By Ken Paulson
John Prine meant the world to our family.
My wife-to-be Peggy and I went to see John, Steve Goodman, Bill Quateman and Bonnie Koloc at Ravinia Festival just after high school graduation in the Chicago suburbs.
We were so excited that I missed the exit on the way home and badly blew curfew. Peggy’s mom was …. judgmental.
One of my earliest paid writing gigs was a handwritten review of John’s second album “Diamonds in the Rough.” I praised the album, but pointed out his limited vocal range. Punk.
His music was everywhere in our household, and we had to convince our 12-year-old son to join us for a Prine concert in New York. He liked “Space Monkey.” Now a music writer for the Tennessean, he just wrote his own celebration of John.
We thought of John as our local musical hero because of shared Chicago ties, but then John moved to Nashville. And a decade later, so did we.
It was coincidence, but the best kind. Suddenly our favorite artist popped up all over town, on stage and in the grocery store. One night a dear friend tipped me off that John was going to hold a secret Christmas party in an hour, and sure enough, there he was with his brother Billy, friends and family in a local sports bar. John liked Christmas.
I had the privilege to host John on our “Speaking Freely” TV show on PBS stations years later and saw firsthand what I had been told so often: He was the same guy on stage as he was in-person.
And then just last fall, my wife and I attended “All the Best,” the magnificent festival he and Fiona Whelan Prine staged in the Dominican Republic. There was a truly special night when he took the stage to perform his first album from start to finish, as a full and incandescent moon was reflected in the waves. For the rest of my life, when I think of John, I’ll think of that moment and those songs.
So thankful for that, and for everything John Prine brought into the lives of everyone who loved his music – and him.