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John Prine: A range unrivalled

Singer, at 69, has battled cancer and hasn’t recorded in a decade, but fans still flock to his live performances
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Grammy-winning, country-folk musician John Prine has been performing since 1970.

What: John Prine with Kendel Carson and Dustin Bentall
When: Wednesday, March 2, 8 p.m.
Where: Royal Theatre
Tickets: Sold out
 

John Prine may have said all he wants to say in interviews, but the legendary singer-songwriter has plenty left in the tank when it comes to performing.

Prine, 69, continues to roll on tour and is enjoying a decade-plus run of concert success that almost always results in sold-out rooms. It would appear fans simply can’t get enough of Prine’s country-inflected folk music, even though the Chicago native has kept the studio at a safe distance for the better part of 20 years.

Lost Dogs and Mixed Blessings (1995) and Fair & Square (2005) are the only albums of original material Prine has put his name to since George W. Bush was in the White House. The latter won him a Grammy Award for contemporary folk album of the year, but his self-imposed retirement from recording is not likely to be lifted anytime soon.

The Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame member toured heavily in support of Fair & Square, including a spectacular concert at the Royal Theatre in 2005 — one that saw him deliver, in exceptional fashion, a 28-song, two-and-a-half-hour set. He followed that with a 2009 appearance at the Farquhar Auditorium and a 2012 showing at the Alix Goolden Performance Hall. Prine and his excellent band return to the Royal Theatre next week for another anticipated performance, their fourth consecutive Victoria sellout during the past 11 years.

Though Prine has not done much talking or writing of late, he did sit recently with Mike Leonard, the former Today Show correspondent, for a documentary broadcast on Chicago’s WTTW-TV. It was a revealing look at Prine’s life, from his upbringing in Maywood, Illinois, a suburb on Chicago’s west side, to one of his first public performances in 1970.

“I sang Sam Stone, Hello in There and Paradise the first time I got on stage,” Prine said of his open-mike appearance at Chicago bar The Fifth Peg.
“And nobody clapped. They just sat there and looked at me. I thought, ‘Jesus, it really must be bad. It must be worse than I thought.’ ”

He was 23 at the time, and working by day as a mailman in Westchester, Illinois. Three months later, he received his first review from Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert, who said Prine’s lyrics worked with a “poetic economy.”

Soon after Ebert’s early endorsement, Prine released his self-titled debut, which has since been named by Rolling Stone as one of the greatest albums of all time.

The album features a number of songs that will be in his set Wednesday, including his most notable compositions, Hello in There, Sam Stone, Donald and Lydia, and Angel From Montgomery.

“When I wrote Hello in There, it brought me to tears,” Prine said during his interview with Leonard. “I’ve learned since that that’s a good thing, because they don’t lie.”

Prine is a different singer than he once was, his voice now a leathery instrument following his 1998 battle with cancer, his neck disfigured from surgery. Prine said he no longer worries as much as he once did. Nor should he: Fans are clamouring to see him perform live, and his concerts often wrap in rapturous fashion and with standing ovations.

“It took about a year after I had my surgery before I got the physical strength to get words out above a whisper. And when I did, I thought, ‘Well this is it. This is what I look like.’ I’m not gonna go around wearing turtleneck sweaters and acting like I didn’t have no surgery.”

Prine was the first musician ever to perform at the Library of Congress. He did so, in 2005, at the request of Pulitzer Prize-winning U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser, an avowed fan who ranked Prine’s artistic output on par with some of the great poets in American history.

It’s not hard to see why. From songs protesting war (Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore) and documenting old age (Hello in There) to a first-person narrative written from the standpoint of a woman (Angel From Montgomery), his range is unrivalled.

“Look around you. You don’t have to sit and make up stuff,” Prine told Leonard of his songwriting process. “You just take down the bare description of what’s going on. It leaves space for the reader or listener to fill in their experience with it. Then they become part of it.”

mdevlin@timescolonist.com