Uploaded September 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Novelist and journalist Tom Piazza struck up a friendship with the irreplaceable John Prine in the last years of his life. This relationship, which began as a profile for a magazine, almost blossomed into an autobiography and involved a road trip in an inadvisable vehicle, has resulted in a new book “Living In The Present With John Prine”. Which involves:
• setting off in a 1977 Coupe De Ville and driving “until the engine burns up”.
• sitting up all night playing old country songs.
• remembering how he came to write some of the greatest songs of the last fifty years
• an evening’s swapping stories with Elvis Costello which ends with the alarming word “the jukebox is on fire!”
• what Prine’s last album “The Tree Of Forgiveness” has in common with Beethoven’s late quartets
Buy Living In The Present With John Prine: https://amzn.eu/d/8f7r7aO
Find out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: patreon.com/wordinyourear
Novelist and journalist Tom Piazza struck up a friendship with the irreplaceable John Prine in the last years of his life. This relationship, which began as a profile for a magazine, almost blossomed into an autobiography and involved a road trip in an inadvisable vehicle, has resulted in a new book “Living In The Present With John Prine”. Which involves:
• setting off in a 1977 Coupe De Ville and driving “until the engine burns up”.
• sitting up all night playing old country songs.
• remembering how he came to write some of the greatest songs of the last fifty years
• an evening’s swapping stories with Elvis Costello which ends with the alarming word “the jukebox is on fire!”
• what Prine’s last album “The Tree Of Forgiveness” has in common with Beethoven’s late quartets
Buy Living In The Present With John Prine: https://amzn.eu/d/8f7r7aO
Find out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: patreon.com/wordinyourear
