Remembering John Prine — the Nashville icon who left a mark on Newfoundland and Labrador
John Prine, one of the greatest songwriters of the Americana genre, will be remembered in a rocky corner of the world far away from Nashville as perhaps the most influential songwriter in Newfoundland and Labrador to not be born in Newfoundland or Labrador.
Friends and fans poured out their grief on Wednesday morning across the world. The 73-year-old died the night before in Nashville from complications due to COVID-19. The global pandemic had claimed a global icon.
In St. John's, a city rich with its own folk singers, his death felt like a local loss.
"I don't know what it was," said local singer-songwriter Andrea Monro. "He was just so influential to so many songwriters. It's like everybody's favourite uncle died."
"One second you can be heartbroken and in the same song you can be belly laughing," said multi-instrumentalist Darrell Power, a founding member of Great Big Sea. "I think that's why he was so influential in this province."
"His songs really speak to the genuineness of the human spirit, the human heart. I think here in Newfoundland that's kind of ingrained in our folk music, our folk singers, our culture," said Tony Ploughman, manager of Fred's Records on Duckworth Street in St. John's.
Ploughman had a chance encounter with Prine in 2017.
He was working at the record store when Prine's wife, Fiona, was drawn into the shop by a sign in the window promoting John's show at the Arts and Culture Centre. Pictures of him as a young man with a flowing, brunette Farah Fawcett mane and a handlebar moustache adorned the records for sale on the display rack inside the front door.
She struck up a conversation with the staff for the better part of an hour while John trailed far behind her, moseying through the downtown shops.
She texted him to hurry up, and within minutes Prine poked his head in through the front door.
"I know a little something about that fella," he said, looking at his younger face printed on the CDs and records.
Prine kept the conversation going with the Fred's crew inside the store.
"The person he was on stage was the person he was in public," Ploughman said. "A really sweet guy with fascinating smarts and a brilliant sense of humour. Just a wonderful guy."
He left them with a parting gift — an invitation to accompany himself and his wife to the concert that night.
And so it came to be that the entire staff of Fred's Records watched John Prine run through his greatest hits from backstage at the Arts and Culture Centre in St. John's. Nobody dared to leave their spot once he settled into his set.
"He joked about how he was holding us hostage backstage," Ploughman laughed.
A great unifier
While Newfoundland and Labrador is known for its folk roots, the spread of music is as diverse as the landscape from one place to the next.
When Andrea Monro began playing music with a trio in St. John's, one bandmate was into death metal while the other was a jazz student.
The only songs they had in common were John Prine tunes.
"I think people who didn't really identify as country lovers or folk music lovers, they found a place in his music," Monro said.
Prine shook the rules off songwriting and wrote as if he was an author. Monro admired how he sang from different perspectives — male, female, young, old, elated, depressed, successful or beaten down.
"He crossed over all those kind of genres and borders, and I think everybody found something safe and common in his songs."
Made time for Newfoundland and Labrador
When artists pass over St. John's on a tour, it's never news. But when world-renowned acts take the extra flight east, it sparks lifelong appreciation.
Prine first played St. John's in the 1980s at Holy Heart Theatre. He came back several times throughout the 2000s and played his last show in St. John's with Amanda Shires in 2017.
Darrell Power remembers Prine taking the stage at Holy Heart for the first time since the 1980s and opening with a dry joke.
"I was here 25 years ago," he told the audience. "I said I'd be back."
If there's anything good to come from his death, Power hopes it sparks a love in the younger generation.
"[I've] heard comments from younger people who have never heard of him. Go discover this gem."
Prine isn't just being remembered by artists and industry folk. His fanbase stretched beyond those who were in tune with the local scene.
There was nothing pretentious about John Prine, and that's what struck a young Perry Trimper — a scientist by trade, and now the provincial government member for central Labrador.
"This province felt like he was one of our own," Trimper said. "We're all grieving today because I think we feel like we lost one of our own."
Trimper got a chance to see Prine live in 1981 at a festival outside Truro, N.S. It's a memory that stuck with him and made him a lifelong fan.
He was drawn to the quirky songs, like Please Don't Bury Me, which has now become sadly apt.
"I've got a friend, on my birthday he likes to sing 'Please don't bury me in that cold, cold ground. I'd rather have them cut me up and pass me all around.' He'll sing that for me instead of singing happy birthday," Trimper laughed.
Prine had an ability to draw links between common folk in his music. In death, he's done the same.
"As with so much of the news, you're seeing that no one is invincible from this," Trimper said. "It really drives home how much alike we all are."
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