
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, September 16, 1995                   TAG: 9509180016
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: B12   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: STEVE MORSE THE BOSTON GLOBE
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

LATEST ALBUM TEEMS WITH PRINE-ISMS

A playful nature: Some composers have it, some don't. Veteran folkie John Prine definitely has it. Prine can write serious songs, too - witness ``Angel from Montgomery'' (covered by Bonnie Raitt) and ``Hello in There'' (covered by Bette Midler) - but it's his wry sense of humor that truly sets him apart.

Prine's latest album, ``Lost Dogs and Mixed Blessings,'' the follow-up to his Grammy-winning ``The Missing Years,'' teems with Prine-isms. In one song he describes how ``the loan sharks were sharking, the narcs were narcing.'' In another he mischievously sings: ``Feeling kind of bony/On the telephoney/Talking to Marconi/Eating Rice-A-Roni ... Watching `Twilight Zoney'/On my 42-inch Sony/This is just a long song/It ain't no poem.''

``Shameless rhyming, that's all it is,'' Prine said with a laugh before starting a tour. ``For that last song, I just grabbed a legal pad and started writing in a stream-of-consciousness way. The images just popped up.''

Prine, a former Chicago mailman who was discovered in the early '70s by Steve Goodman and Kris Kristofferson, is a lovable maverick who writes what he wants, when he wants. He then puts it out on his own label, the Nashville-based Oh Boy Records, which he and partner Dan Einstein started after Prine became fed up with the corporate end of the industry.

``I have no regrets about it,'' he said about his switch to ``indie'' status. ``It took a while to get distribution, but it seemed the best route for me. I did it as a means to an end, but it's worked out ... And now the label is starting to sign other artists who have been busted by the bigger labels.''

Prine, 48, has another winner in his new album, which blends mellow folk and country with some jaunty, electric folk rock. Further song treats include the Jimmy Buffett-like ``New Train,'' the autobiographical ``Ain't Hurtin' Nobody'' (``I used to live in Chicago where the cold wind blows/I delivered more junk mail than the junkyard would hold'') and the quaintly positive love song ``This Love Is for Real.''

The record is again produced by Howie Epstein, bassist from Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, who produced the previous Grammy winner. ``Compared to me, he's fussy in the studio,'' Prine said. ``But I guess that we're enough of a yin-and-yang team that it comes out sounding good.''

Prine makes songwriting look easy, but he does admit to hitting writer's block for part of the album. ``It's a stupid feeling. You feel like you've never written a song before. But when it happened, I called up an old buddy in Nashville, Gary Nicholson. We wrote six Mondays in a row, and we got six songs out of it.''

Having acquired the image of a songwriter's songwriter, Prine has enticed name talent to perform on his recent discs. For ``The Missing Years,'' Bruce Springsteen, Raitt, Petty and Phil Everly made cameos. And for ``Lost Dogs,'' Marianne Faithfull, Carlene Carter and Sass Jordan dropped by.

``To get Marianne, we had to wait for her to come by when she was on a book tour,'' Prine said. ``It's not like Oh Boy Records has a lot of money to fly people around.''

These days, Prine also is turning domestic. ``I've got a 9-month-old baby, and we're expecting another in October,'' he said. ``I waited a long time to have kids. I've been though two managers, but no kids before this. But I'm loving it. Heck, I'm now doing everything around the house but mowing the lawn. That's the only thing I won't do.''

by CNB