John Prine - Stories in the Form of Music

By Cindy Layton

Most everybody loves a story, well told. Aside from our own stack of books or what we find at the library, in newspapers or magazines, if we look, real stories can come in the form of a poem or a song. Wherever there are words there are stories.

Those words may tell us our truth or they may take us to a place we are desperate to be. Especially when we don’t care to be where we are.

I’ve spent quite a bit of time and energy warding off the negativity that comes with staying home. I’ve convinced myself that it’s manageable. I’ve avoided anything that evokes trauma, apocalypse, or end of days, in the way of genre. (The exception being, of course, the daily press briefing.)

I’ve relied on stoicism. I do pride myself on under-reacting in times of peril. Should that be a point of pride? Regardless, I’ve felt prepared to weather the circumstances, knowledgeable that I have advantages that give me the ability to do so.

So it is that, when I heard John Prine died of complications from the corona virus, I surprised myself at how hard the news hit me.

“Angel from Montgomery” has stood my personal test of time. Those familiar with that song and his reputation for writing lyrics and music, know him as a bearer of all that this country needs: honesty about the American experience, folk without the folksiness, the assembly of perfect music to perfect words. He’s one of a handful of American musicians and poets who call on the roots of their craft and yet give the listeners a unique but also knowable story.

In the Boston Globe, Prine’s contemporary and fellow storyteller, Tom Rush, had this to say:

He had me from “Angel from Montgomery.” Damn, that song was so strong, so true, it took your breath away. This in spite of the fact that there’s a guy singing, “I am an old woman, named after my mother. . . .” It took about a tenth of a second to get over the, “Wait! He’s not an old woman!” bit and get swept away by the power of the story, get drawn into the picture he was painting. (Also, there was the part that it never seemed to even occur to him that he was not, in fact, an old woman, he understood and occupied that character so fully and empathetically.)

Isn’t that the essence of storytelling? To occupy the character so fully? As writers, our one job is to do that for our readers. A songwriter, however, has that difficult task, and when it’s done, must go on to conjure up notes and melodies to occupy those words.

So, let’s never again complain about how hard writing is.

Instead, let’s take from music, and poetry, and magazine writing and newspapers, the stories of our lives and of others’ lives, even those whom we don’t know. Note that John Prine didn’t have a philosophical discussion with himself or anyone else about whether he was qualified to write a song about an old woman.

He didn’t even have much of an audience at the time he wrote it in 1971. He did, however, have authority. He had a voice and the words and music and defied anyone to question it.

As writers, we need to occupy our characters the way John Prine did.

Our readers deserve a firm reckoning of who these characters are, not who we want them to be.

 And, regardless of our shut-in status, or maybe because of it, we all deserve a reckoning about where we are, not where we want to be.

John Prine, Angel from Montgomery

So many others paused to remember his work and note his passing. Here’s Kevin Cullen from the Boston Globe, April 16.