I came out of the fog of sleep this morning with that feeling in the pit of my stomach that something was wrong, something had happened, but not being able to quite identify it yet. Then, up through layers of the dream state, the memory came into focus that John Prine had died last night. And the sadness was simply engulfing.
As I lay there thinking about him, the memory of the first time I met him—which I hadn’t thought about in a couple of decades—came back to me and actually made me laugh out loud. It was in December of 1993, about 6 months after I’d started Performing Songwriter magazine, and I was at a record release party at Pat McLaughlin’s house. I knew exactly two people there, and after wearing out my conversational skills with them I wandered around Pat’s house to a library-type room where there was a television on the wall. No one was in there, but there was some kind of music awards show on the TV and at that very moment Whitney Houston was singing “I Have Nothing,” belting it out with her praise hand raised. Since I was alone in the room and everyone else was at the other end of the house, when she hit that modulation I raised my hand just like Whitney and sang along to “don’t make me cloooose one more door, I don’t wanna hurt anymore…” Then I heard a chuckle behind me and turned around to see John Prine standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame, grinning. He said, “You know, you came mighty close to hittin’ that note.”
I’d first heard John’s songs in the late 70s, when one of my best friends in high school, Ben, introduced me to them. Ben and his brothers had the best record collection in Baton Rouge, and it was at their house, lying on the carpet in the living room, where I first heard Randy Newman, Jennifer Warnes, Kate Bush. But it was the summer afternoon when he played Prine’s first album—with the cover of him sitting on a bale of straw—that was life changing. Oh my God, every song. Every word. “Illegal Smile,” “Hello in There,” “Sam Stone,” “Spanish Pipedream,” “Angel from Montgomery.”
By the early 80s, when I was working on staff for the Appalachia Service Project, I knew all of Prine’s songs on the guitar and we sang them endlessly — the perfect sing-alongs for the volunteer high school groups and staff gatherings. “Paradise,” “Dear Abby,” “Please Don’t Bury Me,” “Donald and Lydia,” “ Grandpa Was a Carpenter” — a deep well of songs that connected us to each other with a time and a place.
During the life of the magazine I was lucky to interview John a couple of times, spending hours with him laughing and talking about songwriting. And like he did with seemingly everyone, he made me feel like he was so happy to see me whenever we ran into each other around town.
One time several years ago when Mom was visiting, we went to Sunday brunch at a favorite Green Hills restaurant of ours and John and his two young sons were there waiting for a table, too. The boys were playing with some kind of Game Boy or something, and sat on either side of Mom showing her how it worked while John and I visited. They were all so sweet to her, and after we were seated I told Mom that John was a songwriter who’d been on the cover of my magazine. And I reminded her of a newspaper article she’d clipped for me years before about a songwriter who loved Christmas, and would keep his Christmas tree up all year. I told her that was John, and it thrilled her. Mom and I ran into them again a couple weeks later at the same restaurant, same Sunday brunch, and she lit up. She told him about clipping that article on him, and that she loved Christmas, too. And he and his sons all gave her a hug when we said goodbye. I loved him for a lot of things, but the way he made my mom smile was at the top of the list.
We used to say that we’d run into each other in threes — we wouldn’t cross paths for a couple of years, and then boom … three times within a few days. The last two times I saw him was a couple of years ago at the Station Inn for a Jim Rooney event—a quick howdy and hug before heading out the back door. Then the next day I ran into him at the Green Hills Kroger, on my way to my car as he was walking in. We stopped for a quick chat and he asked how my mom was. I told him she’d recently passed, and that it meant so much to me how kind he and his sons were to her, and how he made her smile so big. He said, “That smile of your mom’s didn’t need any help being big.” Then I said I’d see him soon because we had our third random run-in waiting in the wings. He said, “I’m lookin’ forward to it,” as he headed into the grocery, stopping to say hi to someone else and make their day, too.
I loved John, and I’ll certainly miss having him on this earth. But I realize today that the grief of his loss is also all wrapped up in everything else I miss right now, and John and his songs tied them all together. I miss seeing my friends in person instead of on a computer screen because of Covid. I miss how it felt to lie on the carpet at Ben’s parents’ house on a summer day and listen to records. I miss laughing and singing songs with my ASP buddies. I miss my Mom’s smile. I miss the normalcy of days.
So this afternoon I’ll go outside and pull weeds again, like I do every day now. They seem to be some kind of resurrection of the ordinary that I can count on. And I’ll send up prayers for John’s wife, family, and all of his friends who I know are aching. And I’ll send one up for all of you, too. Because I miss you.
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