John Prine in Concert - February 20, 2010
I saw John Prine on Saturday night at the Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank. It was awesome!
He played acoustic guitar with a backup band consisting of an electric guitarist (sometimes mandolin) and bass player (sometimes electric, sometimes double bass plucked or bowed). The band played the beginning and end of the set, with a solo acoustic stretch in the middle. For the encore, he was joined by Sara Watkins on fiddle and vocals (she was the opening act for the show). Sara's set was about an hour, and John's about two.
The concert included music from throughout his career, and a few terrific stories as well. One story was about his first gig, Thursday nights in a club in Illinois (Steve Goodman's?). SInce the same people were showing up every night, he thought he needed some new material, and wrote a song in the car on the way to the show. His guitar was in the trunk and when he arrived he realized he had written a song that probably included chords he didn't know how to play. So he ran inside, started working through the song, and realized it used the same three chords all of his other songs used! (That song was "Souvenirs".) At another point, he mentioned that since he only knew three chords, he'd be sunk without a capo. The point was reinforced when he played the intro to what I thought was "Clocks and Spoons" and then proceeded to sing an entirely different song to that arrangement.
Three chords or more, it all sounded great. He did a lot of spare, haunting ballads as well as driving, up-tempo numbers, and was happy to play songs that the crowd shouted for. Even some of the more sentimental numbers that aren't my favorites came across with total authority and conviction; I like those better now than I did before. Same with the ones I hadn't listened to as much, though I knew pretty much everything he sang. So did the rest of the crowd, who sang along to a greater or lesser degree with about 70% of the songs, and knew all the words too. Although that might sound annoying, it wasn't. Instead it just made sense. (I tried to stick to a little light harmony on the choruses.)
"Angel from Montgomery" accompanied by slide guitar and a beautiful bass line was amazing. So was the encore of "Late John Garfield Blues" with John and Sara alternating verses. They also did a terrific job with "In Spite of Ourselves".
Sara was formerly with Nickel Creek, and was a pleasure to hear. She played solo for her entire set, which included nice versions of "Different Drum" (Nesmith) and "Feelin' Good Again" (Keen), along with a fair number of original compositions for guitar and fiddle. .
Highlights of John's set were too many to mention. "Lake Marie", "Sam Stone", "Paradise", "Hello in There" were all songs that the crowd requested. Really, everything he sang was great. After a two hour set, one of the things that really struck me was thinking of all the great songs he's written that he didn't sing!
John Prine is an amazing songwriter with an unbelievable body of work. If you've never seen him, you should.
john hawkins