"Angel From Montgomery" by John Prine

Singalong 011: Same as it ever was

“If dreams were lightning, thunder were desire / This old house would have burnt down a long time ago”

I read a quote once in the Onion I think, or maybe it was the Village Voice. Or maybe it was one of the other countless local indie rags I used to read before all that fun stuff went away. It went something like this:

Q: Mr. Prine, why do you write so many sad songs?

PRINE: Nobody wants to stop in the middle of having a good time just to write a song about it.

Way to make that point! The clarity that that man had…

“Just give me one thing that I can hold on to / To believe in this living is just a hard way to go”

Marc Maron brought Prine on the WTF podcast in the year he died of COVID. It’s an interview for the ages, go find it. Asked about his writing process, Prine said that sometimes the words came to him so fast that he could barely move his hands fast enough.

As someone who takes just forever to write just one song, I can't imagine how it must have felt to be Prine, just trying to keep up with his own genius. The guy had quite a lot to say, as it turns out.

“When I was a young girl well, I had me a cowboy / He weren't much to look at, just a free rambling man”

People who passively consume music, who call it "content", or who let others define their experience of music? They don't only miss out on the music. They miss out on life. I know you're not one of these people, but they’re everywhere. I wonder how they can get through the day.

Music is life.

A piece of music will hit you differently every single time, and it will never hit two different people in the same way, ever.

“But that was a long time and no matter how I try / The years just flow by like a broken down dam”

Music is not corn flakes. Music, for me at least, is the voice of the universe. God’s voice if you will. A song is a window into an experience other than the one you’re having.

So along comes John Prine - who, as good as he was, was merely one of many - to show us life in songs with the warts and the sorrows. Of course he had a million hilarious songs as well, but let's agree that power pop was not his forte.

“How the hell can a person go to work in the morning / And come home in the evening and have nothing to say”

"Why so sad, Mr. Prine?"

We all need to sing. Music has no obligation to be happy, just truthful.

Because truth sets us free and freedom makes us happy.

Here’s my happy version of a sad song: