By Bruce Rits Gilbert
A Review by Dwight A. Moody
Just as I stumbled upon John Prine on June 12, 2020 (through a Facebook post by my Birmingham friend Todd Heifner), I stumbled upon this book about Prine while searching for material on Amazon. On that first order, I was shipped three CDs and two books, including this one, chosen largely at random. Or, as we say in the religion business, providentially.
Gilbert is a lawyer in Philadelphia, and his relationship with Prine is the very opposite of mine. He hitched his musical wagon long before Prine became a star, while I had never heard of John Prine until last June. So, my journey with John is just one year old, now made richer, deeper, wider as a result of this one-of-a-kind book.
“One song at a time” is the last line of the book which I read mere hours after reading the first line, “I’m old enough to have hopped on the John Prine bandwagon right from the very start.” I could not put it down. It was all new to me, not being a fan of country music and thus not knowing so much of what Gilbert writes: of composers and covers, of triumphs and tragedies, of names and places, of the instruments and musicians that create the sounds of each one of these songs.
And these songs are, one by one, the songs that Prine recorded and published. I knew perhaps half of them by name, and less than a quarter by sound. I was surprised at how many of the songs Prine released were, as they say in their business, covers; many were songs I liked and presumed Prine had written (like most of those on the 1999 album “In Spite of Ourselves”). But even this bit of news helped explain my unspoken awareness that they were different than most of the songs Prine himself wrote (often with others) and thus why they lacked those original, random, humorous, and irreverent lyrics that so appeal to me.
Two secondary things about the book stuck with me especially. Being a Kentucky native and long time Kentucky resident, I appreciated the attention given to the Bluegrass state: Prine’s ties to Muhlenberg County, Kentucky, (and the same for the Everly Brothers), the “Death of Floyd Collins” in 1925 in Crystal Cave (of the Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky), and Prine’s recording of the wonderful and troublesome “My Old Kentucky Home”.
Being a gospel preacher, I was attentive to the occasional way Gilbert tried to understand the religious imagery of John Prine songs. Twelve times, the index records, the name “Jesus” appears in the book, mostly in song titles like “Jesus, the Missing Years” or song lyrics from “Everybody,” “Spanish Pipedream” and “Sam Stone.”
But twice Gilbert expressed his own puzzlement about the matter. In reference to the “Pipedream” song, he writes: “This is the first of many John Prine songs that mention Jesus. I’m not sure if John was a ‘believer,’ but I do believe that John found Jesus to be a compelling figure to write and sing about through his career” (11). Then in reference to “The Missing Years” he observes: “At least in his music, John Prine’s relationship with Jesus always seemed complicated. And this song doesn’t do much to clear that up….” after which he quotes columnist Danny Duncan Collum who, in turn, references Flannery O’Connor and her famous phrase, “Christ-haunted” artist (137.
This interests me greatly, and even before reading this book I had embarked upon a journey to discover the roots of Prine’s religion and explore the many ways it blossomed in his music. Maybe others have done this already; if so, the wonderful bibliography appendixed to this manuscript will help. I will soon know.
This much I know already: I will return to this book again and again for the details of Prine’s music and for hints of where I might go deeper into the things that are calling me.
Thank you, Bruce Rits Gilbert: for this book; for accepting my Friend request on Facebook; and for being a convert to the grit and glory of John Prine long before I heard the good news. Neither of us ever met John Prine; but I hope one day you and I can meet to talk, like friends, about our common delight in the life and music of the late, great John Prine!
See also Dr. Moody’s commentaries on John Prine:
John Prine: Redeeming the Year
(June 1, 2021)
