Somewhere in a crawl space in Vermont is a journal that I kept in 2000/2001 when I lived in Galway, Ireland. I didn’t write regularly, so the entries are mostly the highlights of the year—experiences I’d want my grandkids to know about. One such highlight was the night I was invited a defunct pub a few doors down from my Prospect Hill apartment to hang out with a small group of people that included John Prine. As Prine posthumously and rightfully picked up what were probably the last of his Grammy wins last night, I reflected as I have so many times before on how incredibly grateful I am to have once been in the intimate presence of a national and international treasure, cherished by millions and matched by no one.
As the brakes were slamming down on us all last spring, John Prine people will vividly remember his COVID-related death as one of the first major blows of a year that never stopped blowing. April 7th turned out to also be the day dozens of colleagues and I were suddenly laid off. While everything was not so cool that day or in the days, months, and year to come, there was a shared consolation—a kind of faith—in the knowing of Prine’s gifts. The flood of tributes and remembrances shared by so many other gifted artists since his passing have cumulatively transfigured Prine’s body of work into a soul salve this year. Wrung from the squeeze tube of our shared experience, the heartfelt, same-but-different cover versions remind us that we’re all what we were and what we will be before and after COVID and before and after Prine. It’s a squeeze tube beyond depletion or denying or understanding. Life’s gonna keep coming. For some of us, it’s gonna continue to be soothed by John Prine’s outlook, humor, and unique appreciation for it all.
I came to know Prine’s music in college, when I hosted a college radio show at WRUVfm and had the station’s magical collection of folk vinyl at my disposal. Specifically, my entry point was Sweet Revenge (1973), then his self-titled debut (1971), and then (and since then) everything else. What the radio station might have been missing in college, I gained access to a few years later when I worked at a busy, touristy record shop in Galway. In the auspices of ensuring its employees were current and knowledgeable about the music they sold, the store had a policy of allowing its clerks to take unwrapped CDs home for listening (where a CD might occasionally be fed to a clerk’s portable minidisc recorder for indefinite appreciation). It was interesting to me that despite a modest selection of other better-known artists, Zhivago kept a nearly-complete Prine discography. Before long there, I came to understand why.
At Zhivago, I worked at the counter along side a wise craic’er named Donal. As Prine CDs would pass from customer to scanner to bags, I would hear him say things like “I know this guy” or “that’s my man” or [Irish equivalent here]. He was always putting me on, taking the piss as they say, so I didn’t take the banter seriously until one day, he mentioned Prine presenting a cake at his mom’s birthday party. By this point, I had figured out that Prine was popular in Galway because he was married to an Irish woman. They kept a residence in nearby Kinvara and Prine had been a part of the vibrant music community there for years. Donal hadn’t realized I was such an admirer and he assured me there’d be other occasions soon to have us an introduction.
Sure enough, only weeks later, Donal invited me to his father’s birthday party at the closed-to-the-public bar his family once kept. He told me to come by around 10pm and that Prine and others would probably be by around 11. The musicians didn’t roll in until after midnight, presumably arriving from a prior session. Several were recognizable as players from Sharon Shanon’s popular Diamond Mountain Sessions recording from that year. As friends milled about and said hellos, I had the opportunity to introduce myself to Prine, who unsurprisingly gave me an “oh, I remember you” vibe as we got into talking about his health and what he loved about New Jersey. Mostly the Sopranos. The musicians slowly morphed into their circle in front of a locally-famous fireplace, said to be one of Galway’s oldest.
What happened in front of the fireplace next had certainly happened there hundreds or even thousands of times before over many generations. For me though, those single hours of sounds and words were an experience of a lifetime. It was by no means a John Prine show. In fact, as the songs and stories made their rounds, I don’t recall Prine stepping out to contribute more than the Speed of the Sound of Loneliness and his “hit” from Galway that year, Love Love Love.
Ironically, the session was one of a few special audio moments that I didn’t record that year, which could be baffling for a moment until the intimacy of such a scene is considered. I slept awake, wired, for only a few hours before I had to be back to the record shop for a morning shift, where I would fill people’s bags with only a dash of the essence of the experience I was blessed to have been a whole part of the night before. While I am grateful to have had many rich musical experiences, no memory is as precious as the night of Prine and company.
There’s a video on YouTube of a singer-songwriter named Kasey Musgraves singing her song “Burn One with John Prine”, the chorus of which says “My idea of heaven is to burn one with John Prine”. It’s a perfectly crafted song and sweet homage to Prine’s musical style and turn of phrase, but what induces goose-bumps (I’m over the eye-watering) even after dozens of views is that in this version, Kacey is sharing the stage with Prine, singing her song about him to him, with only him. In another kind of tribute video, Musgraves had this to say about Prine:
I have some memories that I’ll absolutely never forget. I am so thankful that I even just got to be on this planet at the same time as John and I think he’s left us so many wonderful treasures and stories and songs. Such a legacy.
Indeed.