Rock’s roots
Singer-songwriters at the Orpheum
Veteran artist John Prine and fellow singer-songwriter Jason Isbell brought a sold-out Orpheum audience to tears during Saturday night’s show.
The chill of early fall and a smattering of showers did nothing to dissuade the crowds for a highly anticipated pairing of singersongwriters, as young lion Jason Isbell and old master John Prine converged for a sold-out concert at Downtown’s Orpheum on Saturday night.
Coming into the show, 36-yearold Alabama native Isbell was certainly the hotter property. His most recent album, “Something More Than Free,” proved a chart-topping triumph, capping a two-year ascent to the summit of the roots-rock world. That newfound success was reflected in an easy confidence onstage, as Isbell and his 400 Unit band delivered a polished hourlong warm-up that occasionally yielded moments of inspiration.
Though the bulk of the set focused on his two most recent solo albums — and was highlighted by a performance of “Cover Me Up,” the opening salvo off his 2013 breakthrough “Southeastern” — the evening found Isbell in a reminiscing mood.
A former University of Memphis student, he recalled his days in the Bluff City fondly — noting that a gig at local coffee shop the Map Room was the first time he’d ever played any of his original songs in public. He shouted out the Hi-Tone Café as the place where he would first see his future band, the Drive-By Truckers. Fittingly, he delivered a powerful version of his Truckers’ number “Outfit” — a Skynyrd-meets-Bob McDill anthem about Southern pride.
Before leaving the stage, Isbell tipped his cap to Prine, noting his place in the pantheon of American songwriters. “He’s good as anybody that’s ever been,” said Isbell. “A beautiful man, too.” (Isbell typically would’ve joined Prine as part of the latter’s encore, but he had to duck out early to hop a private charter to play a national addiction rally on Sunday in Washington, D.C. — a cause near and dear to his heart since getting sober in 2012.)
In the end, while Isbell’s presence certainly was a bonus for the bill, it became clear that this was Prine’s crowd and show. Following an intermission, the former mailman — just a week shy of his 69th birthday — strode onstage with little fanfare, trailed by his backing combo, guitarist Jason Wilber and bassist Dave Jacques. Clad in suits and armed with five decades worth of material, they began with a sprightly “Glory of True Love.” By the time Prine wrapped up his 90-minute, 18-song set, there was no doubting his status as a peerless tragicomic poet, musical philosopher, and still-undisputed heavyweight champion storyteller.
During the 1970s — the decade when he was first hailed as one of many “new Dylans” — Memphis figured prominently in Prine’s career. He recorded his 1971 selftitled debut for Atlantic at American Sound Studios, backed by the famed Memphis Boys house band. Nine years later, Prine would return to cut his early rock and roll homage “Pink Cadillac” at the Memphis Recording Service, with the Phillips family — Sam, Knox and Jerry — serving as coproducers. While there weren’t any songs from the latter album featured in his set, Prine’s eponymous album provided the bulk of the selections — he played seven of the album’s 13 songs, including still-resonant pieces such as “Spanish Pipedream” and “Angel from Montgomery.”
Early in the set, Prine recognized his Memphis mate and collaborator Keith Sykes, performing a supple version of their 2005 gem “Long Monday.” “This is a song I wrote with Keith Sykes,” announced Prine, grinning. “I killed the chicken; Keith cooked it.”
Since his 1998 neck cancer surgery, Prine’s voice has taken on a rougher quality. Time — and a second bout with cancer in 2013, this time of the lung — has affected his vocals further, but that weathering only added a greater poignancy to performances of picturesque songs such as “Six O’Clock News” and “Bruised Orange (Chain of Sorrow).”
There’s always been something disquieting in Prine’s cockeyed observations of the human condition. “The fundamental story of the contemporary man,” he sang on “Humidity Built the Snowman,” “is to walk away and someday understand.”
“As soon as I find out what that song is about, I’ll let you know,” he cracked when it was over. But Prine’s work has always been, as his famous fan Bob Dylan noted, “pure Proustian existentialism. Midwestern mindtrips to the nth degree.”
Elsewhere, Prine dedicated “Blue Umbrella” to a family of Memphis sisters who’d written a letter to request it in honor of their late brother. “There you go, girls,” said Prine gently, having reduced them, as well as the rest of the crowd, to an emotional hush. The most profound moments came as he delivered devastating versions of humanist weepers like “Hello In There” and “Sam Stone.” It was a run of songs that left even this critic, as well as the audience members on either side of me, wasted, blubbering messes.
Prine closed with one of his later-period classics, the strange, sprawling epic “Lake Marie,” before returning for a singalong encore of “Paradise.”