Jason Isbell and Writing a Song for John Prine

I was devastated when John Prine died in April 2020. I’ve written about this experience in a previous post, and three years later, I still remember spending that evening with my daughter as we played some of his songs, looking for one to post on Facebook as a tribute. We finally decided on “Spanish Pipedream,” and I often play that song in my solo performances. For as much as I adore John, I also need to give Jason Isbell credit for getting me turned on to him again. I had listened to John over the past two decades, often playing “Angel from Montgomery” for friends, and urging others to add it to their setlists, but it wasn’t until Jason and Amanda’s love for John really struck me that I started listening with new ears. Some of you might know, some may not—that Jason has a framed copy of handwritten lyrics to “Storm Windows” that were given to him by John. A treasure, for sure, and that’s a song I play almost as often as “Spanish Pipedream.” 

So I’ve been with my band Sonny on the Causeway for over ten years now. We’ve an album, Mistakes You Make When You’re Young, and our first single, “Detour,” even had some local airplay. During the second year of the pandemic, however, I started playing solo shows under the stage name Frank Hill, and I also started writing more and more music. (About Frank Hill, the name isn’t random, as some might suppose. Franklin is my middle name, and Hill is my great-grandfather’s surname. My mother’s grandfather, Franklin Hill, is remembered by her with great fondness, hence the choice for my name.) By this time, I have enough Frank Hill songs to record an album.  

Being a songwriter myself, it’s always intriguing to hear Jason talk about the writing process. He talks about staying away from mere platitudes, moving instead toward particulars and details. I always write with that advice in mind, often mixing the autobiographical with the fictional, which seems to create something more beautiful along the lines of some of my favorite memoirs like The Glass Castle and Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls. Even my favorite book, Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, contains this blend of the truth and the made-up. For example, he spent two years at Walden Pond, but the book is written as if it were only one year. Seems perhaps trivial, but making this change creates a much better overall structure for the book and allows him greater focus on the events for the reader.

This all leads me to writing a song for John Prine, which I wanted to do in more John’s style than Jason’s. After listening to John’s songs over the years, we’ve all probably noticed the humor in his songs, and I think, the fiction and irony. Although many are written in the first person, there’s a different kind of autobiographical element, which is hard for me to pin down in words. The songs are not autobiographical narratives, I guess, like we get in songs like “When We Were Close” from Weathervanes or “New South Wales” from Southeastern, which both detail Jason’s relationship with Justin Townes Earle.

So when writing a song for John Prine, I knew I had to capture that humorous element. I’ve seen him perform “When I Get to Heaven” on Austin City Limits many times, and that song lended inspiration. Of course, who knew the significance that song would take on after he died in April 2020? It seems like a premonition now that the last song 2018’s The Tree of Forgiveness is about his death, but like most of John’s songs, there is such humor. He’s just taking the whole thing in stride.

So here’s my song for John Prine. Enjoy!

This One’s for John
by Frank Hill

This one’s for John
I hate that you’re gone
Maybe you’ll come back
To steal one more life as a cat

But I think it would be hard
For a cat to pick guitar
So I hope you’re up there in heaven
Just strumming on D7

This one’s for John
I hate that you’re gone
Maybe you’re the bird in that tree
Singing out loud just for me

But I think it would be hard
For a bird to pick guitar
So I hope you’re up there, real high
Just playing in the sky                                    

This one’s for John
I hate that you’re gone
Maybe you’re a whale at sea
Blowin’ so far and so deep

But I think it would be hard
For a whale to pick guitar
So I hope you’re on a stage up there
At the top of all those stairs

Listen, here, dear John
Hell, it won’t be long
‘Til we’re down here picking along
And singing all your songs

So this one’s for John
Yeah, this one’s for John
I think it would be wrong
To leave without a song