Published April 11, 2020
This is a mission impossible, and self-assigned. Telling a story about one of the best storytellers of my lifetime? A fool’s errand, I tell ya. But, being a fool, your girl’s giving it a go.
John Prine died yesterday. He was 73. He was — OK, if you don’t know, check out any social media platform or plug his name into any search engine and strap in for the ride. Will it be around the world in an automobile (as long as it starts, that is), or a symbolic ride on an old rodeo poster, or out to the country, where you’ll be tempted to blow up your TV? Just kidding, I know you don’t have one of those anymore, if you ever did.
I grew up listening to John Prine. A sister had at least one of his albums, and after I learned to play guitar, I taught myself to play some of his songs. Try learning the music of “Hello In There“ without getting lost in the story of its narrator and his wife, Loretta. Or turning the organ-driven beginning of “Sam Stone” into something as poignant from the first strum of your six-string. Or figuring out how to roll through “Speed of the Sound of Loneliness” without letting anyone know that the woman’s part is yours, or without laughing out loud at the lines
You come home late and you come home early
You come on big when you’re feeling small
You come home straight and you come home curly.
Then, prime Prine:
Sometimes you don’t come home at all.
Early in my nephew’s musical career, I gave him a cassette tape that included several John Prine songs. Who better for someone exploring the alleys and back roads of Americana to listen to than the man considered a folk icon and architect of Americana?
A little more than a decade later, I was unexpectedly and delightfully rewarded for giving my nephew the tape. The band he was in was following John Prine onstage on tour — a most surreal piece of news to me at the time — and my nephew told Prine about the tape I gave him, and how much I loved Prine’s music.
This was a few years before I came out as Carly, so the autographed CD case in the photo at the top of this blog post refers to my birth name. But wait: There’s added significance to the inscription. The quote that Prine wrote out after my name and before his signature? It comes from another popular song of his, “Come Back to Us Barbara Lewis Hare Krishna Beauregard.”
She said, ‘Carl, take all the money’
She called everybody Carl
It instantly became my favorite keepsake, even after having received an autographed copy of a Garrison Keillor book from the night when the band was a guest on “A Prairie Home Companion.” I no longer have many CDs, but I will never part with that one.
Now, you are the first to know this: A John Prine song would become part of the soundtrack of my transition to Carly. An Apple Music playlist of singer-songwriters from the ’70s played on repeat a lot during the months when I was building my new wardrobe and my courage, dressing progressively much differently on my weekends before coming out publicly. The song, “Angel from Montgomery,” was fifth on the list, a perfect place for it, in my opinion. Tough act to follow, Elton, if you ask me.
The playlist went away, and I had to reconstruct it. It lives on, on Spotify.
I can’t listen to any of the songs on that playlist without thinking about the shopping and wardrobe mistakes I made, and the uncertain steps into women’s clothing stores, on my way to living as my authentic self.
Authenticity? I can think of few places one could find it in such delicious servings than in John Prine’s body of work.
I love that the CD he signed for me is “Souvenirs,” which features new versions of popular songs from years earlier. There is equal love in my heart for every version of the title track by John Prine, by Steve Goodman, and by the two of them together.
The lyrics landed soft and landed hard as I wrote this mere hours after Prine’s death.
I hate graveyards and old pawn shops
For they always bring me tears
I can’t forgive the way they rob me
Of my childhood souvenirs
Memories, they can’t be boughten
They can’t be won at carnivals for free
Well, it took me years
To get those souvenirs
And I don’t know how they slipped away from me
Too many songs, too many stories, really. That’s why this was a mission doomed to fall short, but one I had to see through to the end.
But one more thing, in the time of coronavirus and quarantine and 6-foot spacing — this part of “Hello In There.”
So if you’re walkin’ down the street sometime
And spot some hollow ancient eyes
Please don’t just pass ’em by and stare
As if you didn’t care, say, ‘Hello in there, hello’
Apply as needed, adjusted for safe distancing, but please, check in on the folks you know from John Prine’s generation and older. And when this is all over, pay them a visit. He’d be grateful, and so would I.