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CALIFORNIA  SHOWS

  • SANTA CRUZ CIVIC AUDITORIUM, SANTA CRUZ 5/7/00

FROM: Jimmy
John was in GREAT shape last night!  Jason and David where great too and Iris DeMent was there and I have never heard Iris sound better than she did last night. The SOUND was the best I have ever heard at ANY live performance in my whole life. (If some one got a tape of this show they have a treasure.) The LIGHTING was SUPER with the whole stage lit up you could see every detail. John did a set with the band, (Jason & David), John did a set with the band and Iris, John did duet with Iris, John did a set by him self and the encore was like a whole new set with John, Jason, David and Iris. The Set List, well the easy thing for me to do would be to tell you what he did not sing, Daddy's Lil' Pumpkin and Illegal Smile. (I don't think John has sung that song after I offered him a hit on my pipe at Strawberry, I'm confused and also very SORRY about that.)  I will tell you that John & Iris did all four of their song's from the album "In Spite Of Ourselves". With all those set's and all those song's you might think this show was extra long, almost three hours. And extra special too, with everybody singin' along with John AND THEN sitting on the edge of there seats listening and watching John, I think I saw John wipe a tear away his eye. Sorry if I missed any thing. Wishing you all the best, Jimmy

FROM: Bud Carney
I went last night and it was absolutely fantastic. Even Iris DeMent showed up and together they were terrific. It was the first time that I saw John Prine even though I have listen to his music for many years and love to pick up my Martin and strum along. Many of his concerts sell out immediately and I was luck to get a ticket to the Santa Cruz show. Everyone loved him.

FROM: Cookie
   Pure and Simple. I was at the show in Santa Cruz this weekend. I've seen John play many times, but this show was special. His song list was great, even better because of Iris, but more than anything else, I came to a realization that I had heretofore not recognized.
   One of the reasons John Prine is so awesome has to do with his innocence. His presence is so pure and un-corrupted that you can't help but give it credence. His love that he displays in his concerts (and on his CD's) is pure like that of a child.
   Tell me....what other artist could begin a verse with "hamburgers, cheeseburgers, Wilbur and Orville Wright" , and get away with it? It is because the music that John makes is sincere in a way that I'm afraid to say the American public is not used to any more. I only hope that we can enjoy him for a long, long, time.......

  • SPRECKELS THEATRE, SAN DIEGO 5/5/00

FROM: Carey Driscoll

I saw John last night in San Diego. I had seats in Row 7, and had the good fortune of meeting John after the show, and having him add his signature to my guitar strap. It now contains the signatures of (in the order they occurred): Gordon Lightfoot; Jerry Jeff Walker; Willie Nelson; Guy Clark; Ramblin' Jack Elliott; and Mr. Prine. A pretty damn impressive group, I think you'll all agree.
  The concert started with an hour of Iris DeMent, who in many ways brought to mind a "country Joni Mitchell". I was surprised at the length of Iris' set, assuming she'd probably do 20-30 minutes. She was very warmly received, and enthusiastically called back for an encore.
  After about 20 minutes, John, Jason, and David took the stage, to a very warm reception. As he did throughout the next 2+ hours, John smiled warmly and appreciatively at the audience's obvious affection for him.
  He was in excellent voice, and great spirits. Wryly funny, both in song and in spoken comments, he held the audience in rapt attention throughout the night. The funny songs made us laugh, the thought- provoking ones made us reflect, and the rockers kicked ass!
  Lake Marie was probably my personal highpoint.
  NOTE: This is probably only of interest to musicians. One of John's crew told me that he's tuning his guitars down one full step, a concession to the effects of his throat surgery. Non-musicians, this means that all of the songs are one key below the way he originally sang them.
  He has one more show, tomorrow in Santa Cruz, before taking some time off. I hope everyone has had a chance to see this tour. The last time I saw him was about 5 years ago, on his last San Diego stop. I have referred to that concert, while not *necessarily* being the best concert I've ever seen (although it was *at least* right up there!), as being the best in terms of the quality of the concert relative to my pre-concert expectations.
  I thought John and the band kicked major ass that night!
  I found out last night that that previous show was only Jason's second or third gig with John!  
  Anyone who has seen them knows, Jason and David are musicians extraordinaire. David's hands and fingers remind me of an octopus. His touch -- he basically brushes and tickles the strings, while hacks like me pluck them -- is amazingly soft and fluid. Jason is about as good as any guitar player *I* could ever imagine. And he's just turned, what, 13? :-)
  Well, I guess brevity gave way to enthusiasm. Shoot me:-)

FROM: Lost Bear
Mrs. Prine’s boy Johnny is a HIT in San Diego
     May 5th in San Diego is dominated by the Cinco De Mayo celebration, and when it falls on a Friday night, the Gas Lamp Quarter is swarming with party animals slamming Tequila shooters and having a wild time. An ol’ Bear would be a bit Lost in that young crowd, and besides, on this Friday night, just a few blocks removed from "whiskey river" an event much more to my liking was about to unfold. 
    SPRECKELS theater is an Ornate old Opera House in the Heart of downtown San Diego. A huge entry with a high ceiling and white marble walls led up to the main lobby which was empty when the Lost missus and I arrived early. While waiting, my wife recalled a time when this place was converted to a movie theater, and having seen the movie Pinocchio here at age 11. In recent years it has been converted back , and is an excellent site for John & company. 
   Iris came on at 8:00 PM and did an hour of great stuff. Previous reviews have listed her songs, and the order was pretty much the same here. She had been shopping at nearby Horton Plaza, and said she had been the victim of bad fashion advice. Her bracelet was in the way on her left wrist, so she moved it to the right. Her shoes wouldn’t stay on when she was playing the piano, but these things didn’t seem to bother her ability to perform, as the audience was quite pleased with her beautiful music. 
   Iris thought John and the boys might have been shopping too, and maybe she was right, they were certainly decked out in sharp looking suits. They took the stage at 9:05 and played non stop until 11:30. John never sat down which was different from when he was here in 1996 on the Lost Dogs tour, he sat during all of his solo act at that time. He seemed very upbeat and happy, and performed very well. I especially noticed how well he sang " All the Best ". You could hardly tell it from the studio recording. I remember when he was here in ’96, a young man had just joined the band, in fact, it was just his second day with them. Jason is still with him of course and is quite a musician. John did say that This would be the last time Iris would be with him on this tour, she will be missed, they were really good together. 
   I didn’t try to go back stage, as I had to work early Saturday morning. My wife and I worked our way through the streets full of revelers, ( they won’t be as happy when they wake up to that Tequila Sunrise ), and drove home feeling great about having once again being in the presence of America’s all time greatest song writer.

  • ROYCE HALL, UCLA - WESTWOOD 5/4/00

"Prine's Invigorating Return....." LA Times by Robert Hilburn

FROM:  Julie Camp
I have had the honor of seeing Mr. Prine in concert 3 times now. I'm 28, and admire and respect Mr. Prine for his song writing and most of all his humble nature. He was playing last night at the Royce Hall at UCLA in Los Angeles, and I bought the tickets for my husband's and my 3rd wedding anniversary. It was so good to see Mr. Prine after a couple of years off, (and I'm so glad he is recovered and well now). The show was great!! Anyways, when it was over I went up to the stage to see if I could get his autograph, but the stage guys were busy packing up and told me the best way to see him was maybe to go outback and maybe I would "catch 'em", they said. So I went outback and patiently waited for over an hour. I watched everyone leave, and no one else cared to stand and wait to see Mr. Prine. But my patience was a virtue, and I saw him walk out. I approached him with tears in my eyes, and was very scared he would think that I was just a!
another crazy fan who only wanted something from him. But I told him the show was Great!! and that I had missed him for the 2 years he was out and glad he was better. He said "thank you for waiting so long, and I'm all better now, and we had a lot of fun playing here tonight"...He asked me my name, shook my hand and signed my concert ticket "To Julie, thank you..love, John Prine." I said thank you very much and walked away as the guys were approaching him to drive him away, I heard him say "that was sweet". I was thrilled to death and I will have that memory forever...he is indeed a very special man...a humble and respectful man. I love you Mr. Prine. Sincerely, Julie Camp Corona, California :)May 6th, 2000

The Voice of Experience  By RANDY LEWIS 
   John Prine has been lionized by critics and folk-rock aficionados during his three-decade career, and 99.9% of the compliments have to do with the second half of the "singer-songwriter" description that usually accompanies his name.
Rarely does the "singer" part enter the picture. Prine himself makes no bones about the dirt-clod of a voice with which he croaks such uncommonly insightful songs as "Sam Stone," his 1971 look at the toll the Vietnam War exacted on one morphine-addicted soldier, through his whimsically titled but penetrating 1996 song "Humidity Built the Snowman," about the age-old struggle to understand why love evaporates.
   Case in point: When a bothersome lump on his neck turned out to be cancerous and a well-meaning radiologist offered to build lead shields to protect his vocal cords during treatment, Prine just laughed and asked, "Have you ever heard me sing?"
So chalk it up to the mysterious ways of the musical gods that Prine's latest album, "In Spite of Ourselves," is selling as well or better than any of his previous 15, when it consists not of a batch of new Prine tunes for fans to rally around, but of 20- to 50-year-old country songs.
Part of the explanation is the friends Prine brought along for his ride down the back roads of country music. The songs are duets with his favorite female singers, including Emmylou Harris, Trisha Yearwood, Patty Loveless, Iris DeMent, Melba Montgomery, Lucinda Williams, Dolores Keane and Connie Smith.
   "There are a lot of singers you hear and go, 'Wow!' because they have such great voices," says Loveless, who sings the 1952 Webb Pierce hit "Back Street Affair" with Prine. "At the same time, [vocal] perfection is not always desirable--it's the feeling you try to get across and the emotion, and that's what John does so well."
   Adds DeMent, who harmonizes on four of the album's songs and will open for him and sing with him when they play UCLA's Royce Hall on Thursday: "John definitely knows how to deliver his songs, and in my book, that makes him a singer."
   The album has sold 115,000 copies since September, according to SoundScan, and has spent 30 weeks on Billboard's country albums chart.
   "The response has been phenomenal," says Prine, who has been used to selling around 75,000 copies of each of the albums he's released on the Oh Boy Records label he started 15 years ago. (The label's logo bears a striking resemblance to the Big Boy restaurant mascot, an icon of Americana that keeps popping up in Prine's album artwork and press materials.)
   "It was something I've been meaning do to for quite a few years," he says. "I just finally figured that if I'm ever going to do a record like this, I'd just have to get in there and do it."
   When he started recording in the fall of 1997, it looked as if the album would be done in a few weeks. That's when he found out he had neck cancer, which put the album on hold for about 19 months.
   "I'd never had a serious health problem before," Prine, 53, says. "If I had to go to the doctor, it was like, 'Lay off of this' or 'Take three of these.' "
   Shopping for a cancer treatment turned out to be far more complicated.
   "I was talking to six or seven different doctors, and they all had radically different remedies," he says. "One wanted to do nothing but big doses of chemo, another guy wanted to do node surgery, another was big on radiation."
   The man he credits for delivering him from cancer is the same man who delivered Elvis Presley to the world--Sun Records founder Sam Phillips.
   "I got a call out of the blue from [Sam's son] Knox Phillips, because he'd had the same thing I had," Prine says. "Sam got on the phone and said I should drop everything I'm doing, go down to this place in Texas where Knox had gone. . . . The last thing he said to me is that 'If you don't go down there immediately, I'm going to come to Nashville and kick your ass every inch of the way.' So I said, 'Yes, Mr. Phillips, I will go and talk to those people.' "
   The treatment he underwent at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston worked, and Prine says he has tested cancer-free for almost two years now.
He did, however, get bitten by the acting bug while going through treatment. He's co-starring with Billy Bob Thornton and Andy Griffith in Thornton's new film "Daddy and Them," which Miramax has slated for late summer release. He also wrote "In Spite of Ourselves" for the movie, which is the only Prine composition on his latest album.
   Now the only pressure Prine is feeling is what to write about for a new album he wants to record in the fall.
   "I've never been so content in my life. All my new songs are probably going to sound like 'Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah,' " he says with a chuckle. "I have the best home life I've had, probably since I got out of high school. I've got a great wife and kids. . . .
   "Everything's good, but even more so since I recovered from cancer. You can't help but go through something like that and not have everything seem brighter than it was before."
JOHN PRINE and IRIS DeMENT, Royce Hall. Date: Thursday, 8 p.m. Prices: $25-$42.50. Phone: (310) 825-2101.

"YEAH LITTLE BUDDY GONNA GET YOUR CHANCE -
MAKE THE PUBESCENTS ALL WET THEIR PANTS"

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