I’ve always been a bit of a music snob.
I know a lot about the artists I like and very little about anything else, other than what I picked up watching Behind the Music specials back in the 90s.
Live shows were never my thing either. I don’t care for large crowds or much of what the large crowds do at live shows.
When I was at Delta State University back in the early to mid 2000s, I made it a point to see a few live shows of my favorite artists. Many you could classify as bucket list items like the Simon & Garfunkel show I caught in Atlanta back in 2003.
There were a couple of artists I would go see over-and-over, as long as they were within a couple hundred miles of Cleveland.
One of those was John Prine.
My older brother Chris and I were at Delta State at the same time, and we discovered Prine’s catalogue about the same time.
There used to be a small music shop right off campus called Gumbo Music, and it was run by a guy named Will Griffin.
I’d go visit Will two or three times a week to talk music and thumb through his selection, even though I was too poor to buy anything most of the time.
Will was one of a kind. If something new came out, and he knew I was a fan, he would often let me have the CD in advance and let me pay it down over the course of the semester.
One day, Will and I were talking about our favorite singer/songwriters, and he brought up John Prine. I had heard of him, but I told him that I had never heard his music.
Will swiftly took a copy of Prine’s Prime off the shelf and told me to go home and listen to it.
Listen to it I did, and so did Chris. We listened to that CD constantly over the next few weeks.
We were hooked.
Every time a Prine concert and money would line up, Chris and I took off to see him.
We even met him a couple of times after shows.
We traveled from Jackson, to Memphis, to Birmingham to see him in concert.
Around 2010, I stopped going to shows on a regular basis. I managed to see Glen Campbell before he died, Ringo Starr and Dwight Yoakam, but I passed on way many more than I attended over the past decade.
Fast forward to 2018.
I could not believe it when Bologna Performing Arts Center Executive Director Laura Howell told the Rotary Club back that fall that Prine was indeed coming to the BPAC.
I can hardly image how elated my brother and I would have been to know that the legend would make a stop on our humble college’s campus.
That is exactly what happened.
As excited as I was about the 2018 show, I still debated whether or not to go see it. I just didn’t have the drive to see a live show.
I went anyway, knowing I would regret it if I did not.
And I was not disappointed. I found Prine to be at the top of his game that night. He was talkative, funny, and he was promoting a great new album of fresh material.
After that night, I started paying closer attention to the BPAC lineup, and I started going to more shows.
The BPAC and that Prine concert really did ignite a new desire to see more live shows.
I’ve since seen the Beach Boys and Jason Isbell, among others.
The deaths of John Prine and Joe Diffie have been sad to us all. The internet and Facebook have been flooded with tributes to Prine over the past week. My brother participated in a tribute that was done this past Sunday night by the Delta State radio station.
While Diffie did not enjoy the underground cult following that Prine did, I think the reaction to their deaths underscores just how relevant and important the BPAC is to the Delta.
If you look at the caliber of stars and bands that have graced that stage just in the past two years, there are very few venues around that offer the acts, the quality venue and the intimate setting the BPAC does.
Prior to COVID-19 shutting everything down, the BPAC was set to host legendary performer Dionne Warwick.
Had the BPAC not booked Prine, I probably would have been content to have never seen another one of his shows, and I would have been missing out.
Thanks to Will for introducing me to Prine in Cleveland almost 20 years ago, and thanks to the BPAC for putting him back in front of me on stage so many years later in the same city.
I guess that’s the way the world goes around.
