Rest in Peace, John Prine

For many of us, this pandemic thing got real about week ago when we learned that singer/composer John Prine had been hospitalized with the COVID-19 virus. And then last night we were absolutely heartbroken to learn that John — called by many the Mark Twain of American songwriting — had lost that fight, dead at 73. So, we are in mourning today. But we’re also thinking about something we read that John said one time. He said, “I guess I just process death differently than some folks. Realizing you're not going to see that person again is always the most difficult part about it. But that feeling settles, and then you are glad you had that person in your life, and then the happiness and the sadness all get swirled up inside you." John will certainly be living inside of us in The Flood. We started doing his tunes more than 40 years ago, just ripping ‘em right that first album in the early 1970s. And now, decades later, we’re still adding John Prine tunes to our songbag. Just recently, for instance, we started doing a song from John’s “Storm Windows” album that he released in 1980, a song that our old partner the late Roger Samples was partial to. Here from a rehearsal a few months ago is “One Red Rose.”