WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - John Prine from 2016

Episode Date: April 8, 2020

From Episode 746, Marc's conversation with John Prine about Kris Kristofferson, Steve Goodman, Bob Dylan, Bonnie Raitt and delivering the mail. John passed away on April 7, 2020. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Yeah, you know, I don't know what to do with the clutter. You got a room like this at home? Where is that? I live in Nashville. Yeah. Any room that they leave to me, my wife leaves to me. Yeah. I love it when she goes in to straighten it up.

Yeah. I can't find anything if she straightens it up, you know. There's an order to it, and it's cozy. The more stuff you're surrounded by from your life. What do you got in there? Junk, basically. But I think it's really important for some reason because I've kept it. About every three years, I'll find something I haven't seen in years and years,

and I'll put it back. Why I don't throw it away something I haven't seen in years and years. Yeah. And I'll put it back. Yeah. Why I don't throw it away, I don't know. You know, I wonder about that too, you know, when I sit in here because I think like, you know, maybe I could just get rid of a lot of this stuff and a lot of the stuff that, you know, I don't know if I take time to look at it or not. But like you said, sometimes you have that moment with something and it'll take you somewhere, even if it's for a second. And I just don't want to turn around and put it in a wastebasket right or throw it away

because then you know that you've lost a time travel machine yeah i mean it would be good if it was like hash or something you stashed away right the surprise cash yeah right yeah i don't i don't think i have any of that do Do you? I haven't found it yet. How long have you lived down there? Lived in Nashville since 1980. I moved there from Chicago. I was born and raised in the western suburbs of Chicago. Yeah?

Like, what town? Maywood. Yeah? Right off of Madison, so we were neither north side or south side. Like, we were half a block off ofwood. Yeah? Right off of Madison. So we were neither north side or south side. Like we were half a block off of Madison. Yeah? And what did your old man do? He was a tool and die maker at the American Can Company.

Oh, really? Yeah, he'd moved up there in the 30s from western Kentucky to get factory work. western Kentucky, to get factory work, because there was no, unless you wanted to work in the mines or your family had a little business or something, there wasn't really a lot of work in that part of Kentucky. So him and a lot of his cousins and stuff drifted up towards Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago for factory work. Uh-huh. And if you did get work, you usually sent for somebody else back home,

and they'd come live with us, and they'd try it out and either move back to... My dad always thought that he was going to go back to Kentucky, so he raised us as if we were from Kentucky, even though we were born and raised in the Chicago area. And what does that mean to be raised like you're from Kentucky? Well, he always thought that he was going to make enough money to move back there. Right. He rented the same house for 38 years.

He could have paid for it three times. In his mind, we're all going back. Right. I remember in particular, they asked us at school, this was like third graders, to go home and find out what your origins are, where your parents are from, what countries. And the next day in school, a little girl in front of me stands up and goes, well, my mother's family's from Sweden and my father's family's from Germany. And I stand up and I go, pure Kentuckian, the last of a dying breed.

You know, that's what the last of a dying breed. You know, that's what my dad taught us to say. Yeah. So there was a southern pride. Yeah, but we were Chicago kids. Yeah. But we sure appreciated Kentucky because of his and our mother's enthusiasm for the area. That's where they were both from.

And is that what, now what kind of, what kind of situation was there down there? Because I don't know much about Kentucky, but I'm always taken with hearing stories about the South because there seems to be a much more elaborate

and sometimes gothic history of that region. Like I've been to Lexington, but I don't know where. That's totally different. Right. That's going towards eastern Kentucky

and Lexington is very, well because of the horse farms and everything, it's totally different. Right. That's going towards eastern Kentucky. And Lexington is very, well, because of the horse farms and everything, it's kind of. High class. Yeah, high class, but also not far from Lexington is you'll find towns that aren't, you know, that are just barely going. Yeah, a few miles away, there's a little, not much indoor plumbing necessarily. And eastern Kentucky. Yeah. Far eastern, right by the West Virginia border, that's totally different.

That's Rio, Appalachia. That's Hatfields, McCoys. Yeah, sure. And where was your family from? They were western part of Kentucky. I live in Nashville now, and if I go 90 miles straight north you're I'm in Muhlenberg County and that's where my parents you're you're in the land of your origin exactly and do you did you grow when you were growing up did you spend time down there did your grand folks yeah mainly in the summer times

yeah I'll go down and visit aunts and uncles and big family my granddad big big family, and we still have a family reunion where we all, these are all my mom's sisters and my dad's family. They're all gone. And the cousins still get together. Your cousins? Yeah. Some of them you haven't met before. They're children.

Sure. They're grandchildren. It was kind of the idea my mother told me as we were growing up and going to the family reunion that she always hoped that after their day had gone that the kids once a year tried to get together and keep in touch with your family, which is mostly a good idea. Yeah, right. And sometimes it's very interesting. It's like Thanksgiving and Labor Day.

Right. So are we talking 50, 100, 30? Sometimes it's as little as 30. Yeah. And sometimes it'll be up around 90. No kidding. Yeah. And what's great now is a lot of them I hardly know.

I have to ask the little kids. I don't know who they are. Right. But it goes over a period of three, four days we spend together. In Kentucky. Yeah. Is there still family property there, or you just meet there? No, there's no family property.

Nobody had any savings on the family property. And where did you first hear the music that moved you to do music? Like your grandfather, what kind of man was he? I don't know if they're connected, but I'm placing it in Kentucky. Both my grandfathers were from Kentucky. One was a carpenter. That was my father's father. And as soon as he would get done with the job, he would pull his family up and move. Oh, yeah?

To the next city for the next carpenter job. My dad went to something like nine different elementary schools up north and down in the south. He had a southern accent. He stuttered. And he was the new kid in school. Oh, no no so he said he learned how to fight like right away you know tough tough guy yeah and uh and and who played music any what was the music in the house uh it was the radio my dad loved country music yeah he'd

play he'd sit at night and uh he'd drink beer by the court because he claimed uh it was more like draft beer uh-huh you know if you sat there and poured a glass yeah from the court because he claimed it was more like draft beer. If you sat there and poured a glass from the court. Yeah. And he'd have the radio sideways, an old Zenith in the kitchen window facing the south. And we had a good country station in Chicago, WJJD. But on the weekends, you could pick up the Grand Ole Opry. If you tilted it right. The weather was right and you tilted it right.

And he'd sit in there with his quarts of beer and have me sitting next to him with an orange pop. And I'd be listening to Webb Pierce and Johnny Cash. Yeah. You know, Hank Williams Sr. and just all this stuff. And I listened to it because of my dad's love for it. Uh-huh. You know, I realized that many years later. But meanwhile, I was growing up listening to rock and roll.

Sure. And I had an oldest, my oldest brother Dave, who's 10 years older than me, decided to teach himself to play guitar and fiddle and mandolin. And he needed somebody to play with him for rhythm. Right, right. So he taught me how to play old-timey country music. Like just three chords? Yeah.

Uh-huh. And after I learned him, when I wasn't accompanying him, I tried to play some of my favorite songs. Yeah. And they didn't sound like the records, so I made up my own words. That was it? I started doing it since i was 14 and in his was he playing bluegrass music with those instruments not quite bluegrass it's called

like it was a precursor to bluegrass uh they're referred to as old-timey music uh-huh so like like what like uh like what was what who would those artists be, boy. Like old-timey country, like swing music? Yeah, I'll tell you who revived it was during the big folk thing of the late 50s and early 60s. Yeah. It was the New Lost City Ramblers. Okay. They went and got a lot of those archival stuff. Right, right, right.

And brought them back again. Right. What was their label? You know, were they on a... They were on Vanguard. Oh, yeah,anguard oh yeah yeah yeah i think you're right yeah yeah right so that it's interesting about that about that that folk revival and uh and just sort of this digging through the the the musical you know pile of

america that it was a real conscious thing it was a reaction wasn't it yeah i think it was yeah and it seems like it's coming around. We spend a lot of time over in Ireland because my wife's from there. Oh, that's the most beautiful place in the world. It is gorgeous. We're getting ready to go over for about a month and a half this summer. Oh, you lucky bastard. Yeah, I love it.

I love it. We got a place in Galway. Oh, my God. I envy you. You know, it's like I'm not, I've got no roots there. You know, my roots are Eastern European Jew. And for some reason, I go to Ireland and I'm like, I feel like I'm home. This place is, it's beautiful.

It really is. Does she have family there? Yeah, that's what we go back. She's got five sisters still. And they're all in Ireland? And her mother, yeah. No kidding. Yeah, they're all in Ireland. They're all in Ireland?

And her mother, yeah. No kidding? Yeah, they're all in Ireland. And Fiona and I, we had a long-distance romance in the late 80s, early 90s. No kidding? And I'd go over there whenever I had more than a week off. How'd you meet her? I met her at, I did a couple of shows over there. We did a festival that was around, what they were doing was getting guys like

me and Guy Clark and American folk and singer songwriters together with Irish bands and we did about three days in Dublin at the Vic? no no this is a venue that became the venue

oh the Vicar is what I was at the Vicar I think is where I. The Vicar, I think, is where I was at. Yeah, Vicar Street. This was the old, it was down by the river. I forget what they called it then. We were the first music in there. It was the old train station. Uh-huh, uh-huh.

So American folk artists with Irish bands. Yeah. I think they're still doing that. Yeah, my wife, Fiona, she worked at one of the big studios in Dublin. She managed it. Uh-huh.

And where U2 cut and everything. Uh-huh. So she was in on the music scene there and she came down to hear these things they call the sessions.

Uh-huh. And that's how we met. Uh-huh. Did she know you before? She said she came and saw me when she was 16 years old. That would have been the first time that I ever played Ireland. And what year would that have been?

That would have been 1980. Okay. So she came to see me. She's been thinking about you ever since? Well, I was in the back of her mind at least. You made an impression exactly uh i was uh after the sessions after this thing they threw a party for all the artists and it was a horseshoe shaped bar yeah and a buddy of mine was standing about 10 feet away from me holding the guitar up and saying hey john come on, come on over. Let's play a few tunes. I couldn't physically get from where I was to him

because the bar was like 10 deep at each. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I had to go around the long end, the far end of the bar, and that's where she was standing. And a little red-headed blues singer that I knew in Ireland introduced her and said, Come here, John Prine.

Meet this girl. And we've been together ever since. So that's sweet. So you guys have been together since 1981, 80, 1980? 1980, 1980.

And this is, you've been married, you've been married before? Twice. Yeah. That's the music business. Yeah. That's the music business.

You stay on the road and... Yeah, and those are the songs. You know, it's a sad fact, but it's true. It is, right? Some of the best songs are written, if you're a songwriter, and somebody breaks your heart, boy, there's some great songs down there. Yeah, yeah.

There really is. Yeah, but you get to a point, maybe I don't know if you've gotten to this point, where you're like, I don't know if I need another one. No, I know I don't. No, I know I don't. Yeah. I know I don't. You know, sometimes when I'm going through periods of not writing, you don't know what to say to me.

What do I have to do, leave you in order to get you to write a song? Well, when you were writing the songs, the Ireland thing, though, we were sort of talking about folk music, and I felt like we were moving in a direction where you were about to talk maybe about the folk music of Ireland. I noticed this is about seven, eight years ago, that the buskers on the street out in Galway and Dublin were starting to play the old-timey songs. The country songs. No kidding.

Like pre-Bluegrass. Uh-huh. It was becoming popular amongst, I'm talking about 18, 19, 20-year-olds. Yeah. And here I'm going, how did they hear that? You know? Right. Why is that becoming popular again? Isn't that interesting? It really is. You know, it does it on its

own. And it's also some sort of full circle because those, I think those Celtic rhythms are definitely part of the Appalachian catalog. That's where it started. It came from Scotland and Ireland. Right, right. That rhythm and the way of playing. Yeah.

And I think some of the fiddle too, right? And the ballads about taking a girl down to the river and murdering her and drowning her. All those happy Celtic themes. That was a successful date. Oh, my God. But when you started out, so you're listening to Grand Ole Opry music and your brother's doing that type of music, the old-timey music, and your dad's listening to what's becoming modern country or the great country artists.

And you're listening to rock and roll. And the folk explosion certainly hadn't happened yet. So what are you fiddling around with? I went with the way my brother taught me to play, which was old-timey music and bluegrass. Right. And it was familiar to you because you listened to country. Yeah. music and bluegrass right and and it was familiar to you because you listen to country yeah and and i would so i wrote my songs with the only way i knew how if my brother would have been a big

chuck berry fan right maybe i would have learned electric right from the start right and wrote my songs to the to a different a blues sort of bass thing but it was just happened that that's the way he taught me yeah and i wasn't going to go to somebody else and learn how to play rock and roll yeah well you're probably better off you know given the thoughtfulness of the lyrics and the uh the sort of uh you know you want the lyrics to be up front right you know and there's something about country music and that lends itself to uh to to putting the lyrics up front it's about the it's about the story if you're not chuck berry it's hard to tell a story in rock and roll i think that's true story i think that's really true and i think like i get what you're saying about the

because it seems to me that you know just getting back to that you you starting to hear that old time in music on the streets in ireland led to the Mumford and Sons and a sort of resurgence of singer-songwriters in that vein. We're seeing a lot of that now. It's sort of an amazing thing because your generation of guys are the guys right before you. I mean, there were some heavy dudes around back then that did thoughtful, I think it's primarily country music. I guess you could call it folk music.

What do you call your music? Pretty good. It's country music, right? Yeah, but you go to Nashville. When I first got to Nashville, I didn't move there to become a country star. Sure. I just moved there because that's where I was having fun.

Well, yeah, and it's interesting, though, because your music is straightforward, and it does come from that source, that I notice in a lot of the records, the tone of the record, you're always going to be you. You're going to write John Prine songs. You're going to play John Prine songs. But depending on who's in the studio with you

or who's producing the album and what they're going to bring to it, it really changes the sound. And I guess when you do that, like I listened to the record, which one did I listen to? Pink Cadillac yesterday, that you're working with some of the Sun guys, some of Phillips' guys. And then Sam come in and did two two songs on us yeah but this is sam what in his 70s right yeah but he was he was on it yeah he's a wizard right i think initially

he came in the studio because he he saw his boys were doing a project and he wanted to kind of give him an extra push oh really i think so uh-. I don't think it was my singing ability that drew Sam Phillips to it. But you were a known guy. Sam claims he heard my voice and he thought it was so bad that he would stick around and try and fix it. That's what he said.

Is he still around? No, Sam passed about eight, nine years ago. I talked to Peter Grolnick about his book about some record. Amazing book. Right? Yeah.

Yeah, it goes all the way back. When you met him, were you at the original place in Memphis? Well, they had sold that. Oh, yeah, now it's like a museum. It became a museum. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But Sam in 61 had built Sam Phillips phillips recording service on madison and that's where we ended up cutting and and what was it because it was a different record i mean

it was a dramatically different approach right and and when when you were in conversation with someone like sam phillips about your john prine songs you, what did he bring to them? What did his boys bring to them? What was their idea? Sam spoke in parables. He looked also like a character from the Bible. He had these big bushy eyebrows. I think he saw himself as a character from the Bible. He would get in your face and he looked like the burning bush was behind him, you know? And he'd tell us, like on a ballad, he would say,

Oh, now you boys are walking down the street covering both sides of the street that is so nice and then he'd go now let's talk

about sex you know and he said I want something like he said I want to do push ups too you know

and he would get like a all of a sudden like a preacher you know no kidding yeah so like it was pretty it was just cool working with him.

Yeah, yeah. And do you like that record? I love it. Yeah. I love it. When we delivered that record to Asylum Records, I heard an L.A. Yeah.

Boy, about five guys listened to it, and then four of them left the room, and one guy leaned over to me and he said, John, I don't think what you have here is what you want and i thought wait a second what did he just say right yeah yeah you know they just uh they the the kind of records that were on the charts then was squeaky clean they were good music now steely dan sure you're making Right. But it was perfect technical stuff. Right.

And the Eagles were making perfectly technical records. All good music and everything, but I wanted some noise. Yeah. I wanted it to sound like five individuals in a room bumping into things. Yeah. You know. Playing. And playing.

Being in it. We paid for the noise, and they didn't appreciate it. Was that one of those moments where you're like, I've got to start my own label? That was probably the beginning of it for me. I had one more record I owed them, and I went and did it kind of half-hearted and said, that's it.

What, that was the next record? Yeah, Stormwindows, which was actually more songs I'd written for Pink Cadillac. Leftovers. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. But let's go back because this is an amazing thing about your presence in music. And I don't know anybody else other than,

and I don't know if people make this comparison. I imagine I'm not that original. But there's very few people who are respected for their poetry and for their songs as much as, like you and Leonard Cohen. You know, Leonard Cohen sort of holds his place. He does. And, you know, there's about four records there that are undeniable masterpieces. And I think you're the same guy.

You're in the same place. You know, like I listened to Sam Stone this morning, and I think most people, if they don't know that song, should know that song. So I listen to that song, and I'm crying again. Now, when that song came out of your heart and your mind, and that is one of your most well-known songs, and the power of that song

transcends you know war conflict or anything you know and and speaks to a a darkness and a pain that that is you know uh eternally human right what do you think of that song do you feel that do you feel like if you if that were the only song you had written that that you would be like that's that that's a great song. I did feel all that about that song when I wrote it. Also, though, I thought that that song, if somebody would have made me a bet, I would have thought that the appeal of that song might have gone,

this was 1971 when I put it on record, I thought by 75 or 76 that would be a song because some songs that are deemed political, they wear themselves out. You go on, time marches on. And I didn't know that that song would stay. Those veterans are all still around. The veterans from other conflicts are still coming home.

Sure. Messed up. Right. Messed up. They go through all this training to go to combat and then come back, and nobody, it's like people are incarcerated. Yeah. They just throw them back out on the street and say,

okay, man, you're a citizen again. Yeah, good luck. Yeah, good luck. Yeah, good luck. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, if you need some health coverage, we got a place. Yeah. Come check in occasionally. You can find it there.

Yeah, no, the tragedy of that and also the tragedy of, you know, American life on a certain level, too. I mean, there's something that spoke to that in those songs and some of the other masterpieces. There's something that spoke to that in those songs and some of the other masterpieces. Angel from Montgomery was another one that was a window in to a sort of American heartache that never goes away. Do you know? Yeah.

When I wrote those songs, I think I was trying to explain things to myself more so than find an audience for it. Because I thought it was a hobby for me. I didn't think I was doing it. What, songwriting? Yeah, I didn't think this was something that you could make a living out of. Uh-huh. And surprise. Oh, exactly, yeah. But the other thing that's amazing about those songs and about your particular song craft is there's a simplicity to it, but the turns of phrase are so fucking good.

It's like you deliver the first line of the cup with, and you're kind of like, what's going to happen? Oh, yeah. You know, and it's so tight, and it's so economic. Now, like, and I know you probably hear that about your poetry and about your songwriting a lot but how much when you sit with a song yeah how much how much how much word math do you do it's um when you get a good one yeah i can hardly write fast enough uh-huh i feel like a scorched stenographer i feel like I'm taking the song down and putting my name on it. But I was just the first one to hear it.

Like, you know, it comes in all tied up in a bow. Oh, right. So a whole thing. It's there. Yeah. And there's other ones you've got to work on. Right. And I don't like it when it appears that you've done too much work on it

because it shows to me yeah especially with repeated performances yeah of a song where you know you really had to work and patch and glue things you know but don't you think you might be the only one that knows that probably probably unless i tell somebody they don't know that yeah unless you get off stage you go like i can't listen to that coming out of my head anymore. But like other songs that make me cry, Souvenirs, wow, that, you know, even Sour Grace, which is a little more, it's not as heavy, but Souvenirs is like heavy, man.

I mean, you know, it's beautiful, but it's heavy. Now, when you release these things into the world or when they move through you, do you feel a relief? Because I saw you here a while back when Connor opened for you. Right. I agree. Yeah. And that was amazing because you're traveling pretty lean. Yeah, and that was amazing because you're traveling pretty lean.

The band is a guy on bass, sometimes stand-up bass, and that kind of miraculous guitar player you got there. Yeah, he's great, Jason Wilber. Yeah, and the drummer, and you. And Connor, what was very funny is that, because I talked to Connor, you listen to him, and he's sort of a natural songwriter. It's a weird, natural gift for him. And with songwriters, the guys I've encountered, I want them to be heavy-hearted dudes that live a hard life,

but some of them, they just got a thing. He's got a thing, and he's up there with a full band, and he's spitting and dancing and putting everything he's got into it, and it's good, but then you come out just with your gravitas and you being you and your lean little outfit there. And everybody quiets down. And it's just a beautifully balanced evening of a dude that we can all just sort of relax. He doesn't have to jump around.

The songs will speak for himself. He's going to say some funny stuff. And we're all going to be moved. Real professional. Well, it took me a long time to settle down and enjoy that. Oh, yeah? Yeah. First 20 years or so, I kept thinking somebody was going to throw something at me

or stand up and go, what in the hell are you doing up there? Really? Yeah. I mean, that just stayed with me. Did that happen? Were you playing in those environments? No, not really. I was well accepted from the get-go.

But you just had it in your head? It was in my head. Yeah, yeah. I'm going to be found out. It was like eight months after I first stepped on a stage that I had a record contract. See, that's interesting. I sang for the first four months. I didn't quit the post office because I was like, don't quit your day job.

Right, yeah. I don't know what's going to happen. And I started making three times the cash that I was making with a regular salary at the post office. I would get that in cash under the table for singing. That's my hobby, singing songs.

Three nights a week. I could sleep the rest of the week. I was at the pinnacle. Yeah, that was it. You made it. This was it. I'm fooling him. I got it.

So that's what you did. So you were playing songs when you were a kid, and you were playing with your brother, and then that was your job? You were a mailman? Yeah. How was that for you? It was like being in a library with no books.

You'd go out on your mail route and spend six hours out there walking around. It wasn't like the movies where people go, Hello, Mr. Mailman, how are you today? People never talked to me. After three years, one lady I had a COD for, that's the first time I saw her, and she said, When's the regular guy coming back? I said, I am your regular guy yeah and was that in chicago

yeah i know and i wasn't even in the further western suburbs now now tell me did you how did you write those songs on your mail route i wrote hello in there on the mail route i wrote sam stone on the mail route no kidding yeah i mean there's not a lot to do once you're on the right street yeah now with hello in there do you do what was that provoked by a moment um the best i can remember is me hearing um uh john lennon's thing uh across the universe and it had if i remember right, it had quite a bit of echo or reverb on his voice. Yeah. And I got to thinking about. It does have a lot of echo, yeah.

About talking into like a hollow log and going, hello. Yeah. Hello in there. And that led to thinking about talking to a person that, trying to get through to him. Yeah. And then that led to talking about old people yeah and that's how it came about yeah i like picking names back in my early songs i love picking the right names for the right characters uh-huh you know donald and lydia and yeah the guy

rudy that the in hello in there rudy was the dog across the street. The lady would come out at 4 o'clock every afternoon and go, Rudy, Rudy, you know, he was coming for dinner. Yeah, yeah. And I went, that's the name of this guy's buddy, Rudy, you know. Yeah, yeah.

I just like getting, I like the sounds of names. Well, that's an important thing about it. You know, I talked to Jason Isbell about that, you know, where, you know, I had to learn from who taught, Nick Lowe, you know, he to jason isbell about that you know where you know it i had to learn from uh who taught nick lowe you know he wrote that song for johnny cash the beast in me yeah

hell of a song right sure is and you know and i i just wanted to believe that nick lowe lived that life you know i wanted to believe that i was talking to the guy that lived it it must it must been a part of him sure in. But he said to me, he said, I write songs. They're not all me. And I'm like, come on, they got to be you. But I think when you put

this emphasis on names, that song starts to take a life of its own. You start to build a life around it. That becomes part of the poetry of it. And those people become real that come out of you, right? Right.

So they're part of you, but they're not necessarily you. Exactly. But they're kind of all of us. Yeah. Right? That's the thing about Hello in there is it's sort of like it's a beautiful sentiment, you know, about respect and understanding of people who are aging and abandoned in a way just by virtue of the fact that they've lived long enough to be ignored. Right.

Wow, man. It's heavy shit. So, you know, because the thing, it's like the blues music, too, where, you know, you're talking about, you know, heavy hearted stuff. But the release of them through music, it actually has the opposite effect. I always thought I called my outlook on the world, I called it optimistic pessimism. Yeah. Admit that there is a problem.

Right. This is the problem. Give the characters names. Yeah. And then say it. Yeah. So it's kind of like the blues. Yeah.

And you just state it. And if there's a humorous aspect to it, then that enters into it, too, as it does in daily life. Yeah. People just don't walk around all the time with their head down. Sure. Something, something. It gets so bad, it gets funny.

Sure. You know? It should. Yeah, right. Exactly. It gets so bad, it gets funny, or it gets ugly. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you can only cry so long until you start laughing about it had it should yeah right yeah it gets so bad it gets funny or it gets ugly yeah i mean you can only cry so long until you start laughing about it yeah yeah hopefully again you know that's the best case scenario so now let's talk a little bit about your relationship with uh

with steve goodman okay uh you know because steve goodman like i didn't realize until this morning that he passed away so young. Because I remember he had a lot of records out for a cat who passed away at 36. And I remember seeing him when I was a kid. My parents took me to see him. The City of New Orleans was the big song, right? Right. But you aligned yourself with him pretty early as a producer and as a cohort, right? Well, Steve, he was well into the Chicago folk scene when I came along.

What was that scene? Who was there? Steve Goodman, Fred Holstein, Eddie Holstein, the Holstein brothers. Holstein, the Holstein brothers. This was after in the 60s there was a scene evidently in Chicago that it kind of mirrored the Greenwich Village scene.

You know, and from what I understood. And then it kind of died out in the late 60s when like psychedelic music got big and everything like this. And then... Psychedelic music won. Late 60s and early 70s, Steve Goodman came along. I came along.

The folk scene started... Coming back? Getting back. So you guys were just two different guys playing. I was thrown into the same well. And Steve was kind of the king of it. He knew every club every club owner knew him yeah and steve came to check me out yeah so and he was like little caesar he was just like

edgar g robinson he steve was about five foot one uh-huh and he'd walk up to you and get right in your face uh-huh poke his finger in your chest when he's talking to you. And I'm going, who is this guy? I'd heard a tape of him singing City of New Orleans, and I had pictured in my mind that he was a tall beanpole of a guy with a little goatee. Right. And here this little guy comes in my face. We became immediate friends. And he started taking me around and introducing me to people.

And it was because of steve that i that i got my first record contract oh yeah even before he did uh-huh it became his shining moment yeah uh he opened some shows for christopherson and christopherson was blown away with steve songs and said man you need to go to new york and get a record contract he says no you need to come across town and listen to my buddy John Fry. Really? That was the kind of guy Steve Goodman was. Uh-huh.

You know, it was his lightning bolt moment. And he said, no, no, you got to get in the cab and hear my buddy. He loved you. He really did. Yeah. And that's when you met Chris Dofferson? Yeah, that's when I met Chris. Chris came and listened to me at a club club where it closed already uh-huh where the waitresses were counting the tips

the floor had been mopped i was waiting to get paid yeah i have my guitar in the case chris comes in with a entourage and we put four chairs down and i sit sat right in front of him on the mic and sang my set. He bought me a beer and said, would you get back up there and sing those songs again? And anything else you have. Yeah. And I did. And Chris was just, he was obviously blown away.

He loved it. And at the time. Were you a fan of his? Yeah. And I couldn't think of more of a person that I wanted to play my songs for more than Chris Christopherson. Sure. I connected with his stuff that he was country,

yet he was doing stuff like Bob Dylan. Yeah. He was really saying something in his songs. And there was nobody else I would have rather in the world played my songs for. And here my buddy Steve Goodman dropped them in my lap. Yeah, and play them twice for. Exactly, right. Yeah, it was crazy.

It was crazy. Are your memories of that night clear? They are. I got home, and I sat on the edge of my bed. My first wife, she was asleep, and she woke up, and I just said, Man, you won't believe what just happened to me. My first wife, she was asleep, and she woke up, and I just said, man, you won't believe what just happened to me. I said, Chris Christopherson heard my songs,

and then he wanted me to sing them all over again. I said, they actually liked me. It was good. And what'd she say? She said, okay, well, go to bed and think about it in the morning. But it was... That's amazing. It was a moment, you know, that was for sure. Chris was the one that introduced me to Bob Dylan back in 1971.

How'd that go? All of a sudden, Chris says, Hey, come on over. Carly Simon was opening shows for Chris. Chris said, Hey, come on over to Carly's place. He goes, I got somebody I want you to meet. Me and Goodman go over there. We're there for about a half hour, and there's a knock at the door.

It's Bob Dug. Oh, man. Yeah. I mean, he hadn't been seen in public for about five years. No kidding. Yeah. Because he had the accident? Right.

Yeah. And he was really trying to be low key. He's up in Woodstock? Yeah. I think he'd found a place back in the village by then. Oh, okay. It was close to it. Yeah.

And he comes in, and we start passing the guitar around. And about the third song I sing, Bob starts singing with me. And I think, my record's not out yet. And I'm thinking how did he know my songs he had gotten Jerry Wexner of Atlantic and sent him a free copy

he already knew the words to come of my songs I mean I wanted to run to a phone booth and call I don't know who call home and tell them what i'm doing you know this is still the first record yeah this is when this is before everything you know exploded for me like uh i'm sitting in new york city playing my songs with bob dylan it was really crazy that's

crazy chris was my biggest supporter chris um i gotta say that that I didn't realize this until after I was in the music business for a while. Chris didn't introduce me to his manager. He didn't introduce me to his publisher, his label. He didn't try and steer me anywhere except towards good people and just let things happen. Yeah. artists happen yeah yeah you know and i don't i don't know many people in the music business that wouldn't at least say hey well come on you know with me and i'll publish your music yeah yeah chris didn't want to do anything but good things to me well yeah he's like uh i have no sense of uh he's a powerful dude as a presence and as a as an artist certainly as as a human. Yeah. I have no sense of him

as a person because I don't know him but I know his songs, I know his acting work and I know that he seems intimidating to me. He's not really. He just has that thing about him. He wrote some good songs, man.

Well, he sure did. He sure put Nashville back in a real good place. Did he? How so? By writing those songs. It gave a new standard. It opened some doors. Oh, really? Yeah, for Nashville people.

Because Nashville's country music is very conservative. I'm not talking politically. Right. It takes a lot to change back then. What's entrenched. Yeah. And Chris came along singing songs, not just love songs, but songs about people being in bed. Yeah.

They didn't talk about that. Right, right. You know? Yeah, we assumed that George and Tammy were having sex, but they didn't talk about exactly they didn't take the ribbon from their hair Chris like just sort of eloquent his songs were but they were still down at home uh-huh yeah and yeah that's something you share with him as much he must have seen as a kindred spirit. Well, he did, and I didn't believe it. Yeah.

It happened just like a dream. Yeah, it's amazing. And I imagine Dylan, like, you know, I can't get a sense of him. How the hell can you? You know, what Dylan are you dealing with? You know, he's a fascinating guy, and he's obviously written some great songs. But I imagine that Bob Dylan heard your songs and immediately knew it was something that he probably couldn't do.

You know what I mean? Dylan writes Dylan songs, but your songs are so efficient and poetically beautiful and full of an energy that isn't verbal fireworks necessarily, but something that kind of grows as you hear it. I imagine he was like, God, that guy's just nailing it, and it's so tight. But there's no way that the, I can't say this for Christopherson, but if Bob Dylan hadn't come along in the 60s and wrote those songs he did before he went on the electric

and the stuff afterwards. None of you would be there. There's no way. I would have wrote a Rora Bluegrass song maybe or something. Yeah. I wouldn't have tried to go through. He not only opened a door for people, he made that door and said, Here's the door.

Right. Come on in. Yeah. And I can't imagine how many people wouldn't have taken that step to be a songwriter or something if Bob hadn't done that first. Right. And I forget, though. It's easy to forget just that Bob Dylan has done everything. Yes.

It's one of those things where you're going to do what you're going to do, and then you're going to look up at the mountain that is Bob Dylan. Right. And that's what that is. Because he did Blood on the Tracks, Nashville Skyline. He did some very earnest country folk records. And it's because he had a big love for country music. He still does, I believe. Yeah, no, he's out there, too.

These guys who are 80 going, what? I don't think nobody, you did this for so long. What else are you going to do? I guess that's true. I mean, so you don't want to sit down? No? If you sit down, you're going to rust, you know? Do you go back to the post office?

I don't know. No. Well, what about just not work? And I do that very good. Yeah, you're good at that. I really do. I'm good at hiding. I leave the house so it appears to my family that I'm going to work or something.

Uh-huh. And I don't come home until about five. Uh-huh. Yeah, yeah. And this way it still looks like I do something, you know? Yeah. So now the other guy, so you came out, so you're sort of the second wave folk revival then. So Dylan was the first.

Is that how that works? That's the way I saw it, yeah. And who else was in your group? Was Tim Harden one of your guys? Well, because of the way I was brought up, it was Bob Dylan and Equal Doses of Hank Williams Sr. Sure. Because I was trying to impress my dad. Yeah, sure.

And I wanted to... Those are good songs. I wrote the song Paradise for my dad. Oh, yeah wanted to those are good songs i wrote the song paradise for my dad oh yeah that was his story uh-huh and i wanted him to recognize himself in a song did he he did he he my dad died about two months before my first record came out and i was able to play the record for him i took a tape uh i bought a tape player and took it. I didn't have a vinyl thing on my record yet. Yeah. I had a tape and I played it for him and Paradise was the last song on the record. And he got up when Paradise started and he left the room and he walked into our

dining room, sat in the dark, and then came back in the room. I said, well, I said, what'd you leave the room for when I played your song? And he said, I wanted to pretend I was on the jukebox. I thought you were going to say he got choked up. Well, he probably did. That's why he left the room. Right, right. He didn't want to show me.

Actually, the only time I can remember ever seeing my father cry was when Hank Sr. died. Oh, yeah. I was just a little kid, and I saw my dad sitting by this big radio down in the basement. And the news had come out about Hank Williams dying. Yeah. And my dad just, like, thought, you know. Fell out, huh? He was the guy for working people and country people.

Yeah. He sang what their life was about. Yeah. Great songs, right? Great, great songs. And his voice was, it had that thing in it. Yeah, yeah. And he was young.

What was he, like in his 20s? 27, I think. Isn't that crazy, man? He really is, considering how many great songs he wrote. Yeah, it's amazing. I was talking about Buddy Holly the other day, who wrote some pretty amazing songs, and a lot of songs. I think he was pretty young, too, wasn't he?

He was very young. So Cropper and Dunn, how do you hook up with him? How do you decide to do a record with Steve Cropper, and what were you trying to get? Did you want some of that stack sound in there? I met Steve, I guess I met him out here, and got to talking with him and

found out he was still back in Memphis I made my first record in Memphis at the old American Studios Chip's Moments place

and I like there's something about Memphis yeah it's only 200 miles from Nashville but it is so

different how so it's a more Memphis is more deep south. Sure. And where Nashville, back then at least, identified more with Charlotte, North Carolina, like it was southeastern.

Uh-huh. You know, and Memphis was. Does that mean more big city in a southern way? I'm wanting to be. Yeah, yeah. I'm wanting to be more of a big southern city. Uh-huh. And Nashville now is bustling. It is a big southern city. And Nashville now is bustling.

It is a big southern city. Oh, yeah, I love it. Yeah, yeah, I love going down there. And it's growing like crazy every day. I'm surprised Jack White hasn't pulled you into the studio yet. I have not had the pleasure of meeting Jack White. You have not met him yet? No, but I love him.

I love his playing. Oh, he should get you in there. He'll have you come over for a one-off. He'll just cut a single with you. I don't seek out people. I prefer bumping into them. How do you not bump into that guy in Nashville?

You certainly know him from about a mile away. He's a big, tall dude. I would imagine. Our time will come. I hope so. You do that record with Steve, and, you know, what's your relationship? How much with, because it looks like you got, you know, Jackson Brown's on there doing his backup vocals,

and he's another guy I imagine has a tremendous amount of respect for you. Jackson, I knew real early when he did his first album, he came through Chicago and played the little folk club with Goodman, and I got started. Uh-huh. That's Saturate before using. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

And he had one great song after another on there. Crazy. So we met here at Jackson early on and he became a buddy of ours as the few times we came out to L.A. early on. And Bonnie? And Bonnie, me and Bonnie were buddies from the get-go. Yeah. We used to tour.

Her bass player, Freebo bonnie bonnie had a dog named prune and bonnie's brother steve um was would drive the station wagon uh-huh we'd go out and tour together and it was just great she's a hell of a guitar player huh oh man i mean bonnie was even at that age when she was in her early 20s, she could play the bottleneck guitar. Yeah. She was not messing around. Yeah.

She learned from the masters, you know. Where did she come from? Bonnie, you know, her dad was John Wright, the Broadway musicals. Oh, really? The jammer game. He was the guy. No kidding. Yeah.

So she's a New York kid? Yeah. And they were Quakers. Uh-huh. Oh, really? The pajama game. He was the guy. No kidding. Yeah. So she's a New York kid? Yeah. And they were Quakers. Uh-huh. And Bonnie was raised, I believe, I think more out this way. Uh-huh. You know?

Interesting. But she went to school around Boston and fell in with that Boston, what was left of the folks thing. Right. In Boston, which was a heavy-based blues thing. Yeah, yeah. That's where she picked it up. She picked it up. That's interesting that she comes from that.

Like John Hammond Jr., another guy. Right. I mean, she came here. Bonnie came from a musical family, but it was a totally different part of music. She just picked up on the blues early on. Loved it. Loved it, and that's what she wanted to do.

Do you know John Hammond, Jr.? I met John. I haven't seen him now in years, Brendan. Hell of a player. He surely is. Wow. And thank the Be The Son, like his dad. Yeah, yeah.

His dad, without his dad, no Bob Dylan. His dad. No Billie Holiday. His dad's right up there with sam phillips and no doubt everybody those guys they knew enough to record the geniuses they weren't musicians themselves they were very intuitive to know whether somebody really had something unique and they would recognize it and give them space to grow so yeah and also the uh well jd souther another great songwriter yes jd's wonderful last time i saw jd with me and my kids were one of my boys were out here with me last couple days he reminded me when snakes on a plane came out we me and my boys

wanted to go see it there was nobody in the theater, right? Right. Just before the lights go down, there's one other guy. It's J.D. Souther. So we go sit with J.D. We all watch Snakes on a Plane. That's weird. Yeah. That's an odd moment. And is that your brother,

he played on that record too? On Common Sense? Yeah. Let's see, Dave played on a couple of my records but I don't think he played on Common Sense yeah

yeah and was that did he have a music career of his own my oldest brother he just played an old timey band and they played

around Chicago forever yeah he was my brother was a musician Dave Prine he's still in Chicago and Dave was a musician, Dave Prine. He's still in Chicago.

Dave was a whiz kid. Dave was the brain of the family. He actually went to college and got a degree. Still around? Yeah, and he would lecture. He's retired now, but he still plays music. Yeah, you guys tight? We played music down at the family reunion together.

Ah, that's great. I'd try and get up there for a Cubs game. Well, that's good that you got the relationship still, huh? Oh, definitely. I love my brothers. And how many you got? I had three, and we lost one a couple years, about five years ago. My brother Doug, he was a retired Chicago policeman. Oh, wow.

Living up in uh northern california oh that's pretty yeah he was a wild one of us he doug was the one that i wanted to be like yeah doug was the guy that drove around on a motorcycle yeah yeah he'd drive it one block and push it for three blocks yeah so after you did like when you made your own label like that i mean you see and you still have Old Boy Records, so that was after Stormwindows, so everything after that is all you. Yes.

It's all your stuff. Yep. And you got a new record coming out soon? Yeah, we got a record called For Better or Worse. Yeah. It's a collection of boy-girl duets. Yeah. I did that one about 15 years ago called In Spite of Ourselves.

Wasn't Lucinda on that one? Lucinda was on In Spite of Ourselves. Yeah, yeah. And her sang two Hank Williams songs on it. Isn't she something? Lucinda's otherworldly, I believe, as a poet and a songwriter. She's determined, too. She goes out there and does it.

Real deal. Yeah, I've had her in here. She's out on the road all the time, too. Yeah, she's wonderful. And who's on this one? This one is, we've got Alison Krauss. Oh, yeah. Iris DeMint.

And I love Iris. And Susan Tedeschi. Oh, yeah. Iris DeMint. Mm-hmm. And I love Iris. And Susan Tedeschi. Oh, yeah. She came in with a George Jones song I'd never heard before. No kidding. Called The Color of the Blues. And me and her toured up. And, man, she turned out to be a real good buddies now.

Yeah. All it took was one song. Yeah. And she's just a great performer. Great singer, yeah. Yeah. And then we got Miranda Lambert. Uh-huh.

And Casey Musgrave and some of the new girls, you know. Yeah. And Kathy Matea. Uh-huh. Puma Lieberman. Harley Williams. Uh-huh. You know, she's Hank Jr.'s daughter.

Yeah, I have her record. We did a song that her grandma was famous for. Oh, really? That Audrey used to sing with Hank Sr. Uh-huh. Called I'm Telling You. Oh, yeah? Yeah, when she found out that was the song I wanted her to sing,

she was just thrilled to be able to sing one of her grandma's songs. Oh, that's sweet. And now, how about original material? What are you churning out these days? I'm writing very slowly. you know, and trying to get 10 that I really like, and hopefully by the beginning of next year getting another John Prine record out there, you know. I'll tell you, man, you've had a rough go of it, you know, health-wise, recently. I've been really lucky with it, too.

I'll tell you, yeah, it sounds've been really lucky with it, too. I'll tell you. Yeah, yeah. It sounds like it was some heavy stuff, man. It was, but at the time, I felt... Well, you got hit with one cancer, right, first? I did, and it was a neck cancer. Uh-huh. But it actually turned out the primary was at the base of my tongue.

Uh-huh. And so it was smaller than the head of a pin, so it took them a long time to get that. Once they did, it didn't spread anymore, but they had to do some radical surgery on my neck in order to get rid of the nodes that had already been affected. And I got a great doctor down in MD Anderson in Houston, Texas. And boy, he said, I'm going to get this, and I'm going to stop it from spreading,

and this is what we have to do. And once you find the right doctor, the doctor that you believe in, and you've got something like anything related to cancer, that's half of the, you've licked it then. Sure. Because you can put yourself in their hands. Yeah. I keep telling people that.

If you don't feel intuitively that you're talking to the right person, go talk to another one. Yeah, right. Because they all have different ways they want to do it. Yeah. That's the scary part. And he didn't get your vocal cords or anything.

No, he didn't know. He knew I was a singer, but it turned out my radiologist was a fan, and he wasn't supposed to tell me. So he actually built a little shield just over my vocal cords. When he got the radiation?

Yeah, to keep the vocal cords from getting the hardest part of the hottest part of the radiation. And when he told me he was doing that, I said, have you ever heard me sing? I said, if I can talk after this, I said, I can sing. You know, it might sound different than I did before, but I said, all I do is say words,

and then at the end of the line I draw it out so people know it's the end of a sentence. Did he get a laugh out of that? Yeah, he did. It turned out he had all my records. Oh, that's great. That's great. And then you got hit with another one.

Just about five years ago. Yeah. Excuse me. It was lung cancer. But, I mean, they must have caught it within a couple of months of it just starting. Uh-huh. Only because if you're a previous cancer patient, you get checked out. Right.

Like normal people don't. Right. So I would get a chest x-ray every six months for no other reason than. You had cancer. Yeah. Yeah. And they saw this right away. They asked what I wanted to do,

and I said, please go in and cut it out. Tell me that I don't have cancer no more. That's what I want you to do. Right. They did. They didn't have to follow it up with radiation or chemo.

Uh-huh. It was that fresh. It was that new. No kidding. And I guess unless you go get regular tests that you wouldn't get it that early oh you got lucky yeah very i've just been extremely lucky with both times with the cancer that i got the right doctors yeah you seem good uh i feel good you know yeah yeah so when you come out to hollywood now what do you what are you out here for this time this

time is is purely stuff that I never do. I'm doing interviews because of that record that's coming out. Yeah, and well, I'm looking forward to it. And you hung out with Sturgill the other night. Oh, I had a great time. Sturgill's wonderful. I met him about a

I guess it was just about a year ago, and I heard his second record, the Matter Modern one. Yeah. And I thought, boy, this guy's, he's on to something. Right. He's really got it.

Whatever it is, he's got it. Yeah, real deal. And he ended up doing his latest record in the studio that I became a partner in. Uh-huh. And I'd drop in every once in a while, and here, one day, he'd have a steel player in there yeah next day they had these horns rfb horns and then i dropped it a third time he had a moog

synthesizer and i thought all right stergel you're doing it yeah he's got a vision yeah yeah yeah mixing it up well there's a whole crew down there that are really sort of like getting back, not unlike, I think, the folk revival. There is a sort of true country music revival going on with that guy Cobb, the guy who, what's his name? Dave Cobb. Yeah, Dave Cobb. That seems to really get like what those George Jones records sounded like

and what those Waylon Jennings records sounded like before you know I think country got a little desperate commercially that there was a way of producing country records that was clean but you know specifically country sounding you see you hear that or am I making that up no I do hear it what whatville became is is it became commercial yeah really commercial they were if they can make money doing that no matter what they call it right they're going to keep on doing it until it stops making money yeah but because i agree with what you said about this coming along this wave of yeah of songwriters like jason is, Chris Stapleton, and that. It's all, I truly believe in music goes in circles. People don't take so much of whatever you call it.

Right. And they want the real stuff again. It's coming around. I'm going to be 70 this year, so I've seen it happen before. It just takes, you just got to have patience and wait until it comes around again. Yeah.

What I do is I'm able to go out anytime and play as much as I want or as little as I want. And people come. I'm lucky that the people are still out there.

Oh, yeah. They want to hear those songs. They love you. They love you. And I, it's a real honor to talk to you and I thank you for coming by.

Oh, Mark, thank you.