I first heard John Prine in a tiny old Vancouver club on Beatty Street. The Egress hosted a variety of fascinating musicians. Not the super-famous, but the specialists and the second tier. Among many others, the newly widowed Mimi Farina played the Egress, as did the virtuoso harmonica duo, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee.
John Prine also showed up there, warming up for another act, as I recall. It was in that place I heard his hilarious song The Accident. about a fender bender at a four-way stop. Another of his zany ballads was Dear Abby, in which the friendless Bewildered, whose "feet are too long," writes in to ask for advice on a unique problem: "My stomach makes noises whenever I kiss."
Heard John Prine on Folk Alley the other day. He sounds much the same. This last time, he was singing a quirky lyric about how a hen-pecked husband escapes from his nagging wife's criticism by fantasizing himself in a bar down the road and across the river.
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