12 special moments at John Prine’s inaugural “All the Best” Festival

By Ken Paulson –

John Prine’s music – and life – have always been marked by courage, compassion and integrity.

Now imagine a music festival just like that.

All the Best, a Prine-curated Sixthman festival in the Dominican Republic, wrapped up tonight after four days of inspired and inspiring music from some of the top songwriters in the world, including Prine, Lucinda Williams, Steve Earle, Gretchen Peters, Lori McKenna and Brandi Carlile.

More important, the performers at this festival were hellraisers and truth tellers, just like their host. When you write a line like “Jesus Christ died for nothing, I suppose,” you don’t invite the meek to your festival.

Kentucky songwriter Kelsey Waldon said it was a treat to perform where “people care so much about the lyrics . . . awesome.”

12 special moments:

• The day after the Country Music Awards featured “Independence Day, Gretchen Peters proudly performed her indelible anthem, smiling broadly and exultantly declaring “My words came out of Dolly Parton’s mouth!”
• Throughout the festival, artists covered Prine’s songs to often stirring effect. Perhaps the most moving, though, were Emmylou Harris and Ruby Amanfu’s respective takes on “Angel From Montgomery.” Prine noted that when artists perform the song, they always base it on Bonnie Raitt’s version instead of his.

• Much like Prine, Paul Thorn is always wildly entertaining, but then he’ll draw you up short with a song that makes you look at something in a fresh way. “You Might Be Wrong” couldn’t have been more timely.

• Given the line-up, the festival was full of songs that reflect the news. Todd Snider joked that surveys indicate that only 50 percent of the audience should like his topical songs, while Steve Earle’s “City of Immigrants” received a rousing response.

• In the spirit of the festival, Iris Dement and John Prine performed what appeared to be a thoroughly unrehearsed version of the spouse-swapping tune “Let’s Invite Them Over Tonight.” The real lyrics showed up about 30 seconds in. Pure fun.
• Nitty Gritty Dirt Band – The Dirt Band was a late addition to the line-up, and happily so. It’s hard to imagine a more joyous band than these guys, and that’s been the case for a half-century.  Sometimes you want self-reflection . Sometimes you want to dance. The Dirt Band has been around for more than a half-century, but remain as vibrant as ever.

• Keith Sykes performed “You Got Gold,” a number of times during the festival, but added the inside story during a guitar pull at the Breathless Plaza.  He and Prine felt so good about the song they had written that they were “overserved” and ended the night being “picked up by two women” – Memphis police officers – who promptly took them to jail.

• Tyler Childers’ swift career ascent has been amazing, and he played two crowd-pleasing sets, but the real treat was seeing him cover fellow Kentuckian Prine’s “Yes, I Guess They Oughta Name A Song After You” and “Please Don’t Bury Me

• Lori McKenna unveiled a brand new song “In it for Love.”  “I’ve only heard it twice myself, she said. She played the near-anthemic song in back-to-back sets and the audience roared.  Sometime, somewhere and in the hands of someone to be determined, “In It For Love” is going to be a hit.

• Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats played a raucous set on the final night and then Rateliff returned to the stage for a closing segment of Prine songs. Wiping away tears, Rateliff sang “Summer’s End” and was then joined by Prine for a touching “Sam Stone.”

• Brandi Carlile was fresh off the Country Music Awards, where she had performed with her new group the Highwomen. Her All the Best  set was high energy and compelling, but two solo turns stuck out: Her rendition of the yodel-intensive “Lovesick Blues” and “Highwomen,” the gender-revised version of Jimmy Webb’s classic “Highwayman.”

There was much more, including fine sets by Emmylou Harris and the Red Dirt Boys, Courtney Marie Andrews, Jason Wilber, Lucinda Williams, Rita Wilson, Senora May, Ruston Kelly, Kristi Rose and Fats Kaplin.

• But everything was eclipsed by John Prine’s revisiting his very first album, playing the LP in order, start to finish. This was the astounding debut album that gave us “Sam Stone,” “Angel From Montgomery,” “Paradise,” “Donald and Lydia” and “Hello in There, ” and signaled the emergence of an extraordinary new talent. Prine noted that the album didn’t chart or win any awards, but that it was eventually inducted into the Grammys Hall of Fame along with Neil Young’s Harvest and Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks. “I’ll take that,” Prine said.

Prine later joked that it took 40 minutes to play the album and another hour for him to talk about the songs. Of course, that’s what made it so special:  A great American songwriter standing steps from the ocean, exploring his groundbreaking first recording under a full moon. Now that’s Paradise.