You're going to be. Hello and welcome to the working songwriter. The show where today's best songwriters come to talk shop. I'm your host Joe Pug. Each episode here we host a distinguished

guest and we ask them to go deep on their inspiration, on their process, on the

general ups and downs of making a life in music.

So, whether you're a grizzled veteran dusting off your old Martin to play a cover of

Samstone or else a scrappy upstart dusting off your

talkamini to play a cover of Paradise. This is your show because ultimately it is

what every writer seeks most,

an ironclad excuse to put off actually writing. Hey everybody it's the second Friday of April 2020. I'm glad you're here.

Thank you for joining us. Before we get started with our regularly

scheduled show, we have to bid farewell to one of the greatest that ever was. You're going to be here. You're not. Oh, When you're trying to evaluate how good a basketball player is, it's not just their

stats and their championship rings that matter.

The respect or lack thereof from their peers, the people who actually played against them also speaks volumes.

John Prines' peers have spent entire lifetimes shouting his praises from rooftops.

His songs have been covered by Bonnie Rate, Johnny Cash, and Willie Nelson, just to name a few.

And in 2009, none other than Bob Dylan listed Prine as one of his favorite songwriters.

Prine stuff is pure Proustian existentialism,

Dylan said.

Midwestern mind trips to the nth degree and he writes beautiful songs.

Prine had a winding road to the music business.

After discharging from the the Army he famously worked as a

mailman in a suburb of Chicago, Maywood, later remarking that he wrote most of the

songs for his iconic debut album walking that route every day. He began frequenting the open

...