More than thirty years ago, as a teenager, I kept a mental list of all the “Next Dylans.” By the end of the 1980s, I figured I could plot each one of them. James Taylor was soft and light. Bruce Springsteen was big and bold. Patti Smith was poetic and punk. Billy Joel was musical and needy. And then there were the honorable mentions -- Loudon Wainwright III, Willie Nile, Steve Forbert, etc. I understood all of them — all of them, except for John Prine.

Some of them I filed away and some got their own spot on the shelf. But John Prine was much harder for me to classify. His voice was reedy and his songs were spare, like early Bob Dylan. He was folksy like Dylan, but he was never surreal and only occasionally political. Sometimes he sounded like he was singing whimsical children’s music that children would never understand. Other times, he sounded tired and prosaic, but also quite literary. I listened to all of his 70s albums, though, mostly because Robert Christgau told me I should. Christgau was the man who made sense of The New York Dolls and Television for me. He was the dean of Rock criticism. I trusted him implicitly. “Maybe all the A’s he gave out to Prine were typos,” I thought. “Maybe they were distant cousins and he was biased.” I tried to understand. But as a sixteen year old who had just made the broad jump from Queen straight to The Clash, John Prine was lost on me. 

A couple of years later, Prine won the Grammy for the best contemporary Folk album for “The Missing Years.” I was not especially interested in contemporary Folk at the time but felt some unearned pride for even knowing who the man was and what he sounded like. Based on the little I had heard, I sensed that the Grammy was something of a lifetime achievement award. It wasn’t that I presumed the album to be mediocre. It was more that I saw the parade of stars on the album (Petty, Bruce, Bonnie Raitt), read the adoring reviews and figured that it was a necessity as much as it was deserved. And though I didn’t fully comprehend it, I knew enough that those who loved John Prine, really loved John Prine; not the way you love a star or your favorite singer. The people that loved John Prine seemed to love him like an uncle or a brother or a drinking buddy. Real love.

It would take me another two decades, marriage, fatherhood and a move from New York to Texas to understand that kind of love. Part of the revelation was a gift of middle age -- of feeling kind of old on the outside but still young at heart. Those songs that sounded like children’s music to my teenage ears suddenly sounded playful, but wise. And that reedy voice that sounded flat and prosaic thirty years ago sounded honest and kind of profound decades later. 

Another part, of course, was the songs themselves. In Texas, you hear John Prine songs everywhere. And, at least half the time, John Prine isn’t singing them. All of those covers — most of them sung with honor and with more technical ability than the writer — made me appreciate their durability. John Prine songs are like perfect sketches. The words are so true and the forms so sturdy that they can withstand any finish, rounded corner or translation. They’re good enough to survive Prine talking his way through half of them and being melody-adjacent, at best, in the other half. His best lines sound like cliches that you know in your bones, but have never heard before. They don’t even sound like cliches. They sound like new truths.

I listened to Johnny Cash cover John Prine. I listened to Dwight Yoakam and My Morning Jacket and Lambchop and Bonnie Raitt and Bette Middler and Bob Dylan and Jason Isbell and Adrianne Lenker cover John Prine. I listened to local Texas artists cover him at empty open mic nights, outdoor festivals and pizza parlors. And every single time, no matter how good the singer, the song delivered.

Most of the long form pieces I’ve read about Prine mention his career as a mailman. For years, I thought it was a lazy, but colorful, narrative device. But, over time, I came to realize that the notion of his every day reliability and service was impossibly true. Or, more specifically, that his songs have that quality. I never met John Prine. I’d guess that most of the people that have written about John Prine don’t know him either. We’re all guessing based on the stories and the stage banter and our projections. But, also — and most of all — the songs provide this kindness. They work.

It took me a while. It took time and distance and familiarity and a certain comfort. But, eventually, age and all of that affection sent me back. I pulled those first six records off the shelf. In 1971, he starts out like a wounded troubadour hiding a silly hobo somewhere inside. But, eventually, his inner Woody Guthrie finds his inner Hank Williams. The voice begins to strain less. He becomes more confident in his own jokes, knowing that, so long as he thinks they are funny, they are funny. The observations get sharper and he pulls more poetry from each snapshot. By “Sweet Revenge,” he’s in full command, effortlessly switching gears from beautiful loser to seasoned Country Rocker. And, for the rest of the decade, he would would continue to refine his part as that wry, mustached guy from Chicago, who was great at talking, and who could barely sing, but who sang the most truthful songs you’d ever heard.

As the decade turned, Prine’s status as a best kept secret became increasingly problematic for his record labels. He wasn’t garish or light enough for Modern Country radio and he was too smart for Rock and Roll. Out of adoration and some desperation, he coaxed Sam Phillips out of the studio for a Memphis throwback record in 1979. But, when that album, “Pink Cadillac,” mostly missed, he found himself rethinking the whole story. In spite of some similarities, he wasn’t destined to be the next Dylan. He could never be a Nashville song factory. He was too clever and not pretty enough to be Johnny Cougar. But he was too good to simply gut it out night after night at bars and small rooms. The remaining idealists at major record companies may have revered him. But, by the early 1980s, John Prine was not a major label artist.

So, in 1981, he did something unusually bold and prescient. He started his own indie label -- Oh Boy Records. The company and its first LP (“Aimless Love”) were in part crowdfunded by Prine’s fans. And although mostly a vehicle for its founder, Oh Boy stayed busy releasing albums by Kris Kristofferson, Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, Don Everly and other friends and admirers. The 80s were a period of transition for Prine. In 1984, Steve Goodman, Prine’s longtime friend and the producer of Oh Boy’s inaugural LP, passed away from leukemia. Several years later, Prine divorced for the second time and met Fiona Whelan, who would eventually become his manager and his wife. 

In comparison with all of the personal change, however, the decade felt creatively fallow. He released just three full length albums, each of which can sound hedged when compared to their predecessors. Frankly, the 1980s was not a friendly time for Folk music or Bluegrass or classic Country — at least, not if you wanted to make a living in those fields. Prine was not old enough to be considered a prestige heritage act by college radio and the seeds of 90s Americana had yet to sprout. Fortunately, though, John Prine could still write the hell out of a song. And those who loved him, still really loved him. 

One of those fans was Howie Epstein, the bassist and “glue guy” for Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers. A uniquely versatile player, he signed on to produce what would be John Prine’s first album of the 1990s -- “The Missing Years.” Epstein was fully committed. The Heartbreakers was his day job, but increasingly his work with Prine was his love. For more than half of the decade, the duo worked tirelessly to breathe new life into the songwriter’s familiar and beloved approach. Two albums were born from this partnership. The first was a critically adored, Grammy-winning album that has its rightful place in the canon of comebacks. The second album, “Lost Dogs and Mixed Blessings” begged the question: where do you go after you come back?

Released in 1995, nearly four years after his star-studded victory lap, “Lost Dogs and Mixed Blessings” resembles its predecessor musically, if not textually. Epstein again enlists Benmont Tench (also of The Heartbreakers) to play piano, keys and most everything else with keys on it. Meanwhile, the producer’s bass and backing vocals give Prine’s songs a bottom bounce that his stories frequently had but his tunes often lacked. The result is something closer to the Bluegrass tradition, faster than Folk but slower than the Appalachian version. It doesn’t sound like a Tom Petty record. It doesn’t sound like a Dylan record. It sounds a good deal like “The Missing Years,” but a tick more whimsical. For the uninitiated, it fits somewhere between Jimmy Buffett, John Mellencamp and Townes Van Zandt, but twice as smart as the first two and twice and fun as the last one. 

Between those two albums, Prine got married and became a father (twice). The busyness and deliriousness of new fatherhood is evident on “Lost Dogs and Mixed Blessings.” At fourteen tracks and nearly an hour, it is also Prine’s longest album. It is also the sound of a sleep deprived, middle-aged writer, bursting with melodies, stories and reflections; a man who stood in place for ten years until the world circled back to him in 1991. It’s the sound that you hear after the comeback. It is the sound of a happily married, new father, being born again. 

“Lost Dogs” bursts out from the gates faster, sweeter and more bright eyed than other John Prine albums. The meter and the minor hook of “New Train,” the opener, is a dead ringer for Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock & Roll.” Prine’s song is as joyful as Seger’s, but in no way nostalgic. It is, in fact, looking in all directions but back. It’s a short and sturdy singalong all the way through and a nice contrast to what follows. “Ain’t Hurtin’ Nobody,” the second track, has a similarly innocent heart, but features a smokier growl and a little groove that lets itself get comfortable for five minutes. It’s unlike most of Prine’s songbook. 

“All the Way With You” is probably the best of three Country ballads on the record, but that is no slight to the other two. With its plaintive piano and wind chime cymbals, it fully ventures onto Kenny Rogers corner. In fact, Rogers would have had a feast with this song. But whereas the bearded bear would have played it with a warm, light smarm, Prine plays it straight. When he sings the chorus, you can hear a young man’s come-on, a groom to be and an aging husband all in the same line. It’s quite a feat. 

“This Love is Real” is of a similar vein, but adds harmonium, Spanish guitar and Marianne Faithful. Her voice not quite shot, Faithful plays a credible partner for Prine who can only barely hold the melody himself. Fortunately, the song is so well made and the sentiment so sincere that the duo pull it off. And the album’s closer, “I Love You so Much It Hurts,” is a cover of a 1948 Country hit by Floyd Tillman. Naked and simple, it is reminiscent of early Randy Newman. And it makes you want to get drunk and dance real slow.

In between the rebirth and the slow dance, we get all the colors of John Prine. We get a couple of heavier, bluesier rockers that prove to be better ideas than songs (“We Are the Lonely” and “Quit Hollerin at Me”). And we get songs from his inner child. “Big Fat Love” is a silly, mostly disposable rocker about his daughter, while “Leave the Lights On” is a Honky Tonk throwaway that answers: what if Bob Dylan rewrote “Subterranean Homesick Blues” in the 1990s and made it for children. It is hard to pull off guileless and still be beguiling, but Prine does it on verses like:

Feeling kind of bony on the telephoney

Talking to Marconi eating Rice-a-Roni

Nominated for a Tony for acting like a phony

Watching Twilight Zoney on my forty-two inch Sony

This is just a long song, it ain't no poem

Leave the lights on till your baby gets home 

In addition to the romance and the wiggling around, Prine drops two stone cold stunners. “The Day is Done” is just the singer and his guitar, singing about adultery or forbidden love and what it feels like to go back to your other life when the thing that is right feels wrong. It’s an almost perfect John Prine song -- unusually observant, emotive and concise — plain in the most beautiful way. “Lake Marie,” on the other hand, is the opposite of plain. It is an absolute treasure, that somehow spans an old Native American parable with a very personal romance and the aftermath of a famous double murder. The chorus, where Prine sings about standing by the peaceful waters, against a backdrop of carnage and loss, is the singer at his very best. The hook and the stories are so good that he can basically talk his way through the verses. You never feel like the delivery is casual or affected. It’s a modern Folk anthem, considered an all-timer by many fans and famously adored by Bob Dylan himself. It deserves all of its reverence.

“Lost Dogs and Mixed Blessings” is by no means a masterpiece. Epstein was notoriously obsessive and a bit of a maximalist. He always wanted one more song and one more element. He was also battling a crippling heroin addiction at the time. The result is a record that probably could use some trimming. And those that like the Raymond Carver side of Prine’s writing might find the album to be both slightly sentimental and slightly whimsical. But what it lacks in brevity or profundity, it more than makes up in musicality. It’s the rare album that has a heavy soul and a light wit about it. Had it been released in 1992, on the heels of “The Missing Years” and on the verge of Alternative Rock, it would have likely found a wider audience. Three years later, however, the world had turned just a little too far to hear it.

It would take another two decades for the planet to come back around to John Prine. Two brutal decades. First came the cancer in the neck and the devastating surgery. Then came the lung cancer and more surgery. There were years of rehab. Learning how to talk and sing and perform again. Years where some people forgot about him and a whole bunch assumed he was dead already. Impossibly, he returned in 2016 with an album of duets with great and admiring women singing alongside him. This version of John Prine was a miracle. He had been picked apart and, with his wife Fiona, had put himself back together. It was a gift that lasted for a few years. And we got to witness it. 

By 2018, we had all come back to John Prine. “The Tree of Forgiveness” was his first album of originals in over a decade and was the highest charting album of his career. Like “The Missing Years,” his final album was something of a star-studded affair, with contributions from Jason Isbell, Amanda Shires, Brandi Carlile and Dan Auerbach. And, like his comeback album, this one was received with a slow clap that became a standing ovation. Prine put on his black suit, packed his suitcase with songs and traveled the world to play for his nephews, nieces, cousins, drinking buddies and their grown up kids. This time, it wasn’t thousands of us loving him. It was millions. And we all really loved him.

Looking back, it took me far too long to return to John Prine. Occasionally I feel that loss of time. The world had already come back around to him twice by 2016. When I arrived, it was late in the day. He was older than his age, just standing by the peaceful waters. And, far too soon, he died of complications from COVID-19. In 2021, he won a posthumous Grammy for “I Remember Everything.” The song’s title read like a bold and weighty claim. But he was the also the guy who came back, was reborn and then put himself back together. So, I tend to believe him.

by Matty Wishnow