Like so many things in life, the beauty of this week's featured tune came to me much later in life than it should have. I first heard it in the early nineties, but it wasn't until the middle of the last decade while on one of my periodic John Prine listening fests, on a cold winter's night driving home from my job at the thrift shop, that I listened to the lyrics in its first stanza with my much older ears while sitting in another of too many traffic jams, and thought, "Holy shit--there's a lot more to this song than I've noticed before...." I played it several more times while I sat stuck in a sea of cars, and the song has become a favorite of mine, and, even better, a never-ending source of wonder ever since that fateful night.....
I wrote about Prine's song "Christmas in Prison" in a December 2015 post, and I wrote about his song "Sam Stone" in a December of 2016 Friday Night Jukebox. Unlike last week's post about the Faces, John Prine's bio has had some significant (and not all good) changes since then. On the good end, Prine had his two highest charting LPs, 2016's For Better or Worse which hit #30, and The Tree of Forgiveness, released in 2018, which gave Prine his lone top ten hit, landing at #5. He was also inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2019. On the sad end, after years of poor health (including beating cancer) Prine contracted the COVID-19 virus and never recovered, passing away in April of 2020.
"Souvenirs" was featured on Prine's second album, the 1972 release Diamonds in the Rough. It was never released as a single (though it should have been) and the album would peak at #148 on the Billboard 200.
Fun Fact: Prine first began performing regularly at a club in Chicago called Fifth Peg. He didn't want people hearing the same songs every Thursday when he performed so he tried to add a new song each week. Prine said he wrote "Souvenirs" in a '65 Malibu while en route to one of his Thursday night performances--which for me makes the song just that much more amazing.
From the acoustic guitar interplay between Prine and frequent collaborator Steve Goodman at the beginning, "Souvenirs" sets forth a folk and bluegrass-tinged tale of the fleeting nature of loss. Prine's lyrics (maybe the best of his career and that's saying something) subtly paint a picture that effortlessly moves from the lost joys of childhood to the heartbreak of lost love. Prine's vocals are heartfelt without being maudlin, and the harmonies he and Goodman share in the chorus are superb. I'm not one to ascribe literary qualities to a song, but "Souvenirs" is much like a well written short story--it's three and a half minutes of us watching a man look into the mirror that reflects his life...and his sorrow for how quickly so much of it has disappeared without his even knowing.
Lyric Sheet: "All the snow has turned to water/Christmas days have come and gone/Broken toys and faded colors/Are all that's left to linger on..."
Enjoy:
Republican = Traitor
Peace,
emaycee
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