, Lost Dogs & Mixed Blessings, Prine's had to deal with distractions a lot bigger than hot dogs.
In 1997, he was diagnosed with cancer in his neck. He beat it, but the surgery and radiation dropped his voice an octave and left it even more gravelly than usual. He had his hip replaced. In 2001, he took a spill in Ireland and busted his elbow. But the biggest distraction has been his two sons, who are now 9 and 10, the children of his third marriage.
"For 49 years, it was kind of a quirky world for me," he says by phone from Hartsfield. "I'd go wherever I wanted, get up whenever I wanted to. I'd been married twice before, but I never had any children. The children, they tell you when to get up, when to go to bed. It threw me for a loop - a good loop."
Until his children were born, Prine's songwriting depended as much on serendipity as focused effort. "I would just wait until lightning struck. It'd be 4 in the morning and I'd write a song and go back to sleep." He chuckles. "I was never busy before when lightning struck. I was just walkin' around waitin' for a storm."
In his youth, Prine explained (when he visited the Library of Congress earlier this year at the invitation of America's poet laureate Ted Kooser), he was often subject to "spells," as he called them, where it would seem like he was looking down at the room from above. Such spells brought on emotions that led to songs. The best songs, he said, took about as much time to write as they did to sing.
Today, with two kids to chase after, a summer house in Ireland, the responsibilities of running his own record label, and the challenge of maintaining his health, Prine has to fit in his muse when he can.
"In order to write a record, I had to make an appointment with myself," he says with another chuckle.
But his fans can rest easy: Fair & Square, which will be released April 26, is a return to form. Look no further than "She is my Everything," about his wife, Fiona, in which Prine rhymes "Copenhagen" with "eggs and bacon." Or "Some Humans Ain't Human," the last song he wrote for the record. In it, he blasts George W. Bush's Iraq war.
"I don't particularly like protest songs myself because they don't last very long," he says. "Soon as you mention anything about current events, it puts a time limit on the song. But in this case, I started feeling like the stuff that the administration was doing - from the Dixie Chicks on down, the way they came down on anybody saying anything about Iraq - I thought this was pretty crazy. Anyway, I got the feeling if I didn't say something that that would be a 'yes' vote for Bush. So I wanted to make it clear if a bus should hit me tomorrow morning, I wasn't a Republican."
At his shows, Prine even took one of his first songs out of retirement, the self-explanatory "Your Flag Decal Won't Get You Into Heaven Anymore." And last fall Prine took part in Vote for Change, the coalition of musicians who tried to mobilize voters to vote Bush out of office. Some of his fans didn't appreciate their guy wearing his politics on his sleeve.
"You think you know who you're playing to. Not that I'm trying to please everybody, but I was surprised that as many people would get as p*** off as they did. In the same letters, they said they'd been following the music for 30 years. You wonder what songs they've been listening to."
Prine laughs again.
"So if nothing else, I feel like I've cleared the board and reminded 'em where I'm comin' from."
Oh, and one more thing - Prine says his next album should come a bit quicker this time around.
"I'm gonna try and do one in three years. You can write that down."
JOHN PRINE, THE POET LAUDABLE
Joe Heim - Special to The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 01446.html
During an event honoring him at the Library of Congress in February,
singer John Prine was extolled by U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser as a
"truly original writer, unequaled, and a genuine poet of the American
people."
High praise for a former mail carrier and Army grunt who has forged his
nearly 40-year music career in the shadow of high-profile contemporaries
like Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen -- both of whom have more often
been recipients of such encomiums. Even now, at age 58, Prine cannot
quite escape the comparisons. The release yesterday of his new album,
"Fair & Square," coincided to the day with the release of Springsteen's
"Devils & Dust" and will certainly receive far less attention.
But there's nothing on this collection of 14 songs that would give
Kooser reason to pull back from his succinct, spot-on summation of the
Illinois-born musician's importance. Coming after a nine-year gap
between releases of new material, this low-key masterpiece arrives not
just as a reminder of Prine's cleverness and mischievous wit but also as
a confirmation of his deeply human values. These are values rooted in
the enduring mystery and majesty of everyday, ordinary lives.
The album, a straightforward folkie affair with flecks of country and
blues, begins with the prettiest and grittiest of love songs, "The Glory
of True Love," and Prine, a longtime Nashville resident, declaring in
his southern, gravelly drawl:
You can climb the highest mountain
Touch the stars and moon above
But Old Faithful's just a fountain
Compared to the glory of true love.
Prine is a master of small, detailed scenes in which he explores ideas
familiar to everyone but in ways and words that paint pictures never
seen before. "My Darlin' Hometown" evokes the nostalgia anyone distanced
by geography or time feels for the place of his upbringing. But in this
song, the home town is not just a place but a being. "I'm lost and I
wish I were found," he sings, "in the arms of my darlin' hometown."
There are reasons it has taken Prine so long to return with new songs,
chief among them a battle with throat cancer. Listening to some of the
darker songs here, it's hard not to wonder how much they were shaped by
illness. "Taking a Walk" (whose intro, by the way, sounds uncannily like
the beginning of Dylan's "Lay Lady Lay") is an almost palpable
expression of anxiety and depression, even helplessness. And sorrow
fills "The Moon Is Down," a lament about the loss of a loved one,
perhaps to a failed relationship, perhaps to death.
An artist who came of age in the era of protest singing, Prine still
takes his shots. On "Some Humans Ain't Human," the most pointed and
political track on the CD, he derides President Bush as "some cowboy
from Texas" who "starts his own war in Iraq."
And yet, the playful Prine is often just a line away. Always an
inventive wordsmith, you can hear his cockeyed side in lines such as
"Constantinople is a mighty long word / Got three more letters than
'mockingbird' " or when he rhymes "too darn chewy" with the "arch in old
St. Louis." Moving from dark to light, from sad to silly, Prine reminds
us, line by line, of our ever-changing natures and demonstrates his
"truly original" ability to create detailed and emotional portraits
rather than half-formed sketches.
Joe Heim - Special to The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 01446.html
During an event honoring him at the Library of Congress in February,
singer John Prine was extolled by U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser as a
"truly original writer, unequaled, and a genuine poet of the American
people."
High praise for a former mail carrier and Army grunt who has forged his
nearly 40-year music career in the shadow of high-profile contemporaries
like Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen -- both of whom have more often
been recipients of such encomiums. Even now, at age 58, Prine cannot
quite escape the comparisons. The release yesterday of his new album,
"Fair & Square," coincided to the day with the release of Springsteen's
"Devils & Dust" and will certainly receive far less attention.
But there's nothing on this collection of 14 songs that would give
Kooser reason to pull back from his succinct, spot-on summation of the
Illinois-born musician's importance. Coming after a nine-year gap
between releases of new material, this low-key masterpiece arrives not
just as a reminder of Prine's cleverness and mischievous wit but also as
a confirmation of his deeply human values. These are values rooted in
the enduring mystery and majesty of everyday, ordinary lives.
The album, a straightforward folkie affair with flecks of country and
blues, begins with the prettiest and grittiest of love songs, "The Glory
of True Love," and Prine, a longtime Nashville resident, declaring in
his southern, gravelly drawl:
You can climb the highest mountain
Touch the stars and moon above
But Old Faithful's just a fountain
Compared to the glory of true love.
Prine is a master of small, detailed scenes in which he explores ideas
familiar to everyone but in ways and words that paint pictures never
seen before. "My Darlin' Hometown" evokes the nostalgia anyone distanced
by geography or time feels for the place of his upbringing. But in this
song, the home town is not just a place but a being. "I'm lost and I
wish I were found," he sings, "in the arms of my darlin' hometown."
There are reasons it has taken Prine so long to return with new songs,
chief among them a battle with throat cancer. Listening to some of the
darker songs here, it's hard not to wonder how much they were shaped by
illness. "Taking a Walk" (whose intro, by the way, sounds uncannily like
the beginning of Dylan's "Lay Lady Lay") is an almost palpable
expression of anxiety and depression, even helplessness. And sorrow
fills "The Moon Is Down," a lament about the loss of a loved one,
perhaps to a failed relationship, perhaps to death.
An artist who came of age in the era of protest singing, Prine still
takes his shots. On "Some Humans Ain't Human," the most pointed and
political track on the CD, he derides President Bush as "some cowboy
from Texas" who "starts his own war in Iraq."
And yet, the playful Prine is often just a line away. Always an
inventive wordsmith, you can hear his cockeyed side in lines such as
"Constantinople is a mighty long word / Got three more letters than
'mockingbird' " or when he rhymes "too darn chewy" with the "arch in old
St. Louis." Moving from dark to light, from sad to silly, Prine reminds
us, line by line, of our ever-changing natures and demonstrates his
"truly original" ability to create detailed and emotional portraits
rather than half-formed sketches.
It's never too late to open your ears to an original
Thursday, August 21, 2003
The song "Dear Abby" flowed into the mainstream in the early '70s, and I heard it on the radio and thought the guy singing it was a country-and-western comedian and I hated country-and-western. After I heard it a few times and smiled at some of the lines, I didn't hear it anymore.
Fast-forward more than a decade, and I'm walking in Tulsa with my friend Ruth, and we're talking music and musicians. She says something about John Prine and I say, "John who?" and she stops as if there's a 50-foot hole right in front of her. She slaps her hand over her heart and says, "You don't know who John Prine is?" and I say, embarrassed, "Well, I think I've heard of him," remembering, just barely, that he was the guy who sang "Dear Abby."
"Girl," she said, "I'm turning you on to John Prine."
I thank Ruth, among other friends in the '80s, whose influences wooshed me from my safe little music stream into the mouth of a wide, fast-flowing river -- The New Orleans funk of the Meters and their kin, the Neville Brothers, old doo-wop and jump blues, reggae and ska, Hank Williams, Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly, Victoria Spivey and Tampa Red on scratchy tapes and that wonderful world of John Prine.
I was one of the thousands who massed to hear him at Hartwood Acres last Sunday.
He will be 57 in October. He has survived cancer that was two years along when it was discovered in 1999. Doctors cut part of his neck out, and his voice rattles and scrapes the baritone ground like a rusty can when he talks, but when he sings, it grabs hold of a quirky air stream, his personal musical air stream.
I found a couple of friends near the sound guys, close enough that I could see his face, the weathered face of a son of Kentucky who was born near Chicago and was a mailman before he stepped away from a job and devoted his life to music.
He started about a half-hour late and apologized before he started, alluding to road detours. He played for about two hours, without a break, backed exquisitely by a man on stand-up bass and a man who played guitar and mandolin. In the middle of the show, they took a break and he played solo.
In the last part of the show, he sang two of his most moving songs, "Sam Stone," a painful song about a war veteran's brief life after his return home, and "Hello in There," an anthem to the effects of loneliness.
I feel as if I heard some of his songs thoroughly well for the first time that night, got nuances I hadn't before, realized a little better his magic weavings of lyric and tune.
In the beauty of the moment when he sang, "There's a hole in Daddy's arm where all the money goes," his pace slowed, the sweep of thousands up and down the hillside gone silent, and I thought, here before us is one of America's great troubadours. I watched the people around me. Many of them were mouthing the words, as I was. Maybe they were lucky enough to have discovered him early, or maybe they were like me, prompted by a loving friend years after he had begun building a following. Either way, we were seeing him live, still alive, a legend-to-be in a dark suit and tie, with hair receded on the sides, a lyrical wordsmith swelled with great humanity and humor.
After several encores, he finished with a bow and waved with a sweep of his arm, saying, "Thanks a lot. Sorry we were late."
I walked up the hill to my car, carrying my cooler and my folding chair, not having minded the wait, happy that in connecting with John Prine, I hadn't been too late.
Thursday, August 21, 2003
The song "Dear Abby" flowed into the mainstream in the early '70s, and I heard it on the radio and thought the guy singing it was a country-and-western comedian and I hated country-and-western. After I heard it a few times and smiled at some of the lines, I didn't hear it anymore.
Fast-forward more than a decade, and I'm walking in Tulsa with my friend Ruth, and we're talking music and musicians. She says something about John Prine and I say, "John who?" and she stops as if there's a 50-foot hole right in front of her. She slaps her hand over her heart and says, "You don't know who John Prine is?" and I say, embarrassed, "Well, I think I've heard of him," remembering, just barely, that he was the guy who sang "Dear Abby."
"Girl," she said, "I'm turning you on to John Prine."
I thank Ruth, among other friends in the '80s, whose influences wooshed me from my safe little music stream into the mouth of a wide, fast-flowing river -- The New Orleans funk of the Meters and their kin, the Neville Brothers, old doo-wop and jump blues, reggae and ska, Hank Williams, Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly, Victoria Spivey and Tampa Red on scratchy tapes and that wonderful world of John Prine.
I was one of the thousands who massed to hear him at Hartwood Acres last Sunday.
He will be 57 in October. He has survived cancer that was two years along when it was discovered in 1999. Doctors cut part of his neck out, and his voice rattles and scrapes the baritone ground like a rusty can when he talks, but when he sings, it grabs hold of a quirky air stream, his personal musical air stream.
I found a couple of friends near the sound guys, close enough that I could see his face, the weathered face of a son of Kentucky who was born near Chicago and was a mailman before he stepped away from a job and devoted his life to music.
He started about a half-hour late and apologized before he started, alluding to road detours. He played for about two hours, without a break, backed exquisitely by a man on stand-up bass and a man who played guitar and mandolin. In the middle of the show, they took a break and he played solo.
In the last part of the show, he sang two of his most moving songs, "Sam Stone," a painful song about a war veteran's brief life after his return home, and "Hello in There," an anthem to the effects of loneliness.
I feel as if I heard some of his songs thoroughly well for the first time that night, got nuances I hadn't before, realized a little better his magic weavings of lyric and tune.
In the beauty of the moment when he sang, "There's a hole in Daddy's arm where all the money goes," his pace slowed, the sweep of thousands up and down the hillside gone silent, and I thought, here before us is one of America's great troubadours. I watched the people around me. Many of them were mouthing the words, as I was. Maybe they were lucky enough to have discovered him early, or maybe they were like me, prompted by a loving friend years after he had begun building a following. Either way, we were seeing him live, still alive, a legend-to-be in a dark suit and tie, with hair receded on the sides, a lyrical wordsmith swelled with great humanity and humor.
After several encores, he finished with a bow and waved with a sweep of his arm, saying, "Thanks a lot. Sorry we were late."
I walked up the hill to my car, carrying my cooler and my folding chair, not having minded the wait, happy that in connecting with John Prine, I hadn't been too late.
John Prine is back for show at Wolfe
By Carol Mallett Rifkin
April 7, 2005 12:37 p.m.
photo: ASSOCIATED PRESS
Singer-songwriter John Prine plays Friday night at Wolfe Auditorium.
It's been a while since the great singer-songwriter John Prine played Asheville - but he's back this weekend for a date at Thomas Wolfe Auditorium. And for his many loving fans, it's reason to celebrate.
An icon of the '70s folk movement, his songs were anthems of anti-war protest, poignant tales of the lonely and forgotten, or sometimes just silly reminders not to take ourselves so seriously. "Your Flag Decal Won't Get You Into Heaven Anymore," "Sam Stone," "Blow Up Your TV," "Paradise" and more are embedded in the minds of baby boomers. Prine put everything from environmental issues to the treatment of veterans on the pop charts, mirroring an America questioning itself.
Raised in Illinois, one generation away from the coal mines of Kentucky, the Grammy-winning songwriter and former mailman releases his much awaited new CD April 24. Maturity, marriage, parenthood and a bout with neck cancer have not dulled his ability to say what's on his mind.
CITIZEN-TIMES: "You've been the voice of `everyman' for so long but where have you been?
PRINE: "I've been on the road, we never quit that. I`ve been raising a family, I have a couple boys that are 9 and 10. They were born about the time that last record came out. I was 49 when I had my first child. Raising a family is really great, I love it but I have to set aside time to do everything, write a song or record. You get busy and before you know it nine years have gone by.
Q: "I put the new record in last night and started listening and just started to smile because it was so John Prine again."
A: "Oh, I'm glad; I produced it, with my engineer Gary Paczoza. I wanted a good sound that was like me."
Q: "The accompaniment is really wonderful, its sounds modern and yet it's still that same old sound."
A: "Thank you, I'm real proud of all the music on it. I wrote all the new songs. All of the people on there are just friends I play with all the time, write songs with, around town. I'd rather use people like that instead of strangers just because it's supposed to be good."
Q: "You have a few famous people on there?"
A: "I live in Nashville - its hard not to have a few famous friends. Alison Krauss, Jerry Douglas, Dan Tyminski, Mindy Smith knocked me out, I knew she was good, but boy. It was a pleasant surprise, our voices all blended so well. And any time Allison Krauss wants to sing with me is all right by me, I'll be there."
Q: "You play stylistically like much of the music from here. What were some of your early influences?"
A: "My brother Dave taught me to play guitar. Dave was playing old timey music and was really well versed in that. He played fiddle and taught me to play guitar to back up his scratchy sound. My brother gave me a Carter Family record and my dad had a lot of Hank Snow and Roy Acuff. Also, Elizabeth Cotton and John Hurt records were who I got my finger picking from. A lot of what I got started with was bluegrass and old time."
Q: "You've always been a voice of our conscience; you make a lot of strong statements. What's important to you now that people should know about?"
A: "Well, I'm not really trying to make statements, the truth is, actually who I'm talking to in my songs is just me, myself. I try and write for myself what I think is important day to day. If people hear it and don't understand, well maybe I'm a bit off the mark in day to day life. My children are important; I'm down there at the school a lot. That's a whole different life. Their future is so important. The stuff that's going on with this administration is really crazy. I didn't think I'd see anything like this going on again in my lifetime. It's revived some of my old songs. I have a few old songs I thought were totally retired."
Q: "Which ones do you think?"
A: `"My Flag Decal Won't Get You Into Heaven Anymore."'
Q: "I know that you had neck cancer. When I listen I don't hear a lot of difference. I know everyone changes with age, sings in different keys. Does it sound different to you?"
A: "It was in late '97. Afterwards, it took a while before I had any power to sing. I had to whisper. Once I got a little bit more strength, I noticed my voice had dropped some. I dropped the keys on some of my old stuff. I think my singing voice is more like my talking voice now. I was still singing the same at 48 as I was at 18; I'd never taken the trouble to notice my voice had changed with age. It's more comfortable to listen to than it used to be."
Q: "So it might have happened with age anyway?"
A: "Well I think the radiation pushed it along."
Q: "Anything else you think is real important?"
A: "We're taking a whole tour out of Nashville. I wish the record was going to be in the stores by then but it won't be until April 24. We're going to sing a bunch of new songs and the old songs and I just want to tell everybody in Asheville we're really looking forward to it, that's our first show up there. We're excited about it."
Carol Mallett Rifkin writes about music for the Asheville Citizen-Times. E-mail to cpmallett@msn.com.
By Carol Mallett Rifkin
April 7, 2005 12:37 p.m.
photo: ASSOCIATED PRESS
Singer-songwriter John Prine plays Friday night at Wolfe Auditorium.
It's been a while since the great singer-songwriter John Prine played Asheville - but he's back this weekend for a date at Thomas Wolfe Auditorium. And for his many loving fans, it's reason to celebrate.
An icon of the '70s folk movement, his songs were anthems of anti-war protest, poignant tales of the lonely and forgotten, or sometimes just silly reminders not to take ourselves so seriously. "Your Flag Decal Won't Get You Into Heaven Anymore," "Sam Stone," "Blow Up Your TV," "Paradise" and more are embedded in the minds of baby boomers. Prine put everything from environmental issues to the treatment of veterans on the pop charts, mirroring an America questioning itself.
Raised in Illinois, one generation away from the coal mines of Kentucky, the Grammy-winning songwriter and former mailman releases his much awaited new CD April 24. Maturity, marriage, parenthood and a bout with neck cancer have not dulled his ability to say what's on his mind.
CITIZEN-TIMES: "You've been the voice of `everyman' for so long but where have you been?
PRINE: "I've been on the road, we never quit that. I`ve been raising a family, I have a couple boys that are 9 and 10. They were born about the time that last record came out. I was 49 when I had my first child. Raising a family is really great, I love it but I have to set aside time to do everything, write a song or record. You get busy and before you know it nine years have gone by.
Q: "I put the new record in last night and started listening and just started to smile because it was so John Prine again."
A: "Oh, I'm glad; I produced it, with my engineer Gary Paczoza. I wanted a good sound that was like me."
Q: "The accompaniment is really wonderful, its sounds modern and yet it's still that same old sound."
A: "Thank you, I'm real proud of all the music on it. I wrote all the new songs. All of the people on there are just friends I play with all the time, write songs with, around town. I'd rather use people like that instead of strangers just because it's supposed to be good."
Q: "You have a few famous people on there?"
A: "I live in Nashville - its hard not to have a few famous friends. Alison Krauss, Jerry Douglas, Dan Tyminski, Mindy Smith knocked me out, I knew she was good, but boy. It was a pleasant surprise, our voices all blended so well. And any time Allison Krauss wants to sing with me is all right by me, I'll be there."
Q: "You play stylistically like much of the music from here. What were some of your early influences?"
A: "My brother Dave taught me to play guitar. Dave was playing old timey music and was really well versed in that. He played fiddle and taught me to play guitar to back up his scratchy sound. My brother gave me a Carter Family record and my dad had a lot of Hank Snow and Roy Acuff. Also, Elizabeth Cotton and John Hurt records were who I got my finger picking from. A lot of what I got started with was bluegrass and old time."
Q: "You've always been a voice of our conscience; you make a lot of strong statements. What's important to you now that people should know about?"
A: "Well, I'm not really trying to make statements, the truth is, actually who I'm talking to in my songs is just me, myself. I try and write for myself what I think is important day to day. If people hear it and don't understand, well maybe I'm a bit off the mark in day to day life. My children are important; I'm down there at the school a lot. That's a whole different life. Their future is so important. The stuff that's going on with this administration is really crazy. I didn't think I'd see anything like this going on again in my lifetime. It's revived some of my old songs. I have a few old songs I thought were totally retired."
Q: "Which ones do you think?"
A: `"My Flag Decal Won't Get You Into Heaven Anymore."'
Q: "I know that you had neck cancer. When I listen I don't hear a lot of difference. I know everyone changes with age, sings in different keys. Does it sound different to you?"
A: "It was in late '97. Afterwards, it took a while before I had any power to sing. I had to whisper. Once I got a little bit more strength, I noticed my voice had dropped some. I dropped the keys on some of my old stuff. I think my singing voice is more like my talking voice now. I was still singing the same at 48 as I was at 18; I'd never taken the trouble to notice my voice had changed with age. It's more comfortable to listen to than it used to be."
Q: "So it might have happened with age anyway?"
A: "Well I think the radiation pushed it along."
Q: "Anything else you think is real important?"
A: "We're taking a whole tour out of Nashville. I wish the record was going to be in the stores by then but it won't be until April 24. We're going to sing a bunch of new songs and the old songs and I just want to tell everybody in Asheville we're really looking forward to it, that's our first show up there. We're excited about it."
Carol Mallett Rifkin writes about music for the Asheville Citizen-Times. E-mail to cpmallett@msn.com.
From NashvilleScene.com:
http://www.nashvillescene.com/cgi-bin/a ... over_Story
Lost Notes and Myriad Blessings
John Prine's first album of new material in nearly a decade takes up cancer, kids and true love
By Michael McCall
Leave it to John Prine to find a silver lining amid life-changing adversity. Having a section of your neck and throat cut out during surgery for cancer would be traumatic for anyone. For it to happen to Prine, one of the most celebrated singer-songwriters of the post-Dylan era, was earth-shattering. Because he also makes his living performing around the world, and because he'd finally found marital and domestic bliss, it could have been the stuff of Greek tragedy.
Just as Prine's songs consider the reprehensible and the glorious as inevitable aspects of life, he's come to see the humor and humanity in what he's endured. "I'm singing in a lower key than before," he says. "I really didn't realize it until recently, but this is a good thing. When I sing, it's so much easier and more natural, I can't believe I didn't figure this out until the surgery sort of forced me to do it. I feel like this is the voice I should've always had. To me, it sounds more like the way I talk."
Then he laughs, letting out a raspy, staccato chuckle. "Of course, I don't sound so good when I talk, either," he cracks.
Like many singer-songwriters in the wake of Bob Dylan, John Prine emerged in the 1970s with sharply observed songs and a quirky voice. Like the best of them, Prine's craggy intonation added to the charms of his material. His calling card has always been writing about everyday characters with wisdom, insight and humor, and his wry phrasing and hoarse, husky tone brought a warmth to his folksy sagacity and wit. Like many great songwriters—Dylan, Townes Van Zandt, Tom Waits, Guy Clark—Prine's peculiar voice suits what he has to say. "I guess if you keep making the same mistake long enough, it becomes your style," he says.
Being who he is, Prine can't help but finding funny stories in his brush with mortality. He likes to tell of the Houston radiologist, who professed that he was a fan and said he could shield Prine's vocal cords during the six weeks of radiation treatments the singer underwent following his radical neck dissection. "I asked him, 'You've heard me sing, right?' " Prine recalls with another laugh. "I told him not to worry about my voice because I never really have. I told him I'd rather make sure we got all the cancerous cells out of there."
As a cancer survivor, Prine didn't at first notice how his voice changed; he was just glad to be able to sing again. "You know, the other great thing is that all my old songs seem new to me again, because I sing them differently," he says. "They're fresh because they sound different, and I do think they sound better now. It was kind of a gift; after singing them for 20 or 30 years, it's like I get to rediscover them."
Prine's lower, more relaxed tone brings to life Fair & Square, his first album of new material in nine years. As whimsical as ever, his new work reflects other changes in his life, too. There are more love songs, and his observant takes of the quotidian seem less sardonic and at times more deeply blue. He can still get across his anger. While he's always woven social commentary into his work—he even was tagged a protest singer early in his career—the album's anti-Bush tirade "Some Humans Ain't Human" is his most pointed political blast since 1972's "Your Flag Decal Won't Get You Into Heaven Anymore."
"I felt like I had to write something about how I feel about the way things are in this country right now," Prine says of the song, a harangue aimed at callous individuals and calculated, lying leaders. "Some Humans Ain't Human" compares heartless people to a neglected home freezer full of old frozen pizzas, to "ice cubes with hair" in them and to "a broken Popsicle." The song further asserts that jealousy and stupidity don't equal harmony.
But the zinger that's creating controversy, and causing some to walk out at his shows, comes in the last stanza. "Have you ever noticed / When you're feeling really good / There's always a pigeon / That'll come s*** on your hood," Prine asks, speaking rather than singing at this point. "Or [when] you're feeling your freedom / And the world's off your back / Some cowboy from Texas / Starts his own war in Iraq."
"What bothers me the most is the way this administration is toward people who are dissenting, the way they're coming down on people," Prine says. "They act as if you're not supporting the troops if you have anything negative to say about Bush or any of his people. That seems totally un-American to me. It's the total flipside of what this country is supposed to be about."
Prine acknowledges that his commentary usually comes from character sketches or story songs. "Some Humans Ain't Human" has its humorous side, especially its carnival-sideshow arrangement, but the songwriter wanted to make his sentiments clear.
"I just got to a point where I didn't want to be silent about it," he goes on. "I thought if I didn't say anything, then people might take it that I was supporting what is going on. If I went out and got hit by a car tomorrow, I wouldn't want anyone to think I was a Republican."
Prine is seated behind the desk of Al Bunetta, his manager of several decades, and the physical changes wrought by his surgery are evident. His neck is disproportionately smaller than it was before he contracted cancer, and the changes in his jaw have caused his lower bite to recede. Yet he's not self-conscious about the changes, which marks another way he departs from most artists. Never vain, Prine has always accepted his disheveled appearance, looking like the everyman who could have lived on the same block as the offbeat characters who populate his songs.
Prine and Bunetta founded Oh Boy Records in 1984, four years after John moved to Nashville. The label has maintained a quiet presence on Music Row over the years, issuing recent albums by Todd Snider, Janis Ian, Kris Kristofferson and Shawn Camp while reissuing vintage country recordings and tending Prine's weighty catalog, as well as that of his old friend, the late Steve Goodman.
As he sits, Prine's hands frequently move along the desk, as if looking for something to do. A chain-smoker since his teens, Prine nearly always had a cigarette between his fingers until he was diagnosed with cancer in 1998. Most of his publicity photos dating back to the '70s even include a partially smoked cigarette. Seven years on, he's still not sure what to do with his fingers.
At age 58, Prine, who grew up in Maywood, Ill., talks about how nearly everything in his life has turned upside down in the last decade—and how he's just fine with that. "You know, I don't really sit and think about it a whole lot, but my life is completely different from what it once was," he says. "I don't want to say it's one thing. Certainly, being a dad is a big part of it. Having the cancer, that made some things change, too. They weren't really subtle changes. Some things had to change real fast."
For one, he's given up his nightlife, which was legendary among his close-knit friends but little-known beyond that. Through the first 25 years of his career, Prine maintained such a humorous, approachable quality that only those close to him knew how much he liked to party. A friendly imbiber, he didn't burn destructively like his peer Townes Van Zandt or recklessly like Steve Earle, but he'd hold court well into the night and into the morning, spinning stories and playing music with small groups of friends.
"All of a sudden, and for the first time ever, I'm leading a normal life," Prine says. "Especially now that my boys are in school, I'm at up at 6:30, and I'm in bed by 11. It's a total flip-flop."
Prine married his third wife, Fiona, in 1990; their oldest son, Jack, is 10 years old, and his brother Tommy is a year younger. Fiona's 23-year-old son Jody lives at the family's home in Green Hills as well. Despite his health scare, Prine figures having children late in life was just right for him.
"If I'd had children earlier in my life, I think I would have had a tendency to see what my limits were, and that wouldn't have been good," he says. "I didn't realize it, but I was all ready for children to come into my life at the time they did. I didn't know I was looking for anything, but it sure came along at the right time."
Prine now attends the boys' sporting events and often is home when they come in from school, which makes him more of a hands-on father than most of the lawyers and businessmen in his neighborhood. "I've got a good home life," he says. "It's about as steady of a home life as I've ever had. I'm there with the boys a lot, and Fiona is just a really good person. I'm lucky to have her. She's brought order to my life, which is a good thing, because if she hadn't, I probably wouldn't be here. I guess the magic of that comes out in the music."
Indeed, Fair & Square features more love songs than Prine has ever put on an album. He started in that direction shortly after marrying Fiona. "You Got Gold" and "I Want to Be With You Always" were standout tracks on 1991's The Missing Years. The new "Glory of True Love," with its chiming melody and unabashed celebration of just how precious it is to find someone to share your life with, comes across like a follow-up to "You Got Gold" written a decade after the joy has settled in and deepened.
Similarly, the new "She Is My Everything" brims with playful toasts to the woman he adores, while "Long Monday," written with Prine's friend Keith Sykes, bemoans the fact that, after a weekend of making love and music together, it's time to go back to work. As he drives off, he's still high on love, humming, "You and me / Sittin' in the back of my memory / Like a honeybee / Buzzin' 'round a glass of sweet Chablis."
Oddly enough, Prine's best work often follows periods when he's considered retiring from making records. Bruised Orange came after he left Atlantic Records, where he made his first four albums, three of them with producer Arif Mardin. (Mardin now works with Norah Jones, who recently covered "That's the Way That the World Goes 'Round," a song from Bruised Orange.)
Prine left Atlantic in 1976 as the commercial crest of the singer-songwriter movement waned. Jerry Wexler, the famed talent scout who had brought Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin and Wilson Pickett to Atlantic, had given Prine his first record deal as well. But Wexler had left the company, and Ahmet Ertegun had recently signed Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones to lucrative deals. The record industry had evolved, focusing on hard rock, dance music, funk and the emerging punk movement. The acoustic singer-songwriters who had risen in the early '70s no longer received the airplay or the record company promotion they once had.
"Atlantic had become part of Warner Bros. and moved into Rockefeller Center," Prine told the Scene in a 1995 interview. "I remember when I first went into the old Atlantic, and it had all these gold records by these great R&B and jazz artists. It was a friendly place. It didn't seem like a big corporation. But by time Jerry left, that wasn't the case anymore."
The pop music industry was evolving from underground clubs, music halls and offbeat record stores to arenas, strong-armed promoters and chain stores. Prine no longer felt connected to it. He nearly left the business, considering becoming a fisherman, among other things. He traveled to Nashville because he'd met Cowboy Jack Clement, and he hung out at Clement's famed Cowboy Arms Recording Spa and Hotel, writing songs and recording stray tracks.
The recordings eventually were scrapped, but Prine seemed creatively renewed. He signed with David Geffen's Asylum Records, which still held out some hope for the commercial possibilities of acoustic music. He then set up shop with his old buddy Steve Goodman in a Chicago recording studio. Even though the sessions were marked with heated arguments between the two friends, the result, Bruised Orange, featured several of Prine's most enduring songs, including "Fish and Whistle," "There She Goes," "If You Don't Want My Love," "Crooked Piece of Time" and the one-of-a-kind "Sabu Visits the Twin Cities Alone."
After Bruised Orange, Prine wanted to experiment with his sound, perhaps wanting to punch it up in the way Neil Young or Joni Mitchell altered their work as times and trends changed. Proud of the rocking band he'd been touring with, he huddled in Memphis' Sun Studio with Knox and Jerry Phillips, the sons of Sun founder Sam Phillips, who also lent his wild-eyed advice to the proceedings. The album that resulted, Pink Cadillac, updated its rockabilly fervor with the raw, noisy spirit of punk.
But Asylum didn't understand the album and hardly promoted it. Frustrated again with his record company, Prine went into Muscle Shoals and created Storm Windows, another rock-combo album whose slicker sound had the strengths of albums by Tom Petty or Bob Seger. It, too, was ignored. Prine is a better rocker than he's given credit for, and his raucous version of The Carter Family's "Bear Creek Blues" on Fair & Square nicely recalls that era.
For the last time, Prine severed his ties to a major label and again considered quitting. He could earn enough money touring to keep alive, he reasoned. But Bunetta, his longtime manager, brought up the idea of starting their own label. Bunetta had successfully run a mail-order label, Red Pajamas, which marketed the music of Steve Goodman, whom he also managed. Prine agreed to give it a try, and so they founded Oh Boy Records, named for the exclamation in one Buddy Holly's most famous songs.
"I don't think I would've continued doing this if I had to jump from label to label," Prine says. "There was something missing. I'm not a control freak or anything close, but what they do and what I do is two different things. They're trying to market music the same way you sell blue jeans and cars. My music's not really made for that."
Still, he never envisioned a label that would be thriving 20 years later—and that would serve as a role model for a growing movement of artist-owned indies. "I'm completely amazed we're still here," he says, crediting Bunetta's hard work and industry expertise for keeping the label afloat despite the fact that Prine's released just six studio albums in its 21 years of existence. "I think he does it with mirrors and smoke sometimes, but thank God he has. It gives us something to talk about."
Having his own label gives Prine the freedom to operate in ways that other artists can't. He's put out two live albums and a live DVD, as well as re-recorded an album of his best-known songs (Souvenirs) and released another of cover songs of male-female duets (In Spite of Ourselves). Owning Oh Boy also encourages him to write and keep recording rather than just to rely on his income from concert touring, which is considerable.
This time around, though, between family obligations and health considerations, he had to change the manner of his writing. "I'd always just kind of wait for songs to come," he says. "They'd arrive in batches, two or three at a time. I could let it happen most any time of day. A lot of the time that would happen to be about 3 o'clock in the morning, or whatever, because I was sleeping until noon anyway."
With fatherhood, all of that changed. "When the songs weren't coming every couple months or so, I realized, 'Oh, I get it, I have to start making appointments to do this stuff,' " he says. "I have to say, 'OK, next Wednesday I'm going to write.' With the kids and the family, I have to schedule time to do other things. Otherwise, I'll just hang out with them."
Because the writing was taking longer, Prine started making demos on his own to show his songs to a potential producer. But he liked the sound of the demos, and eventually decided to record the album himself. He recruited Gary Paczosa as co-producer because he liked the sounds Paczosa got on albums by Alison Krauss and Mindy Smith.
Prine had been credited as a co-producer on Aimless Love and German Afternoons, the first two albums that he made for Oh Boy with producer Jim Rooney. This time, however, he assumed a much larger role in overseeing production than he did back then.
"I'm going to have to write a letter of apology to Jim," he says. "Apparently, he was doing the whole darn thing, and I was just tagging along for the show. Now that I've really done it, I know the difference. It's definitely the first time I've taken a hold of the reins and ridden the thing all the way down to the end of the rodeo."
Even so, Prine's new album may be the most fitting production of his career. There's a warm, natural groove to each song, and the prominence of rhythm guitar and the gentle additions of accordion and steel guitar fit perfectly with his rolling style. Fair & Square also reflects the full sound Prine creates onstage with just his acoustic guitar and the bass of Dave Jacques and electric guitar of Jason Wilbur, who've served as his touring unit for several years.
"It's just a really good sound for what I do," Prine says. "I love it musically, and it's a comfortable situation. I never get wore out by it; I'm always excited about doing the shows. When I had the rock bands, it always seemed like we had the acoustic segments and the band segments. But now it all flows together, and we don't have to jump from one kind of music to another."
So, after all he's been through, here Prine is, traveling the world playing his songs and getting ready to release another batch of new songs. "It's like I have a whole new romance going on with life," he says, shrugging as he smiles, as if he's as mystified as anyone with the way things turned out. "It's like there's a new shine on things. I'm feeling like I'm dug in pretty good."
http://www.nashvillescene.com/cgi-bin/a ... over_Story
Lost Notes and Myriad Blessings
John Prine's first album of new material in nearly a decade takes up cancer, kids and true love
By Michael McCall
Leave it to John Prine to find a silver lining amid life-changing adversity. Having a section of your neck and throat cut out during surgery for cancer would be traumatic for anyone. For it to happen to Prine, one of the most celebrated singer-songwriters of the post-Dylan era, was earth-shattering. Because he also makes his living performing around the world, and because he'd finally found marital and domestic bliss, it could have been the stuff of Greek tragedy.
Just as Prine's songs consider the reprehensible and the glorious as inevitable aspects of life, he's come to see the humor and humanity in what he's endured. "I'm singing in a lower key than before," he says. "I really didn't realize it until recently, but this is a good thing. When I sing, it's so much easier and more natural, I can't believe I didn't figure this out until the surgery sort of forced me to do it. I feel like this is the voice I should've always had. To me, it sounds more like the way I talk."
Then he laughs, letting out a raspy, staccato chuckle. "Of course, I don't sound so good when I talk, either," he cracks.
Like many singer-songwriters in the wake of Bob Dylan, John Prine emerged in the 1970s with sharply observed songs and a quirky voice. Like the best of them, Prine's craggy intonation added to the charms of his material. His calling card has always been writing about everyday characters with wisdom, insight and humor, and his wry phrasing and hoarse, husky tone brought a warmth to his folksy sagacity and wit. Like many great songwriters—Dylan, Townes Van Zandt, Tom Waits, Guy Clark—Prine's peculiar voice suits what he has to say. "I guess if you keep making the same mistake long enough, it becomes your style," he says.
Being who he is, Prine can't help but finding funny stories in his brush with mortality. He likes to tell of the Houston radiologist, who professed that he was a fan and said he could shield Prine's vocal cords during the six weeks of radiation treatments the singer underwent following his radical neck dissection. "I asked him, 'You've heard me sing, right?' " Prine recalls with another laugh. "I told him not to worry about my voice because I never really have. I told him I'd rather make sure we got all the cancerous cells out of there."
As a cancer survivor, Prine didn't at first notice how his voice changed; he was just glad to be able to sing again. "You know, the other great thing is that all my old songs seem new to me again, because I sing them differently," he says. "They're fresh because they sound different, and I do think they sound better now. It was kind of a gift; after singing them for 20 or 30 years, it's like I get to rediscover them."
Prine's lower, more relaxed tone brings to life Fair & Square, his first album of new material in nine years. As whimsical as ever, his new work reflects other changes in his life, too. There are more love songs, and his observant takes of the quotidian seem less sardonic and at times more deeply blue. He can still get across his anger. While he's always woven social commentary into his work—he even was tagged a protest singer early in his career—the album's anti-Bush tirade "Some Humans Ain't Human" is his most pointed political blast since 1972's "Your Flag Decal Won't Get You Into Heaven Anymore."
"I felt like I had to write something about how I feel about the way things are in this country right now," Prine says of the song, a harangue aimed at callous individuals and calculated, lying leaders. "Some Humans Ain't Human" compares heartless people to a neglected home freezer full of old frozen pizzas, to "ice cubes with hair" in them and to "a broken Popsicle." The song further asserts that jealousy and stupidity don't equal harmony.
But the zinger that's creating controversy, and causing some to walk out at his shows, comes in the last stanza. "Have you ever noticed / When you're feeling really good / There's always a pigeon / That'll come s*** on your hood," Prine asks, speaking rather than singing at this point. "Or [when] you're feeling your freedom / And the world's off your back / Some cowboy from Texas / Starts his own war in Iraq."
"What bothers me the most is the way this administration is toward people who are dissenting, the way they're coming down on people," Prine says. "They act as if you're not supporting the troops if you have anything negative to say about Bush or any of his people. That seems totally un-American to me. It's the total flipside of what this country is supposed to be about."
Prine acknowledges that his commentary usually comes from character sketches or story songs. "Some Humans Ain't Human" has its humorous side, especially its carnival-sideshow arrangement, but the songwriter wanted to make his sentiments clear.
"I just got to a point where I didn't want to be silent about it," he goes on. "I thought if I didn't say anything, then people might take it that I was supporting what is going on. If I went out and got hit by a car tomorrow, I wouldn't want anyone to think I was a Republican."
Prine is seated behind the desk of Al Bunetta, his manager of several decades, and the physical changes wrought by his surgery are evident. His neck is disproportionately smaller than it was before he contracted cancer, and the changes in his jaw have caused his lower bite to recede. Yet he's not self-conscious about the changes, which marks another way he departs from most artists. Never vain, Prine has always accepted his disheveled appearance, looking like the everyman who could have lived on the same block as the offbeat characters who populate his songs.
Prine and Bunetta founded Oh Boy Records in 1984, four years after John moved to Nashville. The label has maintained a quiet presence on Music Row over the years, issuing recent albums by Todd Snider, Janis Ian, Kris Kristofferson and Shawn Camp while reissuing vintage country recordings and tending Prine's weighty catalog, as well as that of his old friend, the late Steve Goodman.
As he sits, Prine's hands frequently move along the desk, as if looking for something to do. A chain-smoker since his teens, Prine nearly always had a cigarette between his fingers until he was diagnosed with cancer in 1998. Most of his publicity photos dating back to the '70s even include a partially smoked cigarette. Seven years on, he's still not sure what to do with his fingers.
At age 58, Prine, who grew up in Maywood, Ill., talks about how nearly everything in his life has turned upside down in the last decade—and how he's just fine with that. "You know, I don't really sit and think about it a whole lot, but my life is completely different from what it once was," he says. "I don't want to say it's one thing. Certainly, being a dad is a big part of it. Having the cancer, that made some things change, too. They weren't really subtle changes. Some things had to change real fast."
For one, he's given up his nightlife, which was legendary among his close-knit friends but little-known beyond that. Through the first 25 years of his career, Prine maintained such a humorous, approachable quality that only those close to him knew how much he liked to party. A friendly imbiber, he didn't burn destructively like his peer Townes Van Zandt or recklessly like Steve Earle, but he'd hold court well into the night and into the morning, spinning stories and playing music with small groups of friends.
"All of a sudden, and for the first time ever, I'm leading a normal life," Prine says. "Especially now that my boys are in school, I'm at up at 6:30, and I'm in bed by 11. It's a total flip-flop."
Prine married his third wife, Fiona, in 1990; their oldest son, Jack, is 10 years old, and his brother Tommy is a year younger. Fiona's 23-year-old son Jody lives at the family's home in Green Hills as well. Despite his health scare, Prine figures having children late in life was just right for him.
"If I'd had children earlier in my life, I think I would have had a tendency to see what my limits were, and that wouldn't have been good," he says. "I didn't realize it, but I was all ready for children to come into my life at the time they did. I didn't know I was looking for anything, but it sure came along at the right time."
Prine now attends the boys' sporting events and often is home when they come in from school, which makes him more of a hands-on father than most of the lawyers and businessmen in his neighborhood. "I've got a good home life," he says. "It's about as steady of a home life as I've ever had. I'm there with the boys a lot, and Fiona is just a really good person. I'm lucky to have her. She's brought order to my life, which is a good thing, because if she hadn't, I probably wouldn't be here. I guess the magic of that comes out in the music."
Indeed, Fair & Square features more love songs than Prine has ever put on an album. He started in that direction shortly after marrying Fiona. "You Got Gold" and "I Want to Be With You Always" were standout tracks on 1991's The Missing Years. The new "Glory of True Love," with its chiming melody and unabashed celebration of just how precious it is to find someone to share your life with, comes across like a follow-up to "You Got Gold" written a decade after the joy has settled in and deepened.
Similarly, the new "She Is My Everything" brims with playful toasts to the woman he adores, while "Long Monday," written with Prine's friend Keith Sykes, bemoans the fact that, after a weekend of making love and music together, it's time to go back to work. As he drives off, he's still high on love, humming, "You and me / Sittin' in the back of my memory / Like a honeybee / Buzzin' 'round a glass of sweet Chablis."
Oddly enough, Prine's best work often follows periods when he's considered retiring from making records. Bruised Orange came after he left Atlantic Records, where he made his first four albums, three of them with producer Arif Mardin. (Mardin now works with Norah Jones, who recently covered "That's the Way That the World Goes 'Round," a song from Bruised Orange.)
Prine left Atlantic in 1976 as the commercial crest of the singer-songwriter movement waned. Jerry Wexler, the famed talent scout who had brought Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin and Wilson Pickett to Atlantic, had given Prine his first record deal as well. But Wexler had left the company, and Ahmet Ertegun had recently signed Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones to lucrative deals. The record industry had evolved, focusing on hard rock, dance music, funk and the emerging punk movement. The acoustic singer-songwriters who had risen in the early '70s no longer received the airplay or the record company promotion they once had.
"Atlantic had become part of Warner Bros. and moved into Rockefeller Center," Prine told the Scene in a 1995 interview. "I remember when I first went into the old Atlantic, and it had all these gold records by these great R&B and jazz artists. It was a friendly place. It didn't seem like a big corporation. But by time Jerry left, that wasn't the case anymore."
The pop music industry was evolving from underground clubs, music halls and offbeat record stores to arenas, strong-armed promoters and chain stores. Prine no longer felt connected to it. He nearly left the business, considering becoming a fisherman, among other things. He traveled to Nashville because he'd met Cowboy Jack Clement, and he hung out at Clement's famed Cowboy Arms Recording Spa and Hotel, writing songs and recording stray tracks.
The recordings eventually were scrapped, but Prine seemed creatively renewed. He signed with David Geffen's Asylum Records, which still held out some hope for the commercial possibilities of acoustic music. He then set up shop with his old buddy Steve Goodman in a Chicago recording studio. Even though the sessions were marked with heated arguments between the two friends, the result, Bruised Orange, featured several of Prine's most enduring songs, including "Fish and Whistle," "There She Goes," "If You Don't Want My Love," "Crooked Piece of Time" and the one-of-a-kind "Sabu Visits the Twin Cities Alone."
After Bruised Orange, Prine wanted to experiment with his sound, perhaps wanting to punch it up in the way Neil Young or Joni Mitchell altered their work as times and trends changed. Proud of the rocking band he'd been touring with, he huddled in Memphis' Sun Studio with Knox and Jerry Phillips, the sons of Sun founder Sam Phillips, who also lent his wild-eyed advice to the proceedings. The album that resulted, Pink Cadillac, updated its rockabilly fervor with the raw, noisy spirit of punk.
But Asylum didn't understand the album and hardly promoted it. Frustrated again with his record company, Prine went into Muscle Shoals and created Storm Windows, another rock-combo album whose slicker sound had the strengths of albums by Tom Petty or Bob Seger. It, too, was ignored. Prine is a better rocker than he's given credit for, and his raucous version of The Carter Family's "Bear Creek Blues" on Fair & Square nicely recalls that era.
For the last time, Prine severed his ties to a major label and again considered quitting. He could earn enough money touring to keep alive, he reasoned. But Bunetta, his longtime manager, brought up the idea of starting their own label. Bunetta had successfully run a mail-order label, Red Pajamas, which marketed the music of Steve Goodman, whom he also managed. Prine agreed to give it a try, and so they founded Oh Boy Records, named for the exclamation in one Buddy Holly's most famous songs.
"I don't think I would've continued doing this if I had to jump from label to label," Prine says. "There was something missing. I'm not a control freak or anything close, but what they do and what I do is two different things. They're trying to market music the same way you sell blue jeans and cars. My music's not really made for that."
Still, he never envisioned a label that would be thriving 20 years later—and that would serve as a role model for a growing movement of artist-owned indies. "I'm completely amazed we're still here," he says, crediting Bunetta's hard work and industry expertise for keeping the label afloat despite the fact that Prine's released just six studio albums in its 21 years of existence. "I think he does it with mirrors and smoke sometimes, but thank God he has. It gives us something to talk about."
Having his own label gives Prine the freedom to operate in ways that other artists can't. He's put out two live albums and a live DVD, as well as re-recorded an album of his best-known songs (Souvenirs) and released another of cover songs of male-female duets (In Spite of Ourselves). Owning Oh Boy also encourages him to write and keep recording rather than just to rely on his income from concert touring, which is considerable.
This time around, though, between family obligations and health considerations, he had to change the manner of his writing. "I'd always just kind of wait for songs to come," he says. "They'd arrive in batches, two or three at a time. I could let it happen most any time of day. A lot of the time that would happen to be about 3 o'clock in the morning, or whatever, because I was sleeping until noon anyway."
With fatherhood, all of that changed. "When the songs weren't coming every couple months or so, I realized, 'Oh, I get it, I have to start making appointments to do this stuff,' " he says. "I have to say, 'OK, next Wednesday I'm going to write.' With the kids and the family, I have to schedule time to do other things. Otherwise, I'll just hang out with them."
Because the writing was taking longer, Prine started making demos on his own to show his songs to a potential producer. But he liked the sound of the demos, and eventually decided to record the album himself. He recruited Gary Paczosa as co-producer because he liked the sounds Paczosa got on albums by Alison Krauss and Mindy Smith.
Prine had been credited as a co-producer on Aimless Love and German Afternoons, the first two albums that he made for Oh Boy with producer Jim Rooney. This time, however, he assumed a much larger role in overseeing production than he did back then.
"I'm going to have to write a letter of apology to Jim," he says. "Apparently, he was doing the whole darn thing, and I was just tagging along for the show. Now that I've really done it, I know the difference. It's definitely the first time I've taken a hold of the reins and ridden the thing all the way down to the end of the rodeo."
Even so, Prine's new album may be the most fitting production of his career. There's a warm, natural groove to each song, and the prominence of rhythm guitar and the gentle additions of accordion and steel guitar fit perfectly with his rolling style. Fair & Square also reflects the full sound Prine creates onstage with just his acoustic guitar and the bass of Dave Jacques and electric guitar of Jason Wilbur, who've served as his touring unit for several years.
"It's just a really good sound for what I do," Prine says. "I love it musically, and it's a comfortable situation. I never get wore out by it; I'm always excited about doing the shows. When I had the rock bands, it always seemed like we had the acoustic segments and the band segments. But now it all flows together, and we don't have to jump from one kind of music to another."
So, after all he's been through, here Prine is, traveling the world playing his songs and getting ready to release another batch of new songs. "It's like I have a whole new romance going on with life," he says, shrugging as he smiles, as if he's as mystified as anyone with the way things turned out. "It's like there's a new shine on things. I'm feeling like I'm dug in pretty good."
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True Love Found, (04/27/05)
Fair And Square, John Prine's first full album of new, mostly self-penned material since Lost Dogs And Mixed Blessings [1995], kicks off with the high-energy tribute to, and celebration of, the "Glory Of True Love." Nicely picked lead guitar licks merge with the supporting accordion and mandolin, and of man's place in the universe John offers the view "You can climb the highest mountain/Touch the moon and stars above/But Old Faithful's just a fountain/Compared to the glory of true love." This zippy-paced opening cut sets the tone for the collection, the lyrics of which are liberally leavened with Prine's take on life - reflective, spiky, occasionally humorous, always realistic. Furthermore he's not averse to taking a sideswipe at injustices in his homeland, particularly on "Some Humans Ain't Human."
At the outset of "Crazy As A Loon," an observation upon the sometimes blind pursuit of fame and fortune, John paints, "Back before I was a movie star/Straight off of the farm/I had a picture of another man's wife tattooed on my arm/With a pack of Camel cigarettes in the sleeve of my t-shirt/Headin' out to Hollywood just to have my feelings hurt." Next, intent on becoming "a country star", the narrator relocates to Nashville, but it's a woman who breaks his heart in Music City. Tiring of the entertainment world and wearing a power broker's suit with dollar signs in his eyes, the narrator finally heads for New York. If there's an image that's totally on the money in terms of the price that's often paid for the pursuit of riches and adulation, it's the chorus lines that run to, "You'll be waitin' on a phone call/At the wrong end of a broom." "Crazy As A Loon" contains many bona fide Country song ingredients ... plus, it's a fun-filled cut. Fame casts an illusive spell upon the pursuer and by the close the narrator is in Canada sitting on the banks of a river his rod in hand...
Any time that Chablis has passed my lips it's always tasted dry, never sweet, yet the after the weekend reflection "Long Monday" contains the assertion "Like a honeybee buzzin' around a glass of sweet Chablis." While the latter inaccuracy may rhyme with previous line closer "memory," a couple of lines later Prine's narrator, who is sittin' in his truck with his lady, delivers the definitive "The windows rolled up/My minds rolled down." Mindy Smith shares the vocal with Prine on the cut and she also turns up on "Taking A Walk," a gently-paced commentary on the current state of the American nation, plus the slow and bluesy "Morning Train," a song that actually focuses on joyous feelings rather than the mode of transport. The other guest female vocalist, Alison Krauss, contributes to Prine's tribute to personally precious places "My Darlin' Hometown," plus "The Moon Is Down."
Over seven minutes in length, "Some Humans Ain't Human" comments upon the polarisation of the American nation and how in the process the definition of patriotism has become tarnished. It's no big surprise that the occupant of the White House is mentioned and Prine also comments upon the hypocrisy of professed faith with "You might go to church and sit down in a pew/Those humans who ain't human/Could be sitting right next to you." By the close he draws the conclusion "Jealousy and stupidity don't equal harmony." They say that distance brings perspective and latter tune was written while Prine spent a summer residing in Ireland.
Regular readers of FolkWax should be well aware of the late Blaze Foley and Prine has covered the Texan's "Clay Pigeons." As for A. P. Carter's "Bear Creek Blues," the other cover on Fair And Square, it's given a rowdy, verging on Rock 'n' Roll treatment. "She Is My Everything" is an easy-going love song written for his wife, while "I Hate It When That Happens To Me," which immediately follows, finds John deliver another amusing, skewed take on the misadventures the befall you in life. "Other Side Of Town" was written in 2001 while John was recovering from a hip replacement operation and the version here was captured "in concert." Subjectively it's a rib-tickling reflection upon a mature relationship and the (seemingly) interminable "Honey do" aspect of married life. Supported by an acoustic guitar and mandolin, the closing track, "Safety Joe," amounts to the witty portrait of a person who lives life with extreme caution.
Late last century Prine successfully battled neck cancer and part of the treatment involved a course of radiation that resulted in John's singing voice dropping an octave. His vocals on Fair And Square vary from a dark growl, the occasional croak to a, mostly, weather-beaten baritone. John's songwriting collaborators on this memorable - not before time - collection of new tunes include Keith Sykes, Pat McLaughlin, Donnie Fritts, and Roger Cook.
Arthur Wood is a founding editor at FolkWax
__________________________________________________
Fair And Square, John Prine's first full album of new, mostly self-penned material since Lost Dogs And Mixed Blessings [1995], kicks off with the high-energy tribute to, and celebration of, the "Glory Of True Love." Nicely picked lead guitar licks merge with the supporting accordion and mandolin, and of man's place in the universe John offers the view "You can climb the highest mountain/Touch the moon and stars above/But Old Faithful's just a fountain/Compared to the glory of true love." This zippy-paced opening cut sets the tone for the collection, the lyrics of which are liberally leavened with Prine's take on life - reflective, spiky, occasionally humorous, always realistic. Furthermore he's not averse to taking a sideswipe at injustices in his homeland, particularly on "Some Humans Ain't Human."
At the outset of "Crazy As A Loon," an observation upon the sometimes blind pursuit of fame and fortune, John paints, "Back before I was a movie star/Straight off of the farm/I had a picture of another man's wife tattooed on my arm/With a pack of Camel cigarettes in the sleeve of my t-shirt/Headin' out to Hollywood just to have my feelings hurt." Next, intent on becoming "a country star", the narrator relocates to Nashville, but it's a woman who breaks his heart in Music City. Tiring of the entertainment world and wearing a power broker's suit with dollar signs in his eyes, the narrator finally heads for New York. If there's an image that's totally on the money in terms of the price that's often paid for the pursuit of riches and adulation, it's the chorus lines that run to, "You'll be waitin' on a phone call/At the wrong end of a broom." "Crazy As A Loon" contains many bona fide Country song ingredients ... plus, it's a fun-filled cut. Fame casts an illusive spell upon the pursuer and by the close the narrator is in Canada sitting on the banks of a river his rod in hand...
Any time that Chablis has passed my lips it's always tasted dry, never sweet, yet the after the weekend reflection "Long Monday" contains the assertion "Like a honeybee buzzin' around a glass of sweet Chablis." While the latter inaccuracy may rhyme with previous line closer "memory," a couple of lines later Prine's narrator, who is sittin' in his truck with his lady, delivers the definitive "The windows rolled up/My minds rolled down." Mindy Smith shares the vocal with Prine on the cut and she also turns up on "Taking A Walk," a gently-paced commentary on the current state of the American nation, plus the slow and bluesy "Morning Train," a song that actually focuses on joyous feelings rather than the mode of transport. The other guest female vocalist, Alison Krauss, contributes to Prine's tribute to personally precious places "My Darlin' Hometown," plus "The Moon Is Down."
Over seven minutes in length, "Some Humans Ain't Human" comments upon the polarisation of the American nation and how in the process the definition of patriotism has become tarnished. It's no big surprise that the occupant of the White House is mentioned and Prine also comments upon the hypocrisy of professed faith with "You might go to church and sit down in a pew/Those humans who ain't human/Could be sitting right next to you." By the close he draws the conclusion "Jealousy and stupidity don't equal harmony." They say that distance brings perspective and latter tune was written while Prine spent a summer residing in Ireland.
Regular readers of FolkWax should be well aware of the late Blaze Foley and Prine has covered the Texan's "Clay Pigeons." As for A. P. Carter's "Bear Creek Blues," the other cover on Fair And Square, it's given a rowdy, verging on Rock 'n' Roll treatment. "She Is My Everything" is an easy-going love song written for his wife, while "I Hate It When That Happens To Me," which immediately follows, finds John deliver another amusing, skewed take on the misadventures the befall you in life. "Other Side Of Town" was written in 2001 while John was recovering from a hip replacement operation and the version here was captured "in concert." Subjectively it's a rib-tickling reflection upon a mature relationship and the (seemingly) interminable "Honey do" aspect of married life. Supported by an acoustic guitar and mandolin, the closing track, "Safety Joe," amounts to the witty portrait of a person who lives life with extreme caution.
Late last century Prine successfully battled neck cancer and part of the treatment involved a course of radiation that resulted in John's singing voice dropping an octave. His vocals on Fair And Square vary from a dark growl, the occasional croak to a, mostly, weather-beaten baritone. John's songwriting collaborators on this memorable - not before time - collection of new tunes include Keith Sykes, Pat McLaughlin, Donnie Fritts, and Roger Cook.
Arthur Wood is a founding editor at FolkWax
__________________________________________________