An online celebration of the life of John Prine. Produced by the Prine family and Oh Boy Records, featuring musicians, actors and friends remembering our beloved JP.
The tribute will feature memories and songs as well as rare and never-before-seen footage of John himself, while raising money for three organizations: NAMI, Alive Hospice and Make the Road New York
After the credits please stick around for “I Remember Everything” which was John Prine’s last recording. The song was written by John and his long-time friend and collaborator Pat McLaughlin. This recording took place in John’s living room with Grammy Award-winning producer Dave Cobb. Available Now.
NAMI: https://donate.nami.org/JohnPrine
Make the Road New York: bit.ly/DonateMaketheRoad
Alive Hospice:https://www.alivehospice.org/johnprine
John Prine
A message from Fiona Whelan Prine
“Our beloved John died yesterday evening at Vanderbilt Medical Center in Nashville TN. We have no words to describe the grief our family is experiencing at this time. John was the love of my life and adored by our sons Jody, Jack and Tommy, daughter in law Fanny, and by our grandchildren.
John contracted Covid-19 and in spite of the incredible skill and care of his medical team at Vanderbilt he could not overcome the damage this virus inflicted on his body.
I sat with John – who was deeply sedated- in the hours before he passed and will be forever grateful for that opportunity.
My dearest wish is that people of all ages take this virus seriously and follow guidelines set by the CDC. We send our condolences and love to the thousands of other American families who are grieving the loss of loved ones at this time – and to so many other families across the world.
Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for the outpouring of love we have received from family, friends, and fans all over the world. John will be so missed but he will continue to comfort us with his words and music and the gifts of kindness, humor and love he left for all of us to share.
In lieu of flowers or gifts at this time we would ask that a donation be made to one of the following non profits.” – Fiona Whelan Prine
Life, Death, and John Prine
The 71-year-old’s songs soundtrack moments of deep pain and joy for many, including writer Jayson Greene.
By JASON GREENE | Pitchfork
When my wife had been in labor for 16 hours, I played her John Prine’s “Everything Is Cool.” She’d begun gasping instead of breathing, climbing into the tub to gather herself. As Prine’s fingerpicking rang out from a tiny speaker, she closed her eyes and smiled.
The song is simple, like all Prine songs, a folk lament with a deliberate pace ideal for slow breathing. Over three chords, the singer-songwriter pines for a loved one who has traveled beyond reach—“Across the sea to an island where the bridges brightly burn/So far away from my land/The valley of the unconcerned.” The valley of the unconcerned—that felt like where our daughter was at that moment. We were stuck somewhere else, whatever you would call such a place: the cul-de-sac of the flustered. Together, we beckoned her: join us. The song looped, my wife’s labor progressed, and our daughter slowly moved closer. The midwife and nurses gathered around my wife, and she started pushing. Everything is cool. Everything’s OK.
When my daughter died two years later, the song rang out again into the stricken silence at her service. This time, it felt like a hymn. The song is pierced halfway through by an image of grace and purification: “I saw a hundred thousand blackbirds just flying through the sky/And they seemed to form a teardrop/From a black-haired angel’s eye/And that tear fell all around me/And it washed my sins away.” A message from our daughter, perhaps, a dispatch from the valley of the unconcerned, to which she returned. Everything is cool here, guys, she was reassuring us. Everything’s OK.
I tell all of this to John Prine, and he listens gravely, attentively. His wife Fiona has just brought me into his Manhattan hotel suite and left us alone. “Well, since you’ve been through what you’ve been through, you deserve to know what the song is about,” he says,
his voice so gravelly it sounds broken up by radio static. “It wasn’t about death, so much as about the death of a relationship. You just met the ‘black-haired angel,’” he says, nodding in Fiona’s direction. “I met her chasing after my soon-to-be ex-wife. I had malice in my heart, as angry as I could be, like I was going to find somebody and hurt them. It wasn’t like me at all; I wanted to get rid of that feeling. And while I was running around after my ex, I ran into Fiona, and she washed my sins away. I don’t know if I ever told her that. I think she knows it though.”
I ask if it surprises him that his divorce song would be my death song, that it would speak to me so clearly of grief and grace, redemption and transfiguration. He thinks for a second, then smiles. “Well, there’s only two things,” he says. “There’s life, and there’s death. So it’s a 50/50 shot.”
How Roger Ebert Discovered John Prine
In 1970, Ebert was a young critic at the Sun-Times, when he came across a young singer-songwriter-mailman playing future standards at the Fifth Peg, in “out of the way” Lincoln Park.
In one of those wonderful Chicago moments, it turns out that one of the best writers to ever come out of the city discovered, or was at least the first person to review, one of the best musicians to ever come out of the city: Roger Ebert covered John Prine for the Sun-Times in 1970, back when he was still a mailman and playing at the Fifth Peg, “out of the way” at 858 W. Armitage, a couple blocks from where Charlie Trotter later redefined Chicago cuisine. Ebert’s original review is, as you’d expect, great. What surprised me about it was how many of Prine’s masterpieces had already been written (coincidentally, Ebert’s piece ran on October 9, the day before Prine turned 24): “Illegal Smile,” “Angel From Montgomery,” “Sam Stone” (then “The Great Society Conflict Veteran’s Blues”), “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore.”
Prine was also a child of one of my favorite Chicago subjects, the Hillbilly Highway, though I didn’t know how good his pedigree was:
So you talk to him, and you find out that Prine has been carrying mail in Westchester since he got out of the Army three years ago. That he was born in Maywood, and that his parents come from Paradise, Ky. That his grandfather was a miner, a part-time preacher, and used to play guitar with Merle Travis and Ike Everly (the Everly brothers’ father). And that his brother Dave plays banjo, guitar and fiddle, and got John started on the guitar about 10 years. ago.
Paradise, in western Kentucky, no longer exists. Coal companies strip mined the land around it, and residents sold out to the TVA to escape the massive Paradise Fossil Plant.
Here’s Prine playing … “Sabu Visits the Twin Cities Alone,” eight years out from Ebert’s piece.
And “The Late John Garfield Blues”, from 1972:
Source: Chicago Magazine by Whet Moser | Published 2012