John Prine - Fair & Square
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Artist: John PrineBrand: PRINE,JOHN
Edition: Music CD
Audio: English (Unknown)
CD Release Date: 2005-04-26
Music Label: Oh Boy
Soundtracks:
- Glory Of True Love
- Crazy As A Loon
- Long Monday
- Taking A Walk
- Some Humans Ain't Human
- My Darlin' Hometown
- Morning Train
- The Moon Is Down
- Clay Pigeons
- She Is My Everything
- I Hate It When That Happens To Me
- Bear Creek Blues
- Other Side Of Town
- Safety Joe
Music reviews of Fair & Square
Music Review: Meat and potatoes songs from a meat and potatoes guy
Rating: 5 Stars
A classic song doesn't belong to its creator. It's ours. We take it into our lives and use it for our purposes and sing it in the car or the shower --- we own it so completely we might as well have written and recorded it ourselves. "My favorite song." It's like that.
What are the elements of a classic song? No one can quite say. But some people seem to have the knack of not trying to write them --- and then rolling them out with frightening regularity. Like John Prine.
Prine was once a prodigy, the next savior of the music business. At a tender age, he was introduced to Kris Kristofferson, and the next thing he knew, Kristofferson had called him up on stage. Prince sang a few songs on a borrowed guitar. Kristofferson announced, "No way somebody this young can be writing so heavy. John Prine is so good, we may have to break his thumbs." The legendary producer, Jerry Wexler, was in the audience. The following day, he offered Prine a recording contract.
Prine is such a natural songwriter that on his first album he used two songs he wrote when he was fourteen. At 19, he wrote "Hello In There," a song about senior citizens that will bring audiences to tears until the end of time. For thirty years, he went his own way, pleasing himself and, in the process, delighting his loyal audience. And now, clearing 60, he has a CD that is studded with classics.
This CD is so satisfying, so easy to put on the machine and play all day, so damn comfortable that it almost seemed that Prine had intimate access to my head. It was like, "These are my songs. This is how I feel. So how did this guy in Nashville come to write and sing them?" That was when I decided that I wanted to talk to John Prine. That's usually a terrible idea --- in my experience, you do best never to meet your heroes. But this thing could be arranged, and, in short order, I discovered that the smart, laid-back, endlessly amused persona of John Prine on "Fair & Square" is very close to the actual person I was talking to. Here are the Greatest Hits of that conversation:
HB: Why do these songs sound so familiar
JP: Because this was the most comfortable I've ever been in the studio. I sang these songs in concert over the last 3 years. I knew they fit, I knew people liked them.
HB: "Hello In There" was an instant classic. Forty years later, can you bear to perform it?
JP: More than any other song, it gets stronger every day for me. I never tire of singing it. I don't know how I came up with such a pretty melody. It was an exercise --- to use every chord I had ever heard. I paid a guy five bucks to write it out so I could publish it. I couldn't believe it when he played it on piano
HB: Some of these new songs are so funny, do you laugh while you write them?
JP: I laugh at the funny lines --- hey, I laugh at even the serious stuff. When it's going well, I feel like I'm taking dictation. But I don't have hundreds of songs waiting --- you've heard them all.
HB: Do they come out in a rush?
JP: I type so slow I can edit as I write
HB: You say you're lazy. Do you feel guilty when you go for months and don't write?
JP: I 'm not Catholic, I'm not Jewish --- I can talk myself out of feeling guilty. Because it's easier to not write. I only love the songs I have to write. I trust a song like that --- a song straight from the gut. There are some really good songs that, if you don't write them down, someone else will.
HB: On "Fair & Square," there's a political song, "Some Humans Ain't Human" --- but it's mostly funny, with only one direct reference to the President.
JP: I always felt that way about protest and politics --- include it in your conversation instead of raving about it.
HB: How does that song go over in the red states?
JP: When I'm first singing about some issue, people change the subject. Later, it seems about right.
HB: What's your daily media intake?
JP: I hardly read at all. My wife reads three books at a time, but I read "Archie and Veronica" --- in the comic book form.
HB: Who do you listen to?
JP: I buy a lot of CDs, and I listen to them once. But Van [Morrison] or Bob [Dylan] or Merle [Haggard] --- I listen carefully to all of those.
HB: Taking care of yourself?
JP: I have a poor diet --- I'm a meat and potatoes guy. That has something to do with how I see things. There are no peas on my plate.
"No peas on my plate" is a throwaway line from a song John Prine will never write. No loss. The songs he wrote will do just fine. Not country. Not rock. Not folk. Just...songs. With no gimmicks. I guess if you write classics, that's good enough.
Description of Fair & Square
John Prine takes his own sweet time dancing with his muse -- and truly writes what's in his soul. So if it takes him a little longer to write the songs that capture moments and reveal the gently folded human truths that bind us all together. It's always worth the wait. Now, nearly nine years since the release of his Grammy-nominated Lost Dogs & Mixed Blessings, the iconic American writer has put the finishing touches on his latest offering, appropriately titled, Fair & Square. "It was just time," says Prine in his always understated way. "I had a bunch of songs. I'd started recording them, and it turns out, I liked them pretty well. So, now, I get to get them all just the way I like them - and then I get to let them go out to meet the world." With the occasional wheezing accordion, curlicue electric guitar parts, quick-wristed mandolins, billowing B-3 pads and puddles of pedal steel guitar, the rough-voiced singer/songwriter's first self-produced record is a homey affair that draws generously from the palette of traditional American music -- be it folk, bluegrass, shuffles, vintage rock & roll, torch, country -- for an amalgamation that would be at home on any Wurlitzer in a whiskey-soaked tavern with beer signs flickering from age and the walls stained deeper than sepia from the years of constant smoke.With bluegrass queen Alison Krauss on the ode to his Irish refuge "My Darlin' Hometown", the street corner desolation of "The Moon Is Down" and alt-country princess Mindy Smith bringing allure and tartness to "Morning Train," "Long Monday" and the melted neon ponder of "Taking A Walk," Fair & Square is the work of a man at ease with his life, secure with his place in the world and willing to share the things that he sees. "It's been a while, so I'm pretty excited," Prine admits with that Oh Boy grin. "And that's a really good place to be."
Good things come to those who wait. During John Prine's nine-year interval between albums of original material, fans who hailed his recovery from cancer wondered whether he'd ever return to full creative speed. Here, Prine puts doubts to rest with an album that ranks with the finest of an inspired career. The big heart of "Glory of True Love," the socially conscious bite of "Some Humans Ain't Human," the reflective grace of "Taking a Walk," the wry whimsy of "Crazy as a Loon"--the hallmarks of Prine's artistry are reaffirmed on Fair & Square. The album also reflects Prine's first attempt at producing himself, with the warmth of his rough-hewn vocals finding a comfortable fit among the organic, largely acoustic arrangements. Though Prine penned 12 of the 14 cuts (including two bonus tracks, one recorded in concert), a pair of covers prove revelatory: Blaze Foley's "Clay Pigeons" sounds like it could well be one of Prine's own (with a melody that recalls "Hello in There" and a lyric of renewal that sounds like personal testament), while A.P. Carter's "Bear Creek Blues" carries an electric charge as the traditional song rocks harder than anything else on the album. With a generous selection of close to an hour of music, the album stands as a creative triumph for Prine, a fully satisfying effort that rewards the patience of his loyal fans. Welcome back. --Don McLeese
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