John Prine

[j45nick]

FlatBar, thanks for that. Great job on a great song.

Part of Prine's appeal to me is that so many of his best songs are reasonably straightforward to play and sing. With my limited vocal and playing skills, that's an important consideration. Much of the material from great singer/songwriters is out of reach one way or another, and I just get discouraged trying to do it.

Prine wore his heart on his sleeve, tinged with a lot of self-deprecating irony. His lyrics are often mind-blowingly spot-on. Even when they seem to be simple, they are carefully crafted and devoid of extraneous  words. Maximum feeling in the minimum amount of words,

We are fortunate that even if we have lost him, we still have his songs.

[MissouriPicker]

I was reminded today of an interview Prine did years ago.  He talked about how Keith Richards and Marty Stuart we’re staying at his house for a few days and he figured that was a great opportunity to get some guitar lessons from a couple of great players.  Anyway, after numerous attempts to do what Richards and Stuart were showing him, Prine still had problems with it, so they told him to just do things his way.  Prine laughed and said his mistakes and ineptness on guitar became his technique.  ......For me, Prine’s simpleness made his performing and songwriting far beyond most of his peers.  He was who he was and that’s what made him so special.  Lyrics in everyday street vernacular were as philosophical as anything Confusis ever wrote.  Plus, they made sense to the guy picking-up our trash or the gal waiting tables at Waid’s (a place from back in the day).

Edited April 19, 2020 by MissouriPicker

[Gasman]

On 4/8/2020 at 5:50 AM, Salfromchatham said:

very very sad.

John - Was my all time Favorite - His Songs just reach in your Heart and give it a little tug...  I will miss him Dearly - We Love you John

KF

[Jinder]

I'm still deeply sad about John's passing. As a friend of mine said, "the world just ain't right without him in it". 

I keep coming back to his songs and being newly surprised and thrilled by them. So much artistry and economy, big points raised and made with the minimum of fuss. Not a word, chord or note wasted. What an artist.

[livemusic]

On 4/1/2020 at 7:39 PM, Guth said:

Jinder, I’ll apologize in advance to yourself and the others for the lengthiness this response is sure to reach, but you’ve struck a chord inside of me and I’m going to take this opportunity to “spell some things out” as much for my own benefit as anything else.

Much like yourself, I often tend to process such emotions in a very inward way, although much more privately and far less productively in my case.

I can say for a fact that when I was younger I never once took Stevie Ray Vaughan himself, his abilities or his music for granted. I say this despite the fact that I was able to watch him play many times in a venue smaller than the unassuming house that I now call home for only a few dollars each time. I still count being able to talk with him for a minute, shake his hand and thank him for sharing his music with myself and others to be a fairly significant moment in my life.

(Later on, watching him overcome the demons that he happened to be battling back when I met him was something that I felt was every bit as worthy of celebration as his music itself was.)

Another significant moment in my life would come on morning of August 28, 1990. When I arrived at work very early that day, the security guard at my workplace who shared a mutual love of blues music, asked me if I had heard the news. I had no idea what he was talking about. Then he handed me a copy of that day’s Dallas Morning News that he had obtained for me. Plastered on the cover was the news of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s death — a victim of a helicopter crash the night before.

I was almost speechless, having a very hard time putting my thoughts together in a way that made any kind of sense. Later I was sent home early, still with the newspaper in my hand . I would need the remainder of the day to begin to recover from the impact this news had on me. I still have that very newspaper to this day, packed away with other items that serve as reminders of what my life has been.

In many ways I took SRV’s death harder than that of my own father which also occurred around that time of my then relatively young life.

That is in no way to say that my father was any less significant to me, as few things could be further from the truth. I have thought about this very topic previously. Other than the fact that I was truly in a deep state of shock when my father died, this is what I’ve come up with.,.

No one has meant more to me in my life than my father, even though our time with each other was cut far too short. With that said I would point out that for many of us on this forum there likely exist few if any triggers that impact our memories more than music. In turn, the people who are responsible for creating the  music that we each connect with have the potential to dig deeper into our souls by way of our attachment to not only the music they create but also to them as individuals as part of the process.

So in my case when someone like Stevie Ray Vaughan passed away that left  a  really deep, complex hole inside of my psyche — the path of which was determined by a couple of things. The first was by the many different ways his music connected with me over the course of a few years.  The other was the the intensity of that impact itself at various  points in time.

Such holes can not truly be examined until we are fully aware of their existence.  In my case, when it came to facing the loss of Stevie Ray Vaughan, exploring such emptiness was both immediate and concrete. I felt that I had no choice but to face such things head on even though I had little clue as to how to proceed.

In the case of the news regarding John Prine, the impacts that it might be having on yourself and others becomes a bit more complex. I feel this way because those connections that I’ve just mentioned are still being created, continuing to grow. Yet you find yourself peering into that potential void without any solid understanding of just how complex or just how deep that void might really be.

In my case, I was dealing with events that were in the past, reaching up to and including the death of SRV. That was incredibly depressing in nature. In the case of trying to come to grips with John Prine’s situation, things are still developing, continuing to move forward (fortunately with some good news apparently now mixed in). The difference here is that your concerns regarding JP’s health involve looking forward in time and that generates anxiety. That anxiety might very well exist (and likely does) right on top of any depression you might be feeling as well. That is a lot to contend with.

Add to this the mix of everything else going on in the world today (including that which impacted JP himself) and you have the perfect storm for a very emotional roller-coaster. The likes of which few of us have the necessary mental capacity to deal with head-on at this point in time.

I find this to be one of life’s great ironies. To me this is what is meant by taking the bad with the good. Just as music has the capacity to take us to heights seemingly unimaginable, so it goes that the absence of such music (or those responsible for creating the music to begin with) similarly has the capacity to sink us to unimaginable depths. 

In my case, I found that listening to the  very music that impacted me to begin with was the best way forward. Not so much for the relief it brought (it really didn’t at first), but more as a way of honoring the musical legacy that was left behind. One that I knew I would be able to tap into in more of a uplifting manner at some point in my future.

I can’t imagine a better time to honor John Prine than right now while he is amongst us. I know that I’ll be spinning some of his music again this evening. I like to think that the act of doing so fills the world with a bit more positive energy, no matter how immeasurable it might be. So many of the truly best things in life are beyond measurement, it should not surprise me that this would be any different.

Thanks all for letting me spill my emotions out all over the floor.

Take care and be well.

 

 

 

That is an amazing post. John's gone now and I agree that musicians certainly can mean an awful lot to many of us. The power of music. And creativity. He certainly was a songwriting genius.