[John Prine]

Thank you

(Yay Todd!)

Ha ha, yay Todd! You’re doing terrific down there! I’m having a lot of fun, I hope you guys are having a good time

I wanna do this song I’ve been playing awhile, not that long. Last year we had that, we had to stay home but not only that, we lost a lot of troubadours. One John Prine was like a. John Prine played a large role in my, I met him when I was really young and he was working on a record called The Missing Years. And he was making the demos for that record in Memphis

Keith Sykes was the producer and he knew how much I loved John so he hirеd me to be the runnеr. Meaning I picked up John at the hotel and took him where he wanted to go and got him what he needed. And he came out to see me, the second day we knew each other, he came to see me play at this place called the Daily Planet. And after that, him and his manager, Al Bunetta and Don Bunetta and Fiona Prine. Those four, they looked after me like I was their own for a long time. I made albums for them

People asked me what he’s like a lot and the one story I like to tell is how he always, for years, his whole career, he ended his shows with Paradise and would get the opener to come play with him. And I came out to do it when it was my turn. And I didn’t have a pick and I said I don’t have a pick and he pointed to this pile with like a 150 of them and he was like, “use one of those”. And I went to grab one and he said, “not that one, though”. That’s what he was like

But then you’d play that song with him and then you’d walk off and I’d point that out, he would walk off. For years he’d walk off after thanking them, then he’d walk off

And I’ll tell you, my favourite story is when we went to Europe together and we’d travelled for 14 hours, if I remember. It was just this long flight, we were all beat up and tired and cranky. We knew we had a little bit of drive still. And it was me and John, his tour manager Mitchell, Jason and Dave: guys in the band. And when we get in the car, they start going, John says, “Hey, I think you might be heading the wrong way”. We have a long drive still and the kid says, “No, this is right, this is right”

And then like an hour and a half fucking later, that fucking kid says, “Mr. Prine, I think you might have been right”. I just wanted to fucking kill that kid. And I could tell that tour manager Mitchell wanted to kill that kid and the band, everybody was angry except for fucking John. And I don’t mean that he had just read some book about How Not to Be So Angry or just got sober, joined a church or anything. He was just being the kind of guy who could make up Hello in There. And he still is. He said to that kid, he said, “That’s okay, it’s fun to drive around”. And he meant it. I’m certain that he meant it

My last memory of John was on that last tour he did. He’d been real sick before that tour and I think he felt like time was running against him, you know. On that tour, he did something I’d never seen him do. At the end of the show, he didn’t play Paradise, he played Lake Marie. And he would set his guitar down and he started dancing around a little bit. And then a little more. And then a little more, you know. And eventually he was way out the lip of the stage, he turned around and shook his butt at the crowd. He was doing this to everybody. Like what’s happening, in my mind I was like, “What is happening right now?” He was swinging it

And then it hit me, I felt like not only is there a difference between the way that young people dance and the way that older people dance. In that, when young people dance, it’s like an expression of maybe feeling sexy. And then when you’re older and you do it, it’s because maybe you don’t give a rat’s ass if you look sexy or not

And I felt like oh my god he’s, really I started to cry cos I thought this his last poem and there ain’t no words to it, that’s what I thought. It’s just a blast of gratitude. He had a watch on a chain that he walked off swinging. What a guy. He walked past me and said, “You didn’t see that coming, did ya?” And I did not

And the last thing I’ll tell you before I play this song is that he had a nickname for, that he came up with for himself. It was Handsome John. That’s what he was like