John Prine would have turned 79 years old on Oct. 10. To celebrate his life and legacy, we joined Prine’s widow Fiona Whelan Prine and country music legend Carlene Carter at one the late songwriter’s favorite Nashville haunts: Brown’s Diner.
Tucked into a booth in the dining room, Fiona Prine and Carter recount the creation of Prine’s 1995 Lost Dogs and Mixed Blessings album, which was recently reissued as a 30th anniversary edition via Prine’s Oh Boy Records label. Carter, who was dating the album’s producer, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ bassist Howie Epstein, at the time, sang on the album and was there for all its twists and turns.
“There was always a twist, you would think he was going to a certain word and it’d be a completely different word,” Carter says. “I just wanted to crawl in his brain.”
Both women agree that there’d be a wealth of topical songs today, were Prine still alive. Fiona Prine says her husband saw the direction the country was headed.
“Before John passed I could see a despondency in him about what was happening in America. There was vitriol. And he said, that’s not who we are. We’re a united people,” ehe says. “Seeing the splinters kind of broke his heart.”
Prine died in 2020 after contracting Covid-19.
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