Prine Blends Country, Rock And Folk Into Humor-Packed Show

Thu., Aug. 7, 1997

Don Adair Correspondent

Let’s say it straight out: John Prine is one of the great songwriters.

He was great when he cut his first record in 1971 and he’s only gotten better.

Just listen to his most recent studio records, “The Missing Years” and “Lost Dogs & Mixed Blessings.” A casual listener might mistake him for a casual humorist, but listen carefully and you’ll find meat hanging all over those funny bones.

He’s one of the few singers who can make you think while you’re laughing. Or laugh while you’re thinking.

Sometimes, you have to laugh first and think about it later.

Fitting for a guy whose heroes are Hank Williams, Bob Dylan and Roger Miller.

If Prine has improved his lie as a songwriter, he’s also come up a notch or two as a performer. Where he used to mumble his way through the acoustic numbers and battle his band for primacy during the rockers, his sound is now an organic whole, a rollicking blend of country, folk and rock.

If his last appearance here, at the Masonic Temple last summer, was an indication, he’s singing and playing better now than he ever has.

The best thing about John Prine, though, is that he disproves F. Scott Fitzgerald’s old saw about there being no second acts in American lives.

Prine has survived more than one bullet.

He was ignored at Atlantic Records where the owners preferred to hang with the Stones, and purged from Asylum in the massacre that also got Bonnie Raitt and Tom Waits. And his own label, Oh Boy Records, was little more than a vinyl vanity press until the unexpected, left-field success of “The Missing Years” back in ‘91.

In fact, Prine considered hanging it up when “The Missing Years” took off.

” … When this one came out,” Prine said about “The Missing Years,” “and it started rolling - I’ve heard this story from other artists, but I’ve never experienced it before - it caught momentum and just kept going and going and going and actually selling records and getting radio play, which is something I hadn’t dealt with since Asylum.”

For this year’s show, Prine brings with him a new Oh Boy artist, Knoxville, Tenn. native, R. B. Morris. Morris is a literate songwriter who blends blues, country, gospel and rock influences in a zesty whole.

Like Heather Eatman, who opened for Prine last year, Morris promises to be a cut above the typical opener.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo

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