I had never heard of John Prine until three months after he died. But since then, I have made up for lost time! I have listened to most, but not all, of his published music and also watched many of the YouTube videos, some professional, some not. Two of the better recorded concerts, both in the fall of 2018, are the October concert in the Moody Theater of Austin TX and the December concert in the House of Strombo in Toronto. That being said, here are ten of my favorite John Prine songs. They represent the best of Mr. Prine for various reasons, which I have tried to articulate below.
Paradise
John often ended his concerts with this song he wrote for his dad and about his parent’s hometown, Paradise KY. Now, just as often tribute concerts also conclude with this song. For that reason, I begin with it. I like it because it is about Kentucky, mentions the Green River (where my dad was baptized a decade before John was born), voices his social conscience about surface coal mining, and includes this wonderful final stanza about one of his favorite subjects, heaven:
When I die let my ashes float down the Green River
Let my soul roll on up to the Rochester dam.
I’ll be halfway to Heaven with paradise waitin’
Just five miles away from wherever I am.
Sam Stone
One of his very first songs is no doubt one of his best and most famous. It also is a sad commentary on the fallout of the Vietnam war, about a soldier addicted to drugs. It contains what may be the most powerful line he ever wrote, “There’s a hole in daddy’s arm where all the money goes.” The song concludes with this haunting verse:
But life had lost its fun
There was nothing to be done
But trade his house that he bought on the G.I. bill
For a flag-draped casket on a local hero’s hill.
Everybody
This song does not find its way into many concerts, neither those of John Prine himself nor of his admirers. But, as a minister, I appreciate it. It begins with the clever line, “While out sailing on the ocean, while out sailing on the sea, bumped into the Saviour. He said, “Pardon me.” The song describes a lengthy conversation he had with Jesus: “Now we sat there for an hour or two just a-eatin’ that Gospel pie.” I used that phrase for a paper I wrote on the religious rhetoric in John Prine’s songs. But the best part of the song is the chorus, which describes Jesus more than himself as needing somebody to talk to:
You see, everybody needs somebody that they can talk to,
Someone to open up their ears and let that trouble through.
Spanish Pipedream
The religious language continues with this humorous ballad of a soldier falling for a topless waitress and agreeing to live with her according to her conditions. It contains one of the most humorous lines: “For I knew that topless lady had something up her sleeve.”
But the real humor comes with the chorus, sung three times, containing the invitation of the waitress to the soldier:
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 an’ find Jesus on your own.
The song ends with the confession that he did just that, with her and fathered a bunch of children. The kids ate a lot of peaches and found Jesus on their own … all of them!
Donald and Lydia
This is one of the many sad songs in the John Prine repertoire. It is about a single woman working in a penny arcade and a single soldier living in an army barracks. They each are dreaming of love, and both are oblivious of the other, I think. But the third stanza provides this creative twist to this love story:
Hot love, cold love, no love at all
A portrait of guilt is hung on the wall.
Nothing is wrong, nothing is right
Donald and Lydia made love that night.
They made love in the mountains, they made love in the streams.
They made love in the valleys, they made love in their dreams.
But when they were finished, there was nothing to say
‘Cause mostly they made love from ten miles away.
You Got Gold
But here is the first of two love songs that have John Prine at his best. The next one is about his wife Fiona, he explains, and this one may have been as well. It certainly is appropriate for any and every lover, including me. It contains a line that speaks powerfully to me as an artist: “It gives me an ocean of mixed-up emotion. I’ll have to work it out in a song.” I feel this way often but instead of a song, I work it out in a sermon or an essay.
The song concludes with this affirmation that every person can say to somebody they treasure, regardless of legal or blood relation:
‘Cause you got gold, gold inside of you.
You got gold, gold inside of you
Well, I got some gold inside me, too.
Boundless Love
With only minor changes here and there, this tender song could easily be a hymn of thanksgiving to God. John Prine confesses at one concert that it describes Fiona’s impact on him when she moved to the US from Ireland, transforming his life at a vulnerable time. It is also the perfect hymn for the sinner humbling before his or her beloved and asking for forgiveness.
If I came home, would you let me in?
Fry me some pork chops and forgive my sin?
Surround me with your boundless love
Confound me with your boundless love
I was drowning in the sea, lost as I could be
When you found me with your boundless love.
Mexican Home
Another sad and tender song is the one John Prine wrote after the untimely death of his father, sitting on the porch in a hot August afternoon in a Chicago suburb. I have no idea what “Mexican Home” means or how it connects to his life or this poem, but I know this double line is terrific: “Well, the sun’s going down and the moon is just holding breath.” And I love this line in the chorus: “…your boy is here …waiting for that sacred core that burns inside of me.”
Well, my father died on the porch outside on an August afternoon.
I sipped bourbon and cried with a friend by the light of the moon.
So its hurry, hurry, step right up, it’s a matter of life or death.
Well the sun’s going down and the moon is just holding its breath.
Mama dear your boy is here far across the sea
Waiting for that sacred core that burns inside of me
And I feel a storm all wet and warm
Not ten miles away approaching my Mexican home
On the Other Side of Town
I’ll save the “Remember” song for the last as it was the last song John wrote and recorded. Instead, I’ll turn to this humorous piece, even though there is another dozen I could have put in this list, such as: “Illegal Smile,” “When I Get to Heaven,” “How Lucky,” “Speed of the Sound of Loneliness,” “Unwed Fathers,” “Souvenirs,” and “In Spite of Ourselves.” This one, “The Other Side of Town,” is about a husband who gets tired of listening to his wife; his mind drifts as do his interests; but parts of it are very clever, very funny!
I’m sittin’ on a chair just behind my ear
Playing dominoes and drinking some ice cold beer.
When you get done talking I’ll come back downstairs
And assume the body of the person you presume who cares.
I especially like the chorus and, in my mind’s eye, can see and hear the crowd join in every time it comes around:
A clown puts his make-up on upside down
So he wears a smile even when he wears a frown.
You might think I’m here when you put me down.
But actually, I’m on the other side of town.
I Remember Everything
Finally, I come to the final song, perhaps the last one written and surely the last one recorded, in his home, weeks before his untimely death during the COVID pandemic. “I’ve been down this road before” it begins, and before it ends, the song has created a certain mood that is so familiar to people who love the music of John Prine. Often, the meaning of his lyrics is unclear, even mysterious, or as often as not, nonsensical. As with these triple lines from “Sam Stone:”
Little pitchers have big ears
Don’t stop to count the years
Sweet songs never last too long on broken radios.
But with a song like “I Remember Everything,” we feel the emotion of the lyrics, in this case, of romance, tenderness, and sweetness. This is what is memorable and powerful about this particular poem and about many other John Prine lyrics. I will conclude this list with these lines from this wonderful song that functions like a benediction to his remarkable life.
I remember everything, things I can’t forget
Swimming pools of butterflies that slipped right through the net.
And I remember every night your ocean eyes of blue.
How I miss you in the morning light like roses miss the dew.
