Singer/songwriter Tommy Prine’s debut album is joyful, introspective and angry — just the emotional mix you might expect from someone who’s lost his father and best friend, toured internationally, and released an album, all before turning 30.
Losing a parent is a profound, painful experience, doubly so when your dad is the musical inspiration John Prine. Filling those shoes would be impossible, and Prine doesn’t want to. Instead, he’s written a deeply personal, decidedly individual album, which in no uncertain terms tells the world that he is not riding his father’s coattails.
Out June 23, This Far South opens with an unapologetically fiery, soul-searching disquisition. The 27-year-old Prine encourages the listener to consider the meaning and existence of God, and to sit with the confusion and frustration inherent to processing pain. From there, Prine takes off on a personal and professional artistic journey.
He’s both sweet and thoughtful on This Far South, slowly releasing his anger as he probes rock bottom, ruminates on a panic attack and the hazy malaise of the pandemic. Mid-album, Prine takes a goofy trip with the punk-rock infused "Mirror and a Kitchen Sink," and longs for bygone mundane moments in "Boyhood" and "By the Way," his ode to his father. Prine ends the album triumphant in his independence on "Cash Carter Hill" and with a love letter to his wife, Savannah: "I Love You Always."
Becoming an artist wasn’t a given for Prine, who didn’t consider the career path strongly until late in 2019 when he played an impromptu solo set at All the Best Fest in the Dominican Republic. During the pandemic and after losing his dad in April 2020, Prine began writing more; in November of 2020, singer/songwriter Ruston Kelly and sound engineer Gina Johnson talked Prine into cutting an album.
"It was the most excited I've ever been in my entire life," Prine told GRAMMY.com. "I think I needed that from someone outside of my family that I loved and trusted; I needed that validation."
Growing up, like most teenagers, Prine looked for music that was different than his parents’. He listened to a variety of artists including Jason Isbell, System of a Down, ATLiens, Outkast and Gorillaz, dabbled in EDM, and fondly recalls driving to school with his big brother in the family’s ’85 Ford Bronco blasting Eminem’s The Slim Shady LP. Reflecting his varied musical tastes, This Far South samples auditory flavors from punk rock, pop, and folk and Americana.
Prine spoke with GRAMMY.com after wrapping up a tour, which included sold-out shows opening for Tyler Childers, and his first residency at The Basement in Nashville (with special guests including Amanda Shires and Katie Pruit). He detailed finding inspiration and humor in life’s seemingly insignificant moments, his struggles to process loss, how he took control of his artistic image, and why his music is different than that of his father.
I imagine music was quite present in your household growing up. What are your early memories of listening to music?
Music was just always in the household. My dad was a firm believer in A.M. radio; he'd just have that playing 24/7. And he'd be telling me about all these old country songs.
And me and my brothers, we were all given the space to make our own relationship with music. There wasn't a certain type or a certain record or anything that my parents would be like, "Oh, you guys should only listen to this" or whatever. And I think that was really beneficial.
Growing up, I was listening to so much random stuff. I'd have a couple of months where I would violently switch between genres: like metal, and then classic rock, and then I listened to EDM for a couple of years. I’d say the record that that made the biggest impact on me in terms of what I'm doing now was Southeastern, Jason Isbell's record. It ripped my heart open and put it back together in an hour or so.
Tell me about starting to play music yourself.
I was a really little kid when I picked up the guitar, I think I was just kind of mimicking my father. And family friends that would come over and play music. A majority of how I took in the adult world was adults playing music. I thought that's what everyone did. So I was like well, I better start now.
So I picked up a guitar and would hit it and make noise. And then I just instantly fell in love with it. So I've been playing guitar really my whole life. I started writing my own songs, probably at 16 or 17. But I wouldn't dare show them to anybody until 19 or 20. That's when I started making my own music.
I've read elsewhere that you didn't really write music to share with people until after you lost your dad.
There were like a very select few of my buddies that I would play my songs for when they came over. I was pretty shy about it, as most people are. It's a pretty vulnerable thing to be writing a song and then showing somebody, let alone my parents. I would never show them really much until just the last few years.
So then what changed for you?
I don't know what it was. A majority of my life [now] is sharing my heart and my mind and putting it on display for the world.
I think that every artist would probably say the same thing: it's almost out of necessity. It's just so much going on inside that it has to come out and I have to play it. And I have to show other people to make a connection with it or else I'll just go crazy. I think it was just bursting at the seams with all the things that I wanted to say. And I've always found it easier to tell my story through a song rather than actually talk about it.
I think that was late 2019 when I started seriously thinking about [sharing my music]. I played an impromptu set at All the Best Fest in the Dominican Republic. And I played like a 40-45 minutes set and most of it was originals. As nerve wracking as it was, I was like, wait, I really thoroughly enjoyed that. And I remember walking off the stage, and I had this weird feeling of being more comfortable in my skin than I ever had been.
It sounds as though you were understandably a little bit reluctant to choose a career as a musician. Can you talk about that hesitation and getting over the hump?
I think most people will probably look at it and be like, oh, of course he was because of who his father was and how big of a career he had. It wasn't that, it was really just the ins and outs of the day-to-day life that I knew artists went through. It's a hard job — you're traveling a lot; it's pretty taxing on your mind and your emotions, your body. And I saw what that did to my dad and…it just felt like this big, massive, insurmountable mountain that I didn't even want to start.
I kind of always just gave myself a reason to be like that's not you. The negative self talk which, surprise, surprise doesn't go away, even when you become an artist, is still thriving. But I think being able to look into the face of that version of yourself telling you that you can't do it is pretty empowering.
You don't want to be seen as John Prine Jr. obviously, but also, your dad is an inspiration to you as well. How do you hold space for both those ways of relating to him?
I've always made the distinction, even when I was a kid. There's John Prine and then there's dad. Of course, they're one in the same, but when my father would go out on the road, it was kind of like a switch. He would flip and go into his John Prine personae and go out there and play shows for the world and be who he was, an amazing songwriter, singer/songwriter and artist. And then when he was home, he'd be like, "Hey, buddy, you want pancakes?" And we'd sit down and talk about movies and stuff.
One thing that I hear a lot of artists struggle with is that there isn't ever going to be that many people in your life that can fully understand what you're going through and what you're doing. And it does kind of suck because I have a million questions that I'd like to ask him. And he would be the greatest source of information on this kind of thing. But I'm really lucky that I get to listen to his songs, watch interviews, and learn from that.
I don't know if there's really a way for me to put into words the inspiration that my father has given me. I mean, I'm 50 percent of him. I share DNA. So he's inspired more than just my songwriting and my singing and artistry, he's inspired me to be a good human and he helped raise me.
They say people end up turning into their parents, the older you get. So I think I'm answering that question just by being alive and figuring things out about myself.
I'm curious about the very first single that you released, "Ships in the Harbor," which isn’t on the album. How did that song come to be?
Well, it was after I recorded the record, so that's why it's not on the album. I had only been on the road for just a couple of months at that point. And I was home and it was really pretty outside. So me and my wife and my dog were just kind of chillin’ in the backyard. And I just started picking around and that melody was floating around my head. It was near my birthday. And whenever it's near my birthday, I always get super pensive, introspective, thinking about time and all that fun shit.
And I had this thought that we as humans have the capacity to feel all these crazy, strong emotions and loving people, and missing people, and fear. And I had a thought that the only reason that we're able to feel as deeply in those emotions is because everything that we experience is finite, including our own lives. If the things we loved, the things that we experienced in our life, were around forever, I don't think we'd be able to feel as strongly as we do about them.
We always look at cardinals and blue jays, blue birds because it's a big thing in my family – if we see one it’s someone looking after us. And that's where the second line came from. So I just kept going.
I was getting really emotional towards the end of the song, and I didn't understand why. And then that last verse came out, and I was like, okay, this is what I'm getting at here. So, that one was a tough one to write but I'm glad I did.
It's a beautiful song. Why cardinals and bluejays?
My grandma on my dad's side, his mom, when she was passing away she said if I see a cardinal or a blue jay, it’s her looking after me. And she had pictures of them all over our house. So I ended up getting a big blue jay tattoo on my right arm for my dad's side of the family. And then I have one for my mom's side. It's an ogham, it's an ancient Celtic scripture. It's love in Gaelic. So I have something for my mom and for my dad.
And speaking of powerful moments, when did you perform for people first?
The first time I ever performed on stage was at a sold out Ryman Auditorium show with my dad, I think it was [with] Jason Isbell, when I was a junior or senior in high school, and I just fell in love with it. So I started doing the encores with my dad and then I would sell merch before and during the shows. I just loved it.
It was a lot of really amazing experiences and I got to play some really cool venues with him. And now I have this thing in my head where I'm like alright, I gotta get back there and do my own songs.
I'm curious about the opening track of the album, "Elohim," which is profound and angry. And it's an interesting place to start off an album. Why start there?
I wrote it from a place when I was still really struggling with the loss of my father, and I lost my best friend to an overdose in 2017. And that obviously had a very profound impact on me, and the way that I saw the world.
I struggled for several years with my own personal faith, and why things happen. There was a long time where I thought that we were all just kind of living in this state of limbo. And I wrote that song from a very angry space — just questioning whatever is the omnipotent force that is looking over us, like, Why did I have to go through these things? It doesn't seem like I'm learning anything. It's just like I'm in pain.
And I wanted to start the record that way because the album is a story of me. It's the introduction of Tommy Prine to the world and my formative years and why I am the way I am. And it starts with "Elohim," this big, loud, angry song of me not really even interested in figuring things out. I think that that's a really powerful thing that everyone should know: that it's okay to just
be angry and not have answers. You're doing the good work by letting yourself feel those things.The record kind of moves through from there to me talking about how I don't want to go back to the person I was when I was partying all the time and needing to grow up. And then I start talking about my anxieties and panic attacks. And then I start talking about my family and I'm kind of coming back to my roots a little bit and getting closer with them and talking to them about my life experiences. And then the album ends with a song about my wife. We got married last year, so it's my story of basically entering manhood.
"I Love You Always," the album’s final track, is pretty far from "Elohim." There's also these sweeter and lighter moments on the album, like "Boyhood." I'm particularly curious about "Mirror and a Kitchen Sink"; it’s been stuck in my head for days.
So funny enough, that was actually the first song that I wrote after my dad died. It was literally within the next 72 hours that I picked up the guitar. I was like, why am I writing this goofy sort of punk rock song?
The song is about how I find myself arguing with myself a lot of the time. I’ll be thinking of these people that don't exist, and then a conversation that I would have with these people and …how to win an argument that I'll never have. And then I realized I'm literally just arguing with myself. And the only thing that's in the room is me, a mirror and the kitchen sink.
The album also covers a lot of musical territory, can you describe that variety a bit?
To me, there's three distinct vibes on the album: There's the loud rock songs, anthemic, big songs, where I'm kind of getting a lot off my chest. There's the alternative folk/Americana [songs] where I'm getting really introspective. After getting things off my chest, it's like the questions that I come up with, I kind of dive into those and work some of that out. And then there's the dedication songs — like the one for my dad, the one for my wife, "Letter to my Brother," for my friends that are going through hard times and I'm just telling them that I'm there for them.
I had such eclectic music tastes growing up that there is never one overruling genre that I would ever listen to. But to me it all made sense and was a cohesive thing. And that’s really hats off to Gena and Ruston and that they were able to take all my insane ideas and put it into something that I love. I'm happy that I did it that way with the first record. Because I feel like I can go wherever I want to go now with record two.
Is record two on the horizon?
I probably have enough to make record two right now in terms of songs. I'm taking my time with it, just because the first one isn't even released and I'm trying not to get ahead of myself. I've been thinking about record two for a while, it'll happen whenever it's time.
Can you lay that out, how you would like people to understand you as an independent artist and as your dad's son?
Well, honestly, I really think that the music speaks for itself in that regard. I think that there's some pretty obvious parallels and some times where it intersects, just in my turns of phrase and the way I go about explaining things, or sometimes the in simplicity of the lyrics where people can be like, ‘oh, yeah, like, that sounds like something John Prine's kid would do.’ And I honor that and I fully take that on. I'm never not going to be his son.
But also I grew up in a very different world than he did, I have very different experiences than he did. And when you're making music and you're writing your own songs, that is also going to come through. One big difference is my father was a really amazing character writer.. And through the stories that he would form with these characters were little bits and pieces of him in it. And I think that was something that people had to figure out.
Whereas I'm just straight up talking from my perspective and I'm talking about my life and things that have happened to me and how I felt about it. I think if you come to a show or you listen to the music, you'll see that I'm just Tommy, I'm not John Prine jr. I care about the people that like the song "Elohim," and like "This Far South," because it makes them feel less alone because of my story, rather than like, oh, John Prine’s kid also makes music, this is cool.
And I had to get over that day one starting block before I even did this. I'm just me being me, and if people find similarities, cool, if they don't, good, you're listening.
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