Sarasota News

Your payoff: Don't miss John Prine

by Steve Webb
If the 1980's were John Prine's "Missing Years," so named after his 1990 song about Jesus' teens, the 90's are Prine's payoff years.

The singer-songwriter has had a steady -if low-profile-consolidation of audience and craft in his third decade of musicmaking. He has been Grammy nominated, and currently is pretty much looked at as not just the first but the best of the "new Dylans."

In part, this is because listeners have long since quit expecting him to match every single facet of emotion and characterization from his 1971 debut album. In part, failing that, he has regardless added a healthy body of songs and characters to his repertoire, and then performed them consistently.

Prine's annual West Florida trip coincides with the release of his second live album, plainly titled "Live on Tour" and mixing three new studio recordings with mostly 90's songwriting. He gives a healthy workout to "You Got Gold" and "Daddy's Little Pumpkin" from "The Missing Years." The more rock-oriented songs from his 1995 album, "Lost Dogs And Mixed Blessings" also get a sampling, most notably the mostly spoken "Lake Marie."

The two highlights sparkle because of Prine's seemingly off-the-cuff wit, something his Tampa audience experienced a few years back when he introduced a song about his ex-wife by telling of celebrating his first post-divorce Christmas by nailing his train set to his dining-room table, "because I could."

On "Live on Tour," the longtime concert favorite "Space Monkey" resounds in wry one-liners about a Soviet test animal returning to a non-Soviet world. Similarly, Prine makes "Jesus-the Missing Years" sound fresh even at its most writerly parts.

The larger band is tricky. Prine's fans come for the lyrics and for his asides. Under bad situations, such as his opening set in 1991 for Bonnie Raitt, at the USF Sun Dome, he's indecipherable. The acoustics at Ruth Eckerd Hall, the site of this year's show, are such that this shouldn't be a problem.

Note: this was run in the Sarasota paper the week of John's appearance on April 19 in Clearwater, Florida. My mother, knowing I was a Prine fan and going to this concert, clipped it for me.--WOG--