Prime time Prine

Veteran performer’s gone from
mailman to songman

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By Burl Burlingame
bburlingame@starbulletin.com

John Prine didn't give up his day job of delivering mail until after he'd recorded several albums. Not just albums, mind you, but acclaimed, astounding albums, with songs that went right to the heart with humor and wry observation. He was "discovered" by Kris Kristofferson and Steve Goodman and, like Bruce Springsteen, was hailed as the "new Dylan." But it was Springsteen who asked to sit in on a Prine album, not the other way around.

That mail delivery gig, though, that was a real job -- earning money doing something people look forward to.

Prine is bringing his unique brand of American folk-country music to the Hawaii Theatre this weekend. He declined to be interviewed, citing a medical problem, which is too bad, because we'd love to know what was going through his mind when he wrote "Let's Talk Dirty in Hawaiian." His publicist's office, however, provided another interview that he did as part of his concert appearance on the public television series "Sessions at West 54th" with host and fellow songwriter John Hiatt.

His recent Grammy-nominated album "In Spite of Ourselves" is a Prine anomaly: covers of other writers' songs, each done as a duet with different female singers, such as Iris Dement, Lucinda Williams and Emmylou Harris.

"I kept telling people I wanted to do a record with about 10 different cheatin' songs, each recorded with a different woman, and people would say, 'Oh, that's nice,' and change the subject," recalled Prine.

"Well, I finally made a list of songs and started calling girls up, and they said, 'Sure, when do you want us?' I was kinda surprised, 'cause I expected most of them to say they were going to China for a year and good luck! The first nine we called said yes."

Prine realized that 10 cheatin' songs would tend to "cancel each other out, and so we added songs about getting together, and breaking up -- 'cause of the cheatin'! -- and whatever country song could be broke up into a duet."

Some were decidedly weird, such as Onie Wheeler's one-hit wonder "Let's Invite Them Over," a minor '60s charter about wife-swapping, and Prine's own title song, written for a Billy Bob Thornton movie in which Prine played a "Zen hillbilly." ("Billy Bob took me to a Chinese restaurant in Hollywood with Andy Griffith," recalled Prine. "It was the pinnacle of my career!")

"In Spite of Ourselves" features Dement's pure, holy country soprano singing the line "He ain't got laid in a month of Sundays / Caught him once, sniffin' my undies."

Yes, Prine's prickly, sly humor and iconoclastic sticking-up-for-the-average-Joe doesn't get him up on stage at the Grand Ol' Opry too often. One of the first songs he wrote, the anti-war "Your Flag Decal Won't Get You into Heaven Anymore," actually got him banned from the radio for a while -- and is as topical today as it was three decades ago.

He got professional when the talent at an open-mike night in a Chicago folk house got tired of Prine's drunken needling from the audience and invited him up.

Prine played three songs he'd written -- "Nobody knew I was writing songs, not even my family" -- and he was offered a permanent gig on the spot. In order to fill up an hour (and his first album), he quickly wrote a dozen more tunes.

"Since the same people were coming every week, I figured I needed new stuff, so I was writing a new song every week," said Prine. "I shoulda kept that up!"

After several albums for Atlantic Records, and three for Asylum, "that ended in 1980. Everything was in kind of an upheaval for singer-songwriters, and I knew I didn't want to work with the majors anymore. I knew what my job was: If my refrigerator broke down, I'd go to Kansas City and sing to make enough money for a new fridge. My folks were out there."

He created OhBoy Records, at first strictly a mail-order operation, and now a model for a small boutique label. OhBoy's artists include up-and-comers like Todd Snider and Heather Eatman, as well as a kind of musical shrine to Prine's late friend Steve Goodman.

"Steve was a hell of a performer. One night we were playing in the theater where Al Jolson got his start, and Steve broke a bunch of strings on his guitar, and he got down on his knees and sang 'Mammy' into the guitar microphone. The place went nuts. And then he got up and came backstage and punched me on the arm and said, 'They're all yours now!'"

John Prine In concert: 8 p.m. tomorrow Place: Hawaii Theatre Tickets: $33 and $37 Call: 528-0506

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