Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold on the John Prine Song He Wishes He Wrote
This spring was a season of loss. In New York City, where Fleet Foxes leader Robin Pecknold weathered the worst of the pandemic, crowded streets were vacated, and siren wails replaced the hum of regular life. Two temporary morgues were constructed at the hospital near his home in Greenwich Village, where he’d often see refrigerated semi-trucks parked outside. But instead of being paralyzed by the enormity of the pandemic and the subsequent waves of protest against systemic racism, the catastrophes put his anxieties about creating a new album in perspective. “I was feeling lucky to be alive making music and feeling a responsibility to make the most of it,” he says over the phone.
Last week, Fleet Foxes released their fourth record, Shore. As Pecknold wrote in an accompanying statement: “I wanted to make an album that celebrated life in the face of death.” Part of that mission is basking in the wisdom and joy of lost heroes. One of Pecknold’s own is country-folk legend John Prine, who passed away from coronavirus complications in April. Pecknold pays lyrical tribute to the legendary songwriter twice on Shore, near the beginning and the end of the album, so it’s only fitting that the song Pecknold wishes he wrote is one of Prine’s. “Crazy as a Loon,” from Prine’s 2005 album Fair & Square, tells a droll tale of a man who travels from Hollywood to Nashville to New York, each time driven mad by love and ambition.
Pitchfork: Why did you choose this song?
Robin Pecknold: I’ve been listening to it a lot for the past couple of years. I made this playlist of like 200 songs that I wanted the new record to live amongst—Arthur Russell, Nina Simone, Joni Mitchell, a lot of Brazillian stuff, music that’s warm and a little looser, or less existentially fraught—and this song was on there. It’s reflective of a state of mind I wish I had access to more, just being able to make this beautiful, easy song that has a wry humor to it and expresses something universal in a really individual way. When he passed away, I was really affected. I was more encouraged to try and make a song that had some of these qualities, and then I also wanted to include his name on “Sunblind.”
“Crazy as a Loon” is a comedy of errors, and it’s also important to me because I moved around a lot. In the last decade, I’ve lived in Portland, in Seattle, in New York, and spent time in California, and toured a ton. I think I’m letting go of this wanderlust. And so, when I say I wish I wrote this song, it’s like: I look forward to sitting on that weird Canadian lake that he references at the end. All of these towns will drive you mad eventually, and I’m always listening to the song to remind myself that there isn’t any one place that will solve my problems.
When did you get into John Prine’s music?
It wasn’t really until the last six or seven years. I’m used to thinking about a ton of chords or a weird set of instruments, so I didn’t fully appreciate the ways a person’s character can be expressed. I started absorbing those lessons from John Prine—lyrical things, how to express personality and humanity—qualities I had maybe not been interested in during my early 20s.
Is there a song on Shore that takes inspiration from Prine?
Thinking about “Crazy as a Loon,” where he repeats “crazy as a loon” at the end of almost every verse, there’s a song called “Young Man’s Game” on the record that operates that way, too. It’s a song about being very self-conscious and young, but it seems sympathetic to that experience. I’m no comedian, but I had fun writing those lyrics [“I could worry through each night/Find something unique to say/I could pass as erudite/But it’s a young man’s game”], thinking that they were a little bit goofy. Not that John Prine’s music was goofy—his influence was more in trying to write lyrics that felt wistful and knowing.
Originally Appeared on Pitchfork
