JOHN PRINE'S ENDURING INFLUENCE

John Prine, the first songwriter to read/perform at the Library of Congress, started leaving his mark on music from the moment his self-titled 1970 debut appeared. Now in the Grammy Hall of Fame, John Prine’s “Hello in There” anchored The Divine Miss M for Bette Midler, while Bonnie Raitt’s annexation of “Angel From Montgomery” became one of pop music’s most enduring records.

Even after his passing, Prine’s legacy continues. Fiona Whelan Prine, his wife, recognized the connection her husband had with today’s most impactful emerging voices—and had an idea. If 2010’s Broken Hearts & Dirty Windows: Songs of John Prine was a cavalcade of homages from Justin Vernon, My Morning Jacket, The Avett Brothers, Conor Oberst and Old Crow Medicine Show, Broken Hearts & Dirty Windows, Vol. 2 was born as a way its contributors could acknowledge the influence the always-humble Songwriters Hall of Famer had on their own songs, perspectives and journeys.

A labor of love from Whelan-Prine, Jody Whelan and the team at Oh Boy Records, Vol. 2 enlisted many of the young artists who’d toured with and ended up as good friends to record their favorite Prine songs. Whether straight homage, like Tyler Childers’ perfect country lament “Guess They Oughta Name A Drink After You” or Jason Isbell’s “Souvenirs,” which gives the project its name, the reverence is clear and the love abundant.

Americana goddess and Grammy queen Brandi Carlile opens the project with a gorgeous take on Prine’s reflective final offering, “I Remember Everything,” while Carlile’s “In Spite of Ourselves” duet partner Iris DeMent delivers a piano/vocal rendition of “One Red Rose” that has all the raw tentativeness of uncertain romantic congress. When you listen to these versions, the rough-voiced Chicagoan’s emotional depths take on even deeper emotions.

What’s staggering is hearing a true peer—with all the miles, triumphs and disappointments—reach into these classic American songs. Bonnie Raitt’s revisits “Angel From Montgomery” with exhaustion and knowing, and it’s a revelation, while Emmylou Harris’ silvery voice floats through the emptiness of “Hello in There,” cracking in places to offer a truer measure of the loneliness that old couple endured with a cinema verité delivery.

Lyrical transparency was Prine’s gift. Hearing those feelings explored by artists who are reinterpreting these songs through their own prisms of profound loss creates performances that are incandescent (Valerie June’s “Summer’s End”), earthy (Margo Price’s “Sweet Revenge,” Nathaniel Rateliff’s “Pretty Good”) or defiant (Amanda Shires’ “Saddle in the Rain”).

And then there’s the torqued swagger of Kentuckian Sturgill Simpson’s “Paradise,” with its moaning Appalachian fiddle and a full-bodied acoustic strummed with authority. The recipient of Prine’s Porsche after the legend’s passing, Simpson brings a bracing strength to the strip-mining protest that almost 50 years later had a hand in bringing down the Peabody Coal Company.

Prine meant so much to so many. In his final years, with his songwriting, projects and albums striking new creative highs, he reached out to those artists who found truth in his songs and used it as a compass for their own writing. In that way, Broken Hearts & Dirty Windows, Vol. 2 is a tribute, a thank you and a witness to how these songs expand in the hands of some of roots music’s finest legends and next-wave icons.