In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Tom Piazza’s Living in the Present with John Prine movingly captures his friendship with one of the greatest songwriters of our time while also sharing fascinating glimpses into Prine’s life.
Kirkus wrote of the book:
“The artist’s good humor and low-key grace shine through on every page. A heartfelt blend of first-person journalism, oral history, travelogue, and elegy.”
In his own words, here is Tom Piazza’s Book Notes music playlist for his book Living in the Present with John Prine:
John was unique. Our friendship started in 2018, as a magazine article for the Oxford American, but I never experienced him as an ‘interview subject,’ per se. It was always person-to-person, not journalist-to-subject, and that’s a lot of why we became friends. He was a man in three dimensions, or maybe five or six dimensions. His best songs – all of his songs, really – manage to express tenderness, humor, empathy, irony, and an unblinking eye for the facts of life at the same time, and he brought that combination with him onto the stage when he performed. We spent many great times together in a very short period, less than two years, and toward the end of that time, in January 2020, he asked me to write his memoir with him. We got a great start in February of that year, the results of which are in Living in the Present With John Prine, but the project was brought to an abrupt and painful halt with John’s death, from Covid, in April of that year. So the book became a memoir of that friendship, with all the music, laughs, grief, and gratitude I could summon to give as full a picture as I could. I titled this book Living in the Present with John Prine because that is where he always located himself. His recorded performances give everyone the opportunity to spend time with him in the present, and I hope the book, and this playlist, will serve the same purpose.
“Illegal Smile” shows up on John Prine Live, originally recorded on his very first, self-titled album. Between 1971, when that record was released, and the 1988 version here, John had learned a lot about stage presence and his particular way of involving an audience in the present tense of the event. Here, after a bunch of song requests from the audience, he tells everyone that they have a chance to be on the record. The singalong at the end, where John drops out and lets everyone sing the final chorus by themselves, is essential John Prine.
Illegal Smile – Live (John Prine Live)
John’s trademark sense of humor and angle on life is well known, but as I write in Living in the Present With John Prine, you don’t get that humor without an unblinking awareness of the tragic dimension of existence as well; maybe they are two sides of the same coin. “Sam Stone,” from his 1971 debut album, the story of a veteran returning from Vietnam with “a monkey on his back,” is told with stunning deftness, pity, and a total lack of sentimentality. The following track, “Teenage Fathers,” played and sung by Tim and Mollie O’Brien, is a beautiful and deeply bittersweet song about a young woman, adrift far from home and about to give birth to a child, with the father somewhere far away. There is a tenderness at the heart of it, despite the chilling direct gaze at the situation she finds herself in.
Sam Stone – John, first album
Teenage Fathers – Tim and Mollie O’Brien
John’s songs were prized by other singer-songwriters who found that his combination of very simple harmonic structures and deceptively simple-seeming lyrics allowed meaning and mood to come through very directly in the right hands. John was never in better hands than when his dear long-time friend Bonnie Raitt sang his song “Angel From Montgomery.” It was one of John’s most popular songs and recordings, and she sang it at almost every performance. Here is her original recording, from her 1974 album Streetlights, along with her 2019 duet with John at the Ryman Auditorium during AmericanaFest
Angel From Montgomery – Bonnie Raitt – 1974 version
Angel From Montgomery – 2019 Americana fest version, with John Prine
John loved playing and singing with women, and they loved singing with him. He made two records full of duets with some of the very best country and folk women singers, the best-known of which is his duet with Iris DeMent on “In Spite of Ourselves,” here in a live version from the short-lived 1999 series Sessions at West 54th Street. The song became one of his most popular in concerts, and often generated a sing-along reflex in the audience. The selection that follows, “Speed of the Sound of Loneliness,” is a video clip from a 1990 duet with Nanci Griffith, which will tell you all you need to know about John’s understated charm, ease and pleasure relating to women, not to mention his way with a lyric…..
In Spite of Ourselves – with Iris DeMent
Speed of the Sound… (Nanci Griffith w. John video)
John was turned on to old-time country and folk music by his elder brother Dave, who was gracious enough to spend a couple hours with me in his home in the Prines’ hometown of Maywood, Illinois, where John grew up; The results of that conversation are in the second-to-last chapter of Living in the Present With John Prine. In addition to teaching John about the Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers, the New Lost City Ramblers, and, a little later, Bob Dylan, he introduced John to Elizabeth Cotten’s style of fingerpicking, which became foundational for John. Cotten wrote several folk standards, the best known of which is “Freight Train.” “Oh Babe, It Ain’t No Lie” was one of John’s favorite songs to sing around the table, and we played and sang it together several times. It was one of Bob Dylan’s favorites as well, and he played it often in live performance in the late 1990s. The Grateful Dead, Gillian Welch, Billy Strings, and a number of other roots-music-oriented performers did as well. Here’s Cotten’s original version:
Oh Babe, It Ain’t No Lie – Elizabeth Cotten
John’s 1973 album Sweet Revenge had a number of much-loved songs including “Dear Abby,” “Please Don’t Bury Me,” “Christmas in Prison,” and “Grandpa Was a Carpenter.” John could be cryptic sometimes in his choice of titles, and that album’s “Mexican Home” has nothing to do with Mexico, at least that I could ever figure out. The arrangement on Sweet Revenge is for full band, with a swaggering attitude in the vocal, which somewhat camouflages the fact that the song was about the day his father died. In the 1980s, he began playing it solo, in a very different arrangement, quiet and aimed straight at the heart of the song’s real mood. This is the version I heard him sing the first time I heard him live, and which made me know I needed to write something about him. I asked him about why he used that band arrangement on the original record and he kind of chuckled and said, “I’m my own worst producer.” Here is the original version, from Sweet Revenge, and a solo version from the 1988 album John Prine Live.
Mexican Home – Band (Sweet Revenge)
Mexican Home – Solo (John Prine Live)
Finally, since we are in turbulent times as a country, here in a live video filmed at Nashville’s Station Inn a few years back is one of my favorite songs by John, heard here in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election. The fine group spotlights some of his best and longest-term musical companions – Jason Wilber on lead guitar (he is interviewed at some length in Living in the Present With John Prine), David Jacques on bass, songwriter Pat McLaughlin playing mandolin here, and the great multi-instrumentalist (and part-time magician) Fats Kaplin, playing a great steel guitar solo to Prine’s obvious delight. “Your flag decal won’t get you into heaven anymore…” is as good an anthem as any that I can think of in our time.
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1074113517706372
As a bonus item, here is a video of a house concert filmed in Toronto home of Canadian radio personality George Stromboulopoulos in the final year of John’s life, again accompanied by Jason Wilber and David Jacques in an intimate living room type setting, with John singing songs from his deep catalog. At one point he introduces Gordon Lightfoot, eighty years old and sitting on the floor among a group of youngsters. John’s song “Far From Me” was a favorite of many singer-songwriters, and the camera catches Lightfoot eyes closed, singing along on the refrain, a very moving moment. During John’s second visit to NYC, in 1971, just before his first album came out, Bob Dylan surprised John by dropping in at a small get-together and song-swap at Carly Simon’s New York City apartment. John sang “Far From Me,” and when he came to the refrain Dylan began singing along with him. John tells the story in Living in the Present With John Prine. The concert winds up with “When I Get to Heaven,” from his final album, The Tree of Forgiveness.
Strombo video (bonus)
also at Largehearted Boy:
Tom Piazza’s playlist for his novel A Free State
Tom Piazza’s playlist for his essay collection Devil Sent the Rain
Tom Piazza’s playlist for his book City of Refuge
Tom Piazza’s playlist for his novel My Cold War
Tom Piazza is the author of eleven books of fiction and nonfiction, including the novels A Free State and City of Refuge, the Michener Award-winning story collection Blues and Trouble, and the essay collection Devil Sent the Rain: Music and Writing in Desperate America. He was a principal writer for the HBO series Treme. He lives in New Orleans.