Stories from the Edge of Music #48: JOHN PRINE (Part 2)
For the second part of this tribute to one of the great songwriters of our time, here are some personal tales about John Prine.
THIS POSTMAN ALWAYS DELIVERED
John Prine’s backstory is well known. Learns guitar from his brother, works as a postman in a Chicago suburb, spends time in the army in Germany, writes songs in his head while he’s back home delivering mail, gets discovered by Kris Kristofferson, a major label signs him overnight, and releases his self-titled debut album in 1971.
He sang some of the songs from that record for the rest of his life: “Sam Stone,” “Angel from Montgomery,” “Hello in There,” “Paradise.”
Toronto (then officially the fourth-largest city in North America) was always a welcoming place, where he felt at home. He played three or four week-long gigs at the Riverboat, the best known folk club in town, and Jane Harbury remembers him well.
Jane managed the ’Boat for owner Bernie Fiedler, and remained friends with John long after he had “graduated” to concerts on the University of Toronto’s Convocation Hall (and later the Ontario Place Forum and Massey Hall).
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“Where’s my Kentucky Fried Chicken?”
I remember a 1982 concert, a double bill with Steve Goodman, when John looked askance at the wide range of healthy and wholesome food prepared for the artists and the stage crew.
“Where’s my Kentucky Fried Chicken,” he grumbled.
Jane remembers walking John around the campus while Steve was on stage. “He’d had a bit too much to drink, and he brought his beer with him. He offered me a sip, and I discovered that it wasn’t beer, but neat vodka. He was still a bit drunk when he hit the stage, but he carried the show off perfectly.
“Afterwards, we all went to see Maria Muldaur, who was playing at a nearby club, and after that she came back with us to the hotel where John was staying with Steve. They urged her to have a drink, but she was in her ‘born-again Jesus phase’ and wouldn’t.”
Eventually, Jane adds, Maria did have a shot or two, and left later not knowing where she was. “I have to find my band,” she said, obviously a little tipsy.
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A star at Canadian folk festivals
The Winnipeg Folk Festival is held in a provincial park some 35 miles north of the city, and last year drew 70,000 people over the four-day event. It’s probably the largest folk event in the country, rivalled only by the Edmonton Folk Music Festival.
John Prine played both festivals — and several others in Canada, including Mariposa, which is now held north of Toronto. At every one of them, he won over massive audiences with his songs, his rough-and-ready voice, and his self-deprecating humour.
In Edmonton, in 1991, he hit stage in bright sunlight. “I wanna apologize for my voice,” he said. “It doesn’t come out ’til after dark.”
By the end of his hour-long set it was dark, and many of the 15,000 people on the hill in front of the stage lit candles to flicker in the breeze.
John laughed at the sight, said a heartfelt thank you — and you knew he meant it. Then he literally danced offstage.
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Two great songwriters at work in a party room
For the hundreds of volunteers and people with backstage passes, the highlights at the Winnipeg festival are the Saturday and Sunday night parties, held in the hotel’s huge ballroom. Volunteers, artists, festival staff and visitors dance and drink, discretely smoke a joint or two, and mingle with each other.
In 1991, the Saturday party starts late, since almost everybody is still at the festival site. However, John Prine and Guy Clark are playing two brand new songs to each other in an almost empty room. The songs are not quite finished and certainly not ready to be recorded. Clark’s song is called “Rambling Jack and Mahan” and describes a party at the Driskill Hotel in Austin with the veteran singer and the champion rodeo rider. Prine is trying out “Jesus, the Missing Years,” a fanciful exploration of what Christ might have done between his birth and the events leading to his death 30 years later.
The songwriters exchanged ideas, guitar parts, and made minor alterations to the lyrics. Jesus, apparently, “discovered the Beatles and recorded with the Stones / And once he opened up a three-way package for old George Jones.”
Guy’s song has one of the best song lines ever: “Rambling Jack crawled out from behind the couch and said ‘the lines on my face are from sorting out the wrinkles of my life.’”
And this observer sat at the table with them, and for once kept his big mouth shut as he watched two master songwriters and friends adjusting two miraculous songs.
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Prine sings a Steve Goodman song at a tribute event held in Chicago to honour his friend
This is one of the very few songs John wrote with Steve Goodman. It’s something of an earworm — play it more than twice and you’ll never forget it.
At the beginning of this performance, he tells something of the way the song was created. What he doesn’t say is that he thought the song was so corny that he refused to be listed as a co-writer, and gave 100 percent of the credit to his friend.
That decision probably cost him a lot of money — the song became a bestselling #1 country hit for an artist called David Allan Coe.
I can't confirm this but there’s a story that when the song hit the #1 spot, John sent Steve a brand new jukebox, loaded with dozens of 45rpm discs — every one of them a copy of the smash hit single.
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A tale of two tweets
Back before the richest man in the world purchased (and retitled and ruined) Twitter I was a regular participant.
One day, I wrote “My friend Maria Cockburn just told me she’s brought two tickets so we can go see Dolly Parton. Fair enough, and kind of her, but I’m taking her to Vancouver Island to see John Prine.”
There was near-instant response: “Good idea, Flohil — John Prine.”
And we did go to the Vancouver Island Folk Festival, and after John’s performance spent half an hour in his trailer while he ate spaghetti, talked about his past gigs in Canada, and introduced us to his wife Fiona and his bandmates.
That was in 2018, and it was the last time we spoke. He died from COVID in April 2020, one year before the life-saving vaccine became generally available.
Like everyone who ever knew John Prine, saw him, or heard his records, I will always miss him.
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COMING NEXT TIME, SUNSHINE
Next time, some more silly stories from the years I attended MIDEM, the biggest music industry conference, with some 10,000 delegates.
The annual event took place in Cannes, a ridiculously expensive resort town in the south of France. I will always be grateful to CAPAC, one of the two performing-rights organizations in Canada at the time, for allowing me to represent for so many years in the ’70s and ’80s.
As we live with the snow-and-slush of the last weeks of January in Canada, I recall the sunshine, and wish I could time-travel back into the warmth and the sound of the waves lapping against La Croisette, the scenic street that parallels the Mediterranean.
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Loved it!!!
Perfect.
Every word.
“If heartache were commercials, we’d all be on TV...”
- John Prine
Brilliant! I remember the described very well.