John Prine in a ‘lower key’ of the high life

NASHVILLE —  Leave it to John Prine to find a silver lining amid life-changing adversity.

For anyone, having a section of neck and throat cut out in cancer surgery would be traumatic. For it to happen to one of the most respected singer-songwriters of the post-Dylan years made it a calamity.

Just as Prine’s songs consider the reprehensible and the glorious as inevitable aspects of life, he’s come to see the humor and humanity in what he’s endured.

“You know, I’m singing in a lower key than before,” he explains. “I really didn’t realize it until recently, but this is a good thing. I feel like this is the voice I should’ve always had. To me, it sounds more like the way I talk.”

Then he laughs, letting out a raspy, staccato chuckle that’s as much a part of his character as his ambling waddle of a walk or the warm way he interacts with others. “Of course, I don’t sound so good when I talk, either,” he cracks.

Like many singer-songwriters in the wake of Bob Dylan, Prine, who will be in concert next Saturday at the Wilshire Theatre, emerged in the 1970s with an observational style, and a voice, all his own.

His craggy voice added to the charms of his songs. His hallmark has always been writing about everyday characters with wisdom, insight and humor, and his wry phrasing and hoarse, husky tone brought a warmth to his folksy sagacity and wit.

The personal nature of the voice and the words merge, and a distinctive sound emerges. “I guess if you keep making the same mistake long enough, it becomes your style,” Prine jokes.

As a cancer survivor, Prine didn’t focus at first on how his voice changed; he was just glad to be able to sing again at all.

“You know, the other great thing is that all my old songs seem new to me again, because I sing them differently,” he notes. “It was kind of a gift; after singing them for 20 or 30 years, it’s like I get to rediscover them.”

His lower, more relaxed tone resonates throughout “Fair & Square,” his first album of new material in nine years. Prine’s new work, which came out last week, is still whimsical, but it also reflects other changes in his life.

There are more love songs, and his observational tunes seem less sardonic and at times more deeply blue. He can still get across his anger too: While he’s always worked social commentary into his work -- he even was tagged a protest singer early in his career -- the new anti-Bush tirade “Some Humans Ain’t Human” is his most pointed political blast since “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore” from his 1972 debut.

“I felt like I had to write something about how I feel about the way things are in this country right now,” Prine says of a song about callous individuals and calculating, lying leaders.

For the most part, “Some Humans Ain’t Human” compares cold hearts to a neglected home freezer full of old pizzas, “ice cubes with hair” and “a broken popsicle,” and suggests that jealousy and stupidity don’t equal harmony.

But the zinger that’s creating controversy, and a few live-show walkouts, comes in the last stanza: “[When] you’re feeling your freedom / And the world’s off your back / Some cowboy from Texas / Starts his own war in Iraq.”

“What bothers me the most is the way this administration is toward people who are dissenting, the way they’re coming down on people,” he explains. “They act as if you’re not supporting the troops if you have anything negative to say about Bush or any of his people. That seems totally un-American to me. It’s the total flip side of what this country is supposed to be about.”

Prine acknowledges that usually his commentary comes from character sketches or story songs. “Some Humans Ain’t Human” has its whimsical side, especially in its carnival-sideshow arrangement, but the songwriter wanted to make his sentiments clear.

As he talks, he’s sitting behind the desk of Al Bunetta, his manager for decades, and the physical changes wrought by his 1998 surgery are evident. His neck is disproportionately smaller, and the changes in his jaw cause his chin to recede below his lower bite.

But he’s not self-conscious about the changes, marking another way he departs from most artists. Seemingly never vain, Prine has always accepted his disheveled appearance, looking like the everyman who could have lived on the same block as the quirky characters who populate many of his songs.

Prine and Bunetta founded Oh Boy Records in 1984, four years after the performer moved to Nashville. The label has kept a quiet Nashville presence over the years, issuing recent albums by Todd Snider, Janis Ian, Kris Kristofferson and Shawn Camp while reissuing classic country works and maintaining Prine’s weighty catalog as well as that of his old friend, the late Steve Goodman.

As he sits, Prine’s hands frequently move along the desk, as if looking for something to do. A chain-smoker since his teens, Prine nearly always had a cigarette between his fingers until his cancer diagnosis in 1998. Even most of his publicity photos over the years featured a partially smoked cigarette. Seven years on, he’s still not sure what to do with his fingers.

At age 58, the native of Maywood, Ill., talks about how nearly everything in his life has turned upside down in the last decade -- and how he’s just fine with that.

“You know, I don’t really sit and think about it a whole lot, but my life is completely different from what it once was,” he says. “Certainly being a dad is a big part of it. Having the cancer, that made some things change too. They weren’t really subtle changes. Some things had to change real fast.”

For one, he’s given up his night life, which was legendary among his close-knit friends but little-known beyond that. For years, Prine maintained such a humorous, approachable quality that only those close to him knew how much he liked to party. A friendly imbiber, he didn’t burn destructively like his peer Townes Van Zandt or as recklessly as Steve Earle, but he’d hold court well into the morning, spinning stories and playing music with small groups of friends.

“All of a sudden, and for the first time ever, I’m leading a normal life,” Prine says with a smile that implies he’s as surprised as anyone. “Especially now that my boys are in school, I’m up at 6:30 and I’m in bed by 11. It’s a total flip-flop.”

Prine married his third wife, Fiona, in 1990; their oldest son, Jack, is 10, and his brother Tommy is a little more than a year younger. Fiona’s son Jody, 23, also lives in the family’s Green Hills home. Despite his health scare, Prine figures having children late in life was timed right for him.

“If I’d had children earlier in my life, I think I would have had a tendency to see what my limits were, and that wouldn’t have been good,” he says. “I didn’t realize it, but I was all ready for children to come into my life at the time they did.”

Prine now attends sports games and often is home when the boys come in from school, which makes him more of a hands-on father than most of the lawyers and businessmen who share his neighborhood.

“I’ve got a good home life,” he says. “It’s about as steady of a home life as I’ve ever had. I’m there with the boys a lot, and Fiona is just a really good person. I’m lucky to have her. She’s brought order to my life, which is a good thing, because if she hadn’t, I probably wouldn’t be here. I guess the magic of that comes out in the music.”

Indeed, “Fair & Square” features more love songs than Prine ever put on earlier albums.

“Glory of True Love,” with its chiming melody and unabashed celebration of the preciousness of finding happiness in partnership, comes across like a follow-up to “You Got Gold,” written a decade later after the initial joy has settled in and deepened.

The new “She Is My Everything” similarly rejoices in ecstatic bursts of playful toasts toward the woman he loves, while “Long Monday,” written with his friend Keith Sykes, bemoans the fact that after a weekend of making love and music together, it’s time to go back to work. As he drives off, he’s still high on love, humming,

“You and me / Sittin’ in the back of my memory / Like a honeybee/ Buzzin’ ‘round a glass of sweet chablis.”

“It’s like I have a whole new romance going on with life,” he says, shrugging as he smiles, as if he’s as mystified as anyone with the way things turned out. “It’s like there’s a new shine on things. I’m feeling like I’m dug in pretty good.”

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John Prine

Where: Wilshire Theatre,

8440 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills

When: 8 p.m. May 14

Price: $35-$45

Contact: (323) 468-1716