JOHN PRINE 2005 ONTARIO CANADIAN CONCERTS REVIEWS

Cisco Systems Blues Fest, Ottawa, Ontario
July 17th, 2005

By: Jonathan
Mr. Prine's performance in Ottawa this year was superb. I was a little disappointed when I saw that he was only scheduled to play for an hour, but I think he went longer than that and did two encore pieces, so I was pleased. He was received like a hometown hero and got four standing ovations. Highlights for me were Lake Marie, and Your Flag Decal..., especially with his classic mid-song commentary on why he resurrected it as a live piece (You're right, John, many people still don't see things our way)... if only he sang "Some Humans Ain't Human"... Maybe next time. Mr. Prine can sing or fish in Canada anytime he wants.

By: TWL
JOHN, EXCELLENT CONCERT, THE FIRST TIME I'VE SEEN YOU LIVE. I ASSOCIATED THE EXCITEMENT WITH SEEING MY DAUGHTER BORN 7 YRS AGO. WILL CATCH UP TO YOU SOON!! TWL SUDBURY ONT CAN

By: Patrick Langston
excerpt from: http://www.canada.com/ottawa/ottawacitizen/news/arts/story.html?id=11f5d85b-cd88-4579-9dcf-78561188b990  
  Gauthier proves a tad too blue, while Prine shines 
  Grinning from the second he strode across the stage, Prine 
  accompanied by slap bass and electric lead guitar 
  opened with a rocking version of Spanish Pipedream. 
  He followed that immediately with another oldie, the jingoism-bashing Your Flag Decal Won't Get You into Heaven Anymore. "I stopped singing it in 1978," said Prine, "but I took it down last year and polished it off 'cause we still got some people who don't see things the way we do." 
  One of the most beloved singer/songwriters on the entertainment circuit, as his hugely appreciative Bluesfest audience repeatedly reminded him, the 58-year-old Prine looked healthy and sounded, well, not melodious maybe, but at least strong and unique -- despite his bout with cancer a few years ago. 
  With a catalogue that stretches back about 35 years, Prine focused on old favorites last night. 
  "This song was designed and built just to make you feel good," said Prine as he introduced Whistle and Fish, which references his stint in the U.S. army and showcases his love of the absurd (one verse recalls his first job, scrubbing a parking lot on his knees). 
  Between the reworked and still-sparkling flashbacks, Prine introduced a few tunes from his recently released Fair & Square including Glory of True Love and Taking a Walk, the latter's classic Prine-ism "I felt about as welcome as a Wal-Mart Superstore" drawing whistles of empathy from the crowd. 
  Prine's stories of everyday people and events, sprinkled with common images like sausages and Chevrolets and that big-box store, are invariably accessible. His laid back style, in full bloom last night, clinches his audience connection. 

By: DENIS ARMSTRONG
excerpts from - http://jam.canoe.ca/Music/2005/07/18/1137124-sun.html  
John Prine in Ottawa 
John Prine stays delightfully low-key 
  OTTAWA -- After 11 nights of fireworks and pyrotechnics, Bluesfest 2005 shut 'er down for another summer last night with a whimper, not a bang with John Prine. 
  The venerable American folk singer wrote himself into music history with his 1971 album John Prine. More than 30 years later and despite being ravaged by cancer, an ebullient Prine proved he still had the licks to turn out a great set. 
  Many of the virtues that made Prine such an eloquent spokesman for America's counter-culture in the 1970s when the U.S. was involved in an unpopular war in Vietnam and then-President Richard Nixon was the scourge of civil liberties were just as resonant last night. 
  It's the mantle that another generation of socially conscious songwriters such as Rodney Crowell and Steve Earle now carry. 
  Dressed in black and accompanied by guitarist Jason Wilber, Prine opened his 75-minute set with Spanish Pipe Dream and the rambling Fish and Whistle. 
  Despite his ailing health, or perhaps because of it, Prine seemed positively energized by the closing-night audience. Clearly showing the ravages of his bout with cancer and surgery that's left him without saliva glands, he appeared in a guardedly sentimental mood -- as sentimental as he gets, anyway. 
  As likely to tell you off with a big toothy grin, he covered a wide range of love songs such as Angel From Montgomery, Lake Marie and a pair from his new Fair and Square record, The Glory of True Love and I'm Taking a Walk. For his encore, he performed his hit Illegal Smile. 
  Prine's bite remains every bit as sharp as his bark. 
  What was most surprising, given his current state, was his impish sense of humour. "This is a good song to sing at your ex's wedding," he joked dryly before singing All The Best. 
  Later, while introducing She Is My Everything, a song he wrote for his wife, he joked, "I hum it when I get into hot water with her." 
  After nearly two weeks of top-notch talent, eclectic audiences, unpredictable weather and breathtaking musical jams, all in the name of good summer fun, Prine's performance was a delightfully low-key but heartwarming affair for a particularly unpredictable Bluesfest....

By: Bob
Well, he did it again. He and David and Jason rocked from usual opening number, Spanish Pipe Dream, Flag Decal (dosen't think much of Bush), two new ones from the Fair and Square album to the encore Illegal Smile. Great show John. And the darker smaller one was ...

Venue: Ottawa Blues Festival
Date: Preview for July 17
By: Patrick Langston

http://www.canada.com/ottawa/ottawacitizen/news/arts/story.html?id=bfc4f096-ee1f-40d8-9c92-d7b5770c1621  
  Character songs come to life 
  John Prine's memorable creations to take centre stage 
  Poor Lydia. 
  An overweight ticket-taker in a penny arcade, she spends her free time reading "romance magazines up in her room/Felt just like Sunday on Saturday afternoon." 
  A couple of other details -- she has small eyes and parents named Virginia and Ray -- and our imaginations do the rest. 
  Donald and Lydia, recorded in 1971, is classic John Prine, an economical, compassionate sketch of two people (Donald is a young, lonely soldier) whose ordinariness belies lives that are as emotionally fraught and worthy of attention as our own. 
  Over the years, Prine has given us countless other characters -- some humorous, others not -- trying to cope with a world they don't understand: the heroin addict and Vietnam vet Sam Stone, Sabu the Elephant Boy adrift in Minneapolis-St. Paul, even Jesus who, in Prine's accounting, has marital problems just like the guy next door. 
  Prine brings these and other folks to the Cisco Systems Bluesfest's mainstage tomorrow night when he and fellow headliner Mary Gauthier wind up the 11-day festival. 
  Much-loved as a singer/songwriter, Prine says he's an inveterate people watcher. 
  "Certain people trip characters in my head," he explains by telephone from his home in Nashville. "I can see them and get a really good idea of what they're like just by the way they're walking. 'Course, I could be wrong, but that's how I see them." 
  Prine has been fictionalizing life ever since he was a boy in the Chicago suburb of Maywood. 
  "I was a dreamer and I used to spend a lot of time alone," says Prine, who invariably turns an interview into a series of anecdotes. "I don't mean I was a loner -- I was a real happy kid. My parents used to loan me out to families that had no kids, 'cause I'd just sit there and smile." 
  That dreamy quality served Prine well when he signed on as a mailman back in his hometown after a mid-1960s stint in Germany with the U.S. Army. 
  To while away the time during those six years strapped to a mailbag, Prine made up songs, some of them eventually yielding the characters of his early recordings. 
  "They were just sketches and I did them real quick. Some of the early ones were just an exercise in writing, sort of a hobby, a way to get away from myself." 
  Although mostly composites, some of those characters, including Kathy in the breakup song Far From Me, stepped almost full-blown from real life into a Prine creation. 
  "She was a girl I went out with -- I can say that now, I guess, 'cause so much time has gone by. I ran into her in a bowling alley one time later on. She had a missing tooth. She ran off with some Polish guy, so she probably did better than if she'd stuck with me." 
  A master at the easygoing one-liner that instantly lodges in your memory, Prine also sometimes just hints at a character, as he does with the clueless advice seekers in the singalong tune Dear Abby: "My friends all tell me I have no friends at all," writes one. 
  Despite such memorable creations, Prine's dozen-odd studio albums, with their country, rock and folk forays into love and other matters, have never consisted of just character songs. 
  In fact, his recently released album Fair & Square contains only one, Safety Joe, although the disc does contain a biting characterization of George W. Bush in Some Humans Ain't Human: "Have you ever noticed When you're feeling really good/There's a pigeon that'll come shit on your hood ... (Or some) cowboy from Texas/ Starts his own war in Iraq." 
  "I'm not real political," says Prine. "The only thing that used to piss me off was when they closed the bars on election day. But Bush has done just enough things to piss me off and so I wrote that line 'cause I didn't want people thinking that son of a bitch had anything to do with the way I thought." 
  Not that this or any other Prine song is likely to oust Dubya. Aside from a Grammy for 1991's The Missing Years, Prine has remained well below most people's radars, with his albums averaging sales of 50,000. 
  Even bonuses like Bonnie Raitt covering Angel From Montgomery and Norah Jones recording That's The Way That The World Goes 'Round haven't elevated Prine to star status. 
  On the other hand, Prine has proven to be a successful businessman, building his Oh Boy record label over the past 20 years into a respected operation (Oh Boy's maiden voyage was Prine singing I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus and Silver Bells on a red 45 record). 
  He's also weathered a bout with cancer that resulted in surgery seven years ago to remove part of his neck. That surgery also affected Prine's voice -- always a distinctive if not exactly liquid instrument -- so that he's had to change the keys of his songs. 
  Now married for the third time, father to two young boys and almost 59 years old, the ever-affable Prine says, "Since I was 50, a lot of things have happened. Makes me think, 'What the hell was I doing for the first 50 years?'" 
  With a new album to promote, Prine says he's had to forego the usual family summer getaway to Ireland, where he has a small cottage near Galway Bay and his biggest daily decision is which of the nine nearby pubs to patronize. 
  Were they flesh and blood, which of his characters would he take pubbing? 
  "It's one thing to write about them, but it's another thing to spend an evening with them." 
  John Prine performs tomorrow on the Bluesfest mainstage. Tickets & times, 755-1111 or www.ottawa-bluesfest.ca. 

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