Tag Archives: John Prine

Random Reflections

Reflecting on: John Prine’s Self-Titled Debut

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Yes, many of you know that John Prine, one of the most beloved songwriters of our time, is currently on his ninth day in the ICU, critically ill and being treated for COVID-19. It is true that like so many, during the past week, I have been compelled to offer my love and support to him by playing his music, and that has sent me on a journey through his entire discography, to rediscover old gems and find new ones yet unexplored. But it’s more than that which keeps me replaying Prine records these days; there’s a hope in his songs that brings an unparalleled comfort and which has helped me greatly through this uncertain period. John Prine gives us reasons to smile when we have so few, and so with that in mind, this post goes out to my dear friend Ché Martin and all the others like us who find their smiles in a John Prine song.

Release Date: 1971

Style: folk

People Who Might Like This Album: fans of Jason Isbell, fans of Bob Dylan, fans of Ian Noe, those who value songwriting and clever turns of phrase

Standout Tracks: “Illegal Smile,” “Spanish Pipedream,” “Angel From Montgomery,” “Far From Me,” “Hello in There”

Reflections: It’s a good time to be listening to and writing about new music. Certainly, despite the number of albums being pushed back lately, there have been quite a few notable releases, especially in the past two weeks. Most of us are stuck at home with nowhere to go and no sports to watch and nothing to look forward to, and new music is one of the few remaining bright spots in our lives. AS a reviewer, I’ve got plenty of time on my hands to explore all of it, and yet, the general uncertainty and hopelessness of this strange time in history is often counterproductive; it’s difficult to empty an anxious mind to focus on a piece of art well enough to think critically about that art and lose myself in the analysis. A reflection is an easier task right now because we designed these to be personal accounts of our own musical experience rather than the broader evaluation necessary in a review. This isn’t to say there aren’t some new albums that have captured my attention as a writer and as a music fan, but it’s older, familiar songs that I find myself gravitating toward of late, beacons of certainty in a world where things are changing by the minute. And over and over, especially in the past week since we have learned of his diagnosis, I have found strength and comfort in the music of John Prine. I may do more of these reflections as I wander through his albums, but for now, I’ll start at the beginning with his debut.

It was “Angel from Montgomery” which first drew me to Prine’s music years ago and which remains one of my favorite songs of all time. As a disclaimer, I will say that I actually prefer Bonnie Raitt’s version, as she took this excellent showcase of songwriting and then made it into a soulful vocal masterpiece. But this song made me fall in love with John Prine because of his ability to capture this character, her desperation and regret as she looks back on her life as an old woman. He’s almost painfully perceptive, seeing into the hearts and minds of all of us so thoroughly that there’s peace in the sorrow because it’s so obvious that he understands. WE see that perception here in “Hello in There,” as he explains that “old people just grow lonesome” and allows us all a glimpse into the hearts of so many elderly people who just feel forgotten and ignored by the world. He makes us hurt for the veterans who come home wounded, broken, and forever changed in “Sam Stone,” and gives us insight into the hearts of the Appalachian people whose land has been ravaged by coal mining in the song “Paradise.” It seems that John Prine has a heart for all the disenfranchised, forgotten souls in this world, and there’s something especially comforting about that in a time like this when we’re all hurting together.

And yet somehow, Prine still manages to make us smile with his whimsical lyrics and clever turns of phrase. There is no other songwriter quite like him and may never be after. It’s the poetry of Bob Dylan and the relatability of Merle Haggard with a dose of the magic of Dr. Seuss sprinkled in for good measure. He says in the opener, “Illegal Smile,” when describing his lonely, boring morning, ” a bowl of oatmeal tried to stare me down and won, and it was 12:00 before I realized I was having no fun.” And yes, in case you were wondering, his illegal smile that allows him to go on is indeed marijuana, so there’s that. There’s also some cheeky wisdom in “Spanish Pipedream,” as he advises us all to “blow up your TV, throw away your paper, go to the country, build you a home. Plant a little garden, eat a lot of peaches, try and find Jesus on your own.” Blowing up the TV and throwing away the paper sounds like excellent advice right now, and it’s lyrics like these that put a smile on your face despite everything else. And if you had any doubt about the DR. Seuss part of my analysis, try and unravel this verse from “Quiet Man: “Last Monday night I saw a fight between Wednesday and Thursday over Saturday night. Tuesday asked me what was going on, I said Sunday’s in the meadow, and Friday’s in the corn.”

I’d encourage any of you anytime to check out the music of John Prine, but now is an especially perfect opportunity. He can empathize with the struggle and provide a moment of levity in almost the same breath, and we need both more than ever these days. If you’re new to Prine, send him your love and support by playing his records, and I promise that you’ll find love and support of your own coming from his timeless words.

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Playlists

My Top Thirteen Songs of 2018 so Far

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Editor’s Note: These are not ranked in any particular order, and all songs have been reviewed or featured in some way, whether in Memorable songs or on one of our playlists, by Country Exclusive. Please respect this list for what it is–one person’s opinion, and an outlet for sharing good music. That said, feel free and encouraged to share your favorite songs of the year so far in the comments below!
And don’t ask why I picked thirteen, some things should remain a mystery.

Anderson East: “Cabinet Door”

From Encore, featured on our January playlist

This was the first song to blow me away in 2018, and yes, hopefully I will review this album at some point. This is the tale of a man whose wife of fifty-two years has passed away; he’s left lost and alone trying to pick up the pieces, and he’s talking to her about everything he misses, and everything that hasn’t been right since she’s been gone. It’s just an incredible song of love and loss, and it’s impossible not to feel something when you hear it.

Caitlyn Smith: “This Town is Killing Me”

From Starfire

What an honest, bittersweet, heartbreaking story of an artist’s struggles in Nashville, the things they’ll give up and go through in order to chase that dream, and the reasons it’s worth it. Caitlyn Smith is a world-class vocalist, and she’s known for belting and displaying her incredible range, but it’s a song like this, where her emotions are laid bare before us, that really sets her apart and makes her special. An artist with this much talent shouldn’t be struggling for a second in Music City, but it’s the hardship that led to this poignant, beautiful song.

Mike & the Moonpies: “Steak Night at the Prairie Rose”

From Steak Night at the Prairie Rose

Maybe it’s the relationship I have with my dad, or maybe it’s the stories of chasing his dreams of music, or perhaps it’s just a damn good song, but I think “Steak Night at the Prairie Rose” has been really underrated as a song in 2018. Just a simple tribute to his father and to music that should just be heard. Also, love that organ.

Wade Bowen: “Day of the Dead”

From Solid Ground

An underrated song from an underrated album. Putting some really cool Mexican influence in his Texas country, Wade sings of a man who’s run off to Mexico during the Day of the dead on his ex’s wedding day. It uses some interesting metaphors for the death of their love, and it’s one where the melody, instrumentation, and lyrics all work together to create a really great piece of music.

Courtney Patton: “Round Mountain”

From What it’s Like to Fly Alone

As I said recently on Twitter, here’s a song that blows me away every time I hear it. A beautifully crafted narrative of a woman who married young and felt trapped by her life and family–she made mistakes and eventually abandoned them, and the beauty here is that she’s neither apologetic for her actions nor unaware of what she’s done and the people she’s hurt. Also, there’s an overdose of lovely fiddle.

Courtney Marie Andrews: “Took You Up”

From May Your Kindness Remain

An incredibly moving love song that reminds us the best things in life are free. What a world it would be if we could all learn to embrace life like the lovers in this song. Also, Courtney Marie Andrews absolutely sings the hell out of this.

Red Shahan: “Waterbill”

From Culberson County

And for those of you who don’t think fun songs can be on these lists, I present Red Shahan’s “Waterbill,” the best album opener of the year so far and an absolutely fun, infectious tune that’s been one of my most played in 2018. It’s also got one of the best lyrics this year with: “you ain’t livin’ unless you’re livin’ life broke.” It’s impossible not to smile when you hear this song.

Sarah Shook & the Disarmers: “New Ways to Fail”

From Years

Another fun tune, and probably the most honest, relatable song you’ll hear for a long while. I can’t say anything else about this, I can just assure you that you’ve felt like this at some point in your life, and that relatability is what makes a great country song.

John Prine: “Lonesome Friends of Science”

From The Tree of Forgiveness

John Prine is a songwriter like no other, and we’re blessed to still be getting great, thoughtful songs from him at this stage of his life. He can create empathy for anyone or anything, even “poor planet Pluto,” who was demoted and uninvited by the other planets, as he explains in this song. And what a great way to live, thinking it doesn’t matter if the whole world ends today because this place is not really your home.

Ashley Monroe: “Orphan”

From Sparrow

Overall, I did not care for the overly polished sounds on Ashley Monroe’s latest effort, but this autobiographical sketch of an orphan is beautiful, and it’s made even better by the lovely strings supporting it. This is a story only Ashley Monroe can deliver, and it might be the best song of her career thus far.

Old Crow Medicine Show: “Look Away”

From Volunteer

In a world where Southern culture is being forsaken and eradicated at an alarming rate, “Look Away” uses lines from “Dixie” and embraces everything that is good and cherished about the South. This is a five-minute case for why Southerners still have things to be proud of, and why so many people embrace this land and its rich heritage.

American Aquarium: “One Day at a Time”

From Things Change

The best songs come from a place of honesty, the ability to release a part of your soul out into your music. BJ Barham gives us that in “One Day at a Time,” detailing his journey getting sober. And “you see the man left holding the pen controls how every story ends, and truth becomes a martyr for the sake of the song”–that line is just brilliant.

Jason Boland & the Stragglers: “Hard Times are Relative”

From Hard Times are Relative

The first time I heard this, I declared it the best song of the year so far. I don’t know how that will hold up, but this is an excellently crafted story song and a reminder to us that when we think our lives are tough, these people in times past had it far worse.

Honorable Mentions

  • Blackberry Smoke: “I’ve Got This Song”
  • Brent Cobb: “Come Home Soon”
  • Ashley McBryde: “Livin’ Next to Leroy”
  • Courtney Marie Andrews: “Border”
  • Kayla Ray: “Rockport”
  • Brandi Carlile: “The Mother”
  • Dierks Bentley ft. Brandi Carlile: “Travelin’ Light”
Playlists

April Playlist on Spotify and Apple Music

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April has by far been the busiest month in terms of releases that this site has seen since it began–well, March 30th really began it all with one of the best release days in this site’s history, and then nothing has slowed down since. It’s no surprise that April was also by far our most viewed month ever, and if you’ve first found us in April, I thank you. If you couldn’t keep up with releases, I don’t blame you, and this list is for you. Whereas past months have seen me wondering if we’d have enough good music to fill the playlist, this was the first time I’ve actually cut songs from one because so much good music came out. We’ve got Southern rock from Blackberry Smoke, classic country from Joshua Hedley, Willie Nelson and John Prine proving age is irrelevant when making good music, and some solid mainstream cuts from Jason Aldean and Brothers Osborne. Three of my favorite songs of the year so far are on this list in “Look Away” from Old Crow Medicine Show, “Orphan” from Ashley Monroe, and “New Ways to Fail” from Sarah Shook & the Disarmers. What a great time to be alive and be a music fan! As always, and probably more so currently, thank you to Zack for supplying this to the Spotify people.

Apple Music users, you can follow me there via the user name @countryexclusive for this and all our playlists, as well as updates to Saving Country Music’s top 25. For April’s,
Click here

Spotify users, click below.

Reviews

Album Review: Willie Nelson–Last Man Standing

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Rating: 9/10

Eat your heart out, every Americana artist ever who has either bored me to death or failed to consistently sing on pitch for an entire performance because Willie Nelson, at the age of eighty-four, has just owned all of you. I’d like to hand deliver this record to all of you who, in your twenties and thirties, have half the vocal prowess and not an ounce of the charisma, with that simple message: “Owned.” As he says in a song from his last album, he “woke up still not dead again today,” so he apparently decided to bless us with another great record and embarrass a sizable chunk of the makers of independent music in the process.

As for that album, God’s Problem Child was a good record, and I stand behind my thoughts about it, but one listen to the opener and title track of this new one inherently and immediately makes me enjoy that album less. That album reflected heavily on the end of life, and the songs were well-written, but it didn’t really have too much staying power or relatibility for me. This one deals with many of the same subjects, but more often than not, they’re approached in a lighthearted, charismatic way. The aforementioned “Still Not dead” was a rare moment of levity on God’s Problem Child, but this record is mostly lively. The title track muses, “I don’t want to be the last man standing, oh wait a minute, maybe I do” and advises people to go ahead and leave “if you’re in such a hurry” because heaven and hell are both waiting. Heaven and hell appear again on “Heaven is Closed” as he remarks that “heaven is closed and hell’s overcrowded,” so he’ll just stay here on earth. He says he can hear someone calling him to come in from this world, which he calls “the craziness,” but still he remains here.

That craziness is the center of one of the albums’ best songs, “Me and You.” This deals with the current divisiveness of our world, and the genius in the writing here is that he says “it’s just me and you” against everyone, and then we find that he’s talking to himself. Another cool part is that he doesn’t take a specific political or social stance, so people on both sides of the divide can surely relate to this, to feeling like everyone else besides them has gone crazy, or that, as Nelson sings about a friend with whom he can no longer have discussions, “he ain’t got a lick of sense.” This is how to write a political song–this doesn’t divide or cause half an audience to hate it, it becomes something people from all backgrounds and political affiliations can get behind. Another moment of slightly less obvious political and social commentary comes in “Don’t tell Noah,” and again, this message could strike a chord with both sides, as he’s basically telling us all not to take positions on things about which we know nothing–“don’t tell Noah about the flood, don’t tell Jesus about the blood.” This one features some upbeat piano and harmonica which really add to its infectiousness.

This is just so much more fun and charismatic than Willie’s last album, and like I say, inasmuch as I don’t want to take away from that record, this inadvertently does just that by showing Willie Nelson in a more relatable light. Willie’s at his best when he’s doing these upbeat tunes like “Don’t Tell Noah” or the Western swing-influenced “Ready to roar.” I’ve already mentioned the piano and the harmonica, both integral parts of this record, but the great guitar licks sprinkled throughout this also add a lot of flavor to it. This swing/jazz-influenced country style suits Nelson more than the restrained, adult contemporary ballads which characterized his last album. Not only that, it makes the ballads, like “Something You Get Through,” stand out more, whereas they ran together some on God’s Problem Child.

And it’s worth noting that wile we have all these artists–like Joshua Hedley most recently, but he’s not the only one–trying so hard to be vintage and throwback that they’ve even adapted their songwriting to make it feel retro, here we have Willie Nelson using modern phrases like “it’s getting hard to watch my pals check out” in the title track, and owning an iPhone in “I Ain’t Got Nothin’.” The sentiments in Nelson’s songs remain timeless, and this slight modernization only adds an accessibility to his lyrics. I’m not saying doing this is vital, and indeed, some songs sound dated when they’re modernized too much, but the point is, not everything has to be retro to make it “authentic,” and often, the concentrated effort to make something so actually renders it the opposite, leaving the writing sometimes feeling unnatural. You’d be an absolute idiot to call Willie nelson anything other than authentic. I wonder what the throwback types think about the fact that Nelson and his songwriting partner and producer, Buddy Cannon, wrote most of this album by text…but I digress.

This is a great record on so many fronts. Willie Nelson still sounds good vocally, and his charisma is just ridiculous. I wrote that God’s Problem Child was a good record, but not probably an album that would make new Willie Nelson fans; this one undoubtedly has that potential, with its relatable songwriting and vibrant personality. Much like John Prine’s latest album, it paints the end of life in a humorous light and somewhat alleviates the fear of death. And like Prine, Nelson proves that artist can still have something meaningful, worthwhile, and yes, even relatable and entertaining to say no matter their age. This record will have staying power, and it will be in the conversation when December comes around.

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Reviews

Album Review: John Prine–The Tree of Forgiveness

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Rating: 7/10

How can I actually find a way to properly introduce the great John Prine. If background info seemed superfluous with Willie Nelson, it seems almost ridiculous with John Prine, as that name should be an introduction in and of itself, carrying the legend of the incredible songwriting that has marked his career. Indeed, he wrote one of my favorite songs in “Angel From Montgomery,” and I am nothing but glad to see that with this resurgence of his popularity at this point in his life, new generations are coming around to the fact that Prine is a songwriting genius.

John Prine was never an especially remarkable singer, and time and especially cancer can be cruel to a voice, but that’s not why anyone ever listened to Prine in the first place. If it was a great voice you were looking for, it’s your loss because it’s wisdom and passion which outlast even time and circumstance, and Prine displays both in his songwriting. Anyone looking to become better at this craft should study this album and the music of John Prine, for the man is a world-class wordsmith, and no one can pen songs quite like him.

It’s not just his choice of words or the unique way he can empathize with the world, either. It’s the way he can make death seem like a party in “When I Get to Heaven”–in fact, the very name of this album comes from the name of a nightclub he plans to open in the afterlife. He speaks of starting a band and smoking cigarettes that are nine miles long and makes it all seem like an adventure, all but eliminating the fear of death with this picture of it. He can make us all feel at once sympathetic with the forgotten, lonesome narrator of “Knockin’ on Your Screen Door” and guilty for not helping the less fortunate. With the pictures he paints, he lets us know it’s our business to be more compassionate to people, to understand their circumstances and put ourselves in their place. It’s not preachy because John Prine is not a preacher–he’s a storyteller, and this is a story of the downtrodden that needs to be told. He can even humanize “poor planet Pluto,” as he does in the album highlight, “Lonesome Friends of Science,” the once majestic planet which has now been demoted.

It’s also in that song that he speaks of actually “living” in a place deep inside his mind while collecting his mail in Tennessee. It’s an interesting perspective and one that is common among songwriters and other creative souls, as they interpret the world with deeper emotion and unique insight, feeling things from deep within and letting their imaginations run free. It’s certainly from a place like that where songs like “Egg & Daughter Nite, Lincoln Nebraska, 1967, (crazy Bone)” originate; yes, that’s a real title here on this album, and yes, the song is about as strange as that title would imply. But it’s a cheerful reminder for us all to stay weird if nothing else.

Dave Cobb was, for the most part, a good producer for this because he knows how to get out of the way of an artist and let their lyrics be the focal point. This is pretty minimalist in its approach, and usually, that serves Prine well. There’s some upbeat, cheerful acoustic guitar in “Knockin’ on Your Screen door” which helps to give that track some life, and some lively drums and more energetic production to help the humorous “Crazy Bone.” The piano adds to “Lonesome Friends of Science” as well, creating a nice interlude in the middle of that track. There are some collaborators, most notably Jason Isbell, Amanda Shires, and Brandi Carlile, and they do their part to enhance, rather than take away from, the lyrics. Prine and his words are always the main focus.

Still, it does feel like sometimes John Prine is left too exposed by the production. “Summer’s End,” for example, could have done with a bit more, especially at the beginning, as it sounds sort of unfinished. “NO Ordinary Blue” could have benefited from some collaboration to support the vocals as well, and “Caravan of Fools” just feels like it needed something else, maybe some strings or piano to add to it. There are some strings which come in at the very end, but they would have served the song better if they’d come in earlier. It’s an odd thing to say because a record usually suffers from the opposite when it comes to production issues, but this one is underproduced in places.

As for John Prine himself, this album proves why he’s become so popular again later in his life, why people are once again taking notice of his songs and his career. It’s because he is a songwriter like no other, and people recognize that wisdom and talent when they hear it. They admire his compassion and love the weirdness and wit which separates him from many of his contemporaries. On a side note, this record is also a great case for the fact that artists don’t magically stop having something relevant or profound to say when they’ve reached a certain age or point in their careers–it’s a lesson Americana knows well but which country needs to learn. Aspiring songwriters and fans of good music, acquaint yourself with Jon Prine. This is just another good place to begin.

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