John Prine: The Difficulty of Forgiveness

In the days following the release of The Tree of Forgiveness, John Prine — the 71-year-old master song crafter, storyteller, and lover of a good meatloaf — had the best sales week of his decades-long career. His first album of originals since 2005’s Fair and Square, it’s a rare bit of triumph for the good guys — and for an artist like Prine, who has shaped our current musical climate in ways that are often beyond measure. Because, despite being one of the primary influences on Americana’s best and brightest — from Jason Isbell to Margo Price and Deer Tick — Prine’s never banked those platinum albums. Though 1991’s The Missing Years eventually sold around a half-million copies some 20 years after his self-titled debut, records, like the rest of human life, then went online: People stopped buying, and started streaming.

“Just as I started selling records, records stopped selling. I hope it wasn’t my fault,” Prine says, chuckling from his living room at home in Nashville. “I’d be spoiled, if I sold a million records. I probably wouldn’t go on the road for 10 years. But I don’t ever want to sell so many records that I have to do shows in a stadium. Stadiums are for sporting events: They’re not to watch a guy with a guitar come out and tell his story.”

He’s right, though if there’s anyone who could capture a stadium full of people with just an acoustic guitar and his heart-shaking stories, it would be Prine. The Tree of Forgiveness, an exquisite record that finds Prine looking at love, death, and the passage of time with humor, lightness, and his own quirky sort of grace, isn’t a set of arena rock barnburners (obviously). Instead, it’s touching moments of humanity that stick to the bones and linger in the mind, letting the imagination wander in exactly the direction that Prine wants it to … which is everywhere. Take “Summer’s End,” a nostalgic track if there ever was one, though it’s not explicitly clear for what — for summer, for a relationship, for life itself. “I could sell John Prine Kleenex with a song like that,” he says, laughing.

But it’s hard to be too sad about the end of life or love in Prine’s world, particularly life, if what happens next is as fun as “When I Get to Heaven,” the album’s closer. With Amanda Shires, Jason Isbell, and Brandi Carlile all chiming in on kazoo and vocals — all three appear across the Dave Cobb-produced LP — it details Prine’s perfect afterlife, where he can smoke again, post-cancer, hug his loved ones, and drink his signature cocktail, the Handsome Johnny, to his heart’s content. Like most of what Prine does, “When I Get to Heaven” is loaded with a potent combination of humor and vulnerability. Death is life’s biggest mystery, and Prine would rather solve that problem with lightness than exist in the dark, reality be damned. And Prine likes a good story as much as he likes (or doesn’t like) reality, anyway.

Prine’s own life story is a bit of rock ‘n’ roll lore: He grew up outside of Chicago in a mill town, and formed his songwriting voice after leaving the Army, writing between shifts as a mailman. But much of his signature finger-picking style and his artistic identity come from Kentucky, where his father hailed from, and which feeds the deep bluegrass presence within his songs.

Prine is equally important to Kentucky, too — and to Kentucky’s artists, like Kelsey Waldon, who will open select shows for him in the fall. “John Prine’s music is very special and significant to me,” says Waldon. “He brought together my country and bluegrass worlds, but with relevant and honest songwriting that I think would touch most any walk of life. As a Kentuckian, yes, of course his bluegrass roots make me proud. I have spent some time in Muhlenberg County, and I believe that’s where John learned to play, from his grandfather. That is the area where the great Merle Travis is from, and you can really hear a lot of Merle in John’s pickin’ style — that rhythmic thumb picking. The Everly Brothers and Bill Monroe are also from around the same area so, you know, it’s a lush environment for music. Something has always been in the water. I had heard in an interview that his daddy used to drill the kids that they were not only from Illinois, but also from Kentucky. So, I’d say the roots run deep.”

“I can never really lose those roots,” Prine says. “My family is a big part of my life. A lot of the older relatives are gone now, but I still have family in Kentucky, and I still go to my family reunions every year. Country and bluegrass have always been big influences on me and my music. I still listen to that music.”

Prine listens to a lot of Isbell and Shires, too, and Sturgill Simpson, a fellow Kentucky native with whom he shares a songwriting office — which has never actually been used for any songwriting. Prine stores a big pool table there and, besides, they can’t give it up. Producer/engineer Dave Ferguson uses the space next door, and he likes to smoke there, so Prine and Simpson hold on to it so a new tenant doesn’t put the kibosh on the stogies. “Friendship and cigarettes,” Prine says.

“I would love Sturgill if he was from New York City,” says Prine, “but he is from Kentucky, and I love that he respects and cherishes those roots as I do. He and I both come from the same long line of country-folk-bluegrass guitar-playing musicians. I learned to fingerpick by listening to Elizabeth Cotton and musicians in our tradition. We are all still playing and writing about stuff we know.”

One of the reasons that Prine’s songs are so impactful is how they balance what he knows and what he doesn’t — the mysteries of life, its frustrations, and unknowns. On The Tree of Forgiveness, recorded at RCA Studio A, he’s thinking a lot about forgiveness, itself, and what it means to be kind, something that resonates loud and clear in the Trump era. Prine didn’t write explicitly political songs on this record, but that simple act of forgiveness and kindness is political, in and of itself, in 2018 — a concept that other country and folk singers, like Kacey Musgraves and Courtney Marie Andrews, have also explored on their recent albums.

“Forgiveness, to me, it’s probably the most difficult thing to do,” Prine says. “And the most difficult person to forgive is yourself. A lot of people go through life not forgiving themselves for short-selling something, or paying enough attention to kids or parents, not looking after them when they get old. But the most difficult thing is to forgive yourself.”

Prine’s songs include so much permission to forgive ourselves for being imperfect, for acknowledging that we can love our weaknesses as much as our strengths, and for being content with our priorities, however skewed they may be. Some of Prine’s personal priorities are songs, a good meatloaf, and friends and family. His record label, Oh Boy, is a family affair, with his wife and manager Fiona running things with their son, Jody Whelan. When he’s not touring or playing with his grandkids, he’s writing with friends like Dan Auerbach, who appears on the record, and Pat McLaughlin, or seeing shows around town. He recently checked out the I’m With Her gig at the Station Inn in Nashville. “His support is incredibly meaningful,” says Sara Watkins, who could see he him bopping along from the stage.

“The longer I live in Nashville, I only co-write with friends,” says Prine. “Because, if you spend an afternoon together and you don’t write a song, at least you get to hang out.” For one of The Tree of Forgiveness‘s tracks — “Egg & Daughter Nite, Lincoln Nebraska, 1967 (Crazy Bone)” — Prine and McLaughlin were writing together on a Tuesday (“meatloaf day, that’s our carrot on a stick”) and Prine brought up a story about how he’d heard of farmers taking their daughters to town in order to pawn them off for marriage — which he’d heard jokingly referred to as “egg and daughter night.” Naturally, this gave Prine a good laugh. And an idea.

Prine didn’t think it was a real thing, though (according to Google, apparently, it is), but they wrote the song anyway. “We didn’t think it was about the truth and, when you aren’t writing about the truth,” he says, “the world is your oyster.”


Illustration by Zachary Johnson

Dan Auerbach, ‘Up on a Mountain of Love’

It’s February again — i.e. the time of year when we all must grin and bear it as the supermarket aisles fill with heart-shaped candies, pink marshmallows, and cheesy cards. Valentine’s Day can be sweet for a class of third graders, but downright silly for the rest of us, regardless of relationship status. Suddenly, restaurants offer $100 prix fixe menus, and love is supposed to be somehow equal to a box of only mildly tasty chocolates. In truth, the holiday is often as disappointing as a stray orange cream we return to the wrapper, half-eaten.

The true plus of the season, however, is the perk of new love songs. Dan Auerbach, whose delightful 2017 release, Waiting on a Song, was full of lush and trippy melodic tracks inspired by gauzy ’70s rock, certainly has one up his sleeve: “Up on a Mountain Of Love,” a jangly folk ode to infatuation dripping with notes of the Beatles’ Rubber Soul. It’s not complicated, the way good love songs (and, perhaps, good relationships) are, and far from the gritty reverb of his duo, the Black Keys. “With my head in the clouds, I think I’ll stick around,” Auerbach sings sweetly, tempering innocence with a bit of hidden mischief. It may not be enough to convince the doubters that Valentine’s Day is a holiday worthy of its rank in the grocery store aisles, but it’s a much better surprise than a box of stale Russell Stover candies. And one that will be just as palatable after everything else has gone stale.

Counsel of Elders: Robert Finley on Never Saying Never

Robert Finley is helping pack up his friend’s Batmobile when I reach him in his native north Louisiana. “We got a chance to surprise the kids at the church,” he explains. The occasion felt particularly special for Finley, as it marked his anniversary with his church. “Most of the kids, I knew their parents when they were kids,” he says. “I’ve been here 32 years, and I’m three generations in.” For a blues singer who recently dropped his sophomore album, Goin’ Platinum!, with none other than the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, Finley hasn’t let that game changer shift his values. He still plays guitar and sings in church, he still finds ways to brighten people’s day, he still packs up Batmobiles.

Finley may have been born in Louisiana, but he wasn’t discovered there … at first. He joined the Army during the Vietnam War and was later discovered by a bandleader who heard him playing guitar in a German rec hall. From there, he was recruited to help entertain the troops. If it seemed like music was opening itself up as a career path, things quieted when he returned home. Finley found other ways to make a living, but all that time, he kept playing — just not in the way he once dreamed. Last year, he released his debut album, Age Don’t Mean a Thing, through Music Maker Relief Foundation, but it’s his latest release that’s been the real surprise. He thought he knew the end of his tale, but it turns out there were still a few more chapters left to write.

A friend of Auerbach’s sent him a video of Finley busking in Louisiana, and the bluesman’s growling vocals caught his ear. He eventually signed Finley to his label, Easy Eye Records, and worked with him on Goin’ Platinum! Auerbach wrote the songs, which reflect Finley’s story — about holding on to dreams, about gettin’ while the gettin’s good — while touching on those subjects that have always shone under the blues’ spotlight: love run amok, women with that voodoo touch. Auerbach’s steady blues guitar lets Finley’s raspy vocals run the show. Influenced by singers like Tyrone Davis and Joe Simms, his voice oscillates between the former’s big, howling pleas and the latter’s restrained, thoughtful quality. Goin’ Platinum! is an outcome that took nearly 50 years to arrive, but Finley knows some stories don’t happen overnight. No matter what, he’s been singing and he’ll keep singing. If more people happen to be listening now, ain’t that something.

We tend to view success as something that only happens in youth, but you are proof that there are other stories to tell. What most excites you about this new chapter?

It’s really almost too good to be true. I’m still trying to get it in my head that this is actually happening. Twenty-five, 30 years ago, I wouldn’t have been able to handle it because I wouldn’t have been mentally prepared. I think everything happens within its time so I had to go through these … you know how they say, “You don’t know what it feels like to be well until you get sick”? You remember how you felt when you were well.

So what did age, specifically, help you recognize about this special moment?

I’m more or less concerned with a future for the children and grandchildren, and helping other people fulfill their dreams. I’m really what you call a sharecropper. We farmed for a living and, most of the time, you didn’t get your share; you worked the fields, you picked the cotton, but the check don’t go to you. That’s the hardest part. I’ve understood that everything I went through was for a reason, so now I’m at the age where I understand that there’s a higher power that speaks and you know you have to wait on your turn. Everybody can’t be the king at the same time.

But to hold on to that dream even when you’re being exploited by a system like that …

I had my ways of making an honest living. I performed on local TV shows in Monroe. CBS would show me on the morning show, but everything that come out don’t always work. It has nothing to do with what we were doing, but the people that invest — you know, paying for the TV time — they make the decisions, and it was a business. That’s kind of where I got my first start: I was on The Earnie Miles Show.

Oh, wow, in Bernice or in Monroe?

The show was in Monroe. He used to come by and pick me up, and I’d ride with him. I think he had more confidence in me than I had in myself, and he kept telling me like, “Boy, you need to be doing this and doing that.”

It’s hard when others see it in you, but you can’t hold onto it yet because you haven’t reached that mentality.

Yeah, it’s good when other people see some positive in you, but you can’t see it because … like me, I’ve been hearing my voice all my life. I’ve been singing all my life, but now everybody’s excited about it. But to me, it’s what I’ve been doing all the time. I thank God that I happened to be in the right place at the right time, and then knowing somebody that knows somebody, and then knowing the one that knows everybody, and put a little God in the mix.

 

Right, and wait for the rest of the world to catch up. You never gave up on music, but did you ever feel as though music had given up on you?

I knew one thing: Winners might quit, but quitters never win. I knew, if I wanted to make my dream come true, I had to make everybody out a liar that said I wasn’t gonna be nobody. Once, my dad said to me, “Boy, you ain’t gonna never amount to crap.” I told my friends, “Man, I can be anybody I wanna be, but I don’t wanna make my daddy out to be a liar.” I sat there thinking, “I don’t think that’s what he meant.” I feel like he’s smiling down from heaven now.

And what if you had held yourself back just for that reason? What a story.

Well, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. [Laughs] I tell people, the story never changed in me. I added more to it, but it never changed. When you tell the truth, you don’t have to lie. When you get young people’s attention and elderly, too — in the same room — and they’re dancing and you’re spreading joy, that’s the energy that I strive for. You can get addicted to doing it, because all you’re doing is spreading love. When you do it from your heart and you do it because that’s what the world needs, the good Lord always opens the door and gives you a chance. You just gotta keep doing what you’re doing, and he’ll make everything that happens, but first you’re going to go through some hard times. People know about the last two years.

Yeah, but they don’t know what came before.

There was 50 years of struggling before the last two years was acknowledged. People want it to happen instantly, but the struggle was there.

Nowadays, everyone loves things that come fast and easy, but it doesn’t work that way.

Yeah, there’s no push button success. It’s hard. In order to make a dream come true, you have to stay focused. Right now, everybody’s patting me on the back and, if I let that go to my head, I’ll lose my train of thought. This success, it don’t change me. I still hang out with the same people, and I didn’t move to the big city. I just moved to the other side of town.

You released your debut album last year through Music Maker Relief Foundation, so when you set out to make Goin’ Platinum! with Dan Auerbach, what did you hope the end result would look like?

I think this thing was created by a higher power. When I first went into the studio, I didn’t know what they expected from me, but the greatest part about it is, [Auerbach] told me, “Look man, this is the story, and you tell it your way.” I was like, “What do you mean?” He said, “I just want you to be yourself.” You know how some people try and take you and make you into this? He just wanted me to be myself, and he was open minded to all my suggestions.

You’ve mentioned in other interviews how performing this music felt similar to performing a character. Who is this character and how does he differ from Robert Finley?

It brought out characters in me that I didn’t know, that I hadn’t had an opportunity to do. I was doing music videos and flying out to Hollywood. This was the greatest thing that could’ve happened to me in my life, so I gave it my best shot. I’m a pretty good actor because I always was a clown in school anyway. I give the people what they want. They love for me to dance, and I love to dance because I was in an automobile accident and I broke a lot of bones, and they told me I’d never walk again. And I’m legally blind, that’s another problem. So any chance I get, I just dance. When the crowd roaring and they screaming, I’m enjoying the moment, and all it does it make me want to dance some more. The hardest thing about entertainment is when the stage manager tells me my time is up. I say, “Dang, I wasn’t through!” The joy keeps coming, and the happier I make the audience, the happier I get. I’m living my childhood dream. I feel so blessed.


Photo Credit: Alysse Gafkjen