PRINE ON PRINE at Southern Festival Of Books 10/21, VARIETY + More

PRINE ON PRINE: Interviews & Encounters
Variety, Chicago Tribune, Garden & Gun, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Nashville Scene, CBS News, SiriusXM + More
 
SOUTHERN FESTIVAL OF BOOKS 10/21 @ Nashville Public Library
w contributors Michael McCall + Chicago Sun-Times vet Dave Hoekstra
 
“No music writer alive could be better equipped to edit this volume” – Salvation South
“Book of the Month” – Americana Highways

Having kicked off PRINE ON PRINE: Interviews & Encounters with a discussion with Grammy winner Steve Earle in the Rare Book Room of NYC’s legendary Strand Books, editor/contributor Holly Gleason heads to the Southern Festival of Books this Saturday, Oct. 21 for a panel with longtime Chicago Sun-Times critic Dave Hoekstra and  former Nashville Banner critic/Nashville Scene contributor Michael McCall. The panel takes place at 4 pm in the Obion Room at Nashville’s Public Library.
 
PRINE ON PRINE: Interviews & Encounters has struck a chord across America. Beyond the initial wave of media, including a three page cover story in The Tennessean’s Sunday Features section the week of release, the collection of newspaper and magazine features, tv appearances, award presentations, film scripts, recipes and an evening at the Library of Congress has been difficult to find in independent bookstores. With its initial printing being sold out almost before it arrived, fans of the Grammy, Songwriter and soon-to-be “Austin City Limits” Hall of Fame inductee can be assured a copy of the book following the panel.
 
“People don’t realize what a passion person John Prine is,” Gleason marvels of the initial response, “until all the books are gone, people are being told they have no idea when they may be able to have books in stock. But for those of us who know and love these songs, it’s no surprise. And part of why this book felt important to do is the way it allows John to exists as he was in every stage and moment of his career. Context in looking back, but it’s the real time perspective from  some of the greatest writers who’ve covered music and culture that made this an important work...
 
“Dave Hoekstra, who’s coming in from Chicago, contributes three exceptional pieces. One from the incredible independent music monthly Illinois Entertainer deals with John’s friendship with Steve Goodman and the Chicago folk scene that spawned them, while his Sun-Times pieces tackle John’s move to Nashville and then returning to Chicago as the uber-successful Grammy-winner playing a benefit for Prine’s alma mater Proviso High School in Maywood, Illinois.
 
“Michael McCall, who’s now at the Country Music Hall of Fame, contributes a cover story from the Nashville Scene that checks in with John as his Oh Boy has proven important artists can create and flourish on their own label at a time when it just wasn’t done. But even more importantly, Michael measures what having his family life come together with Fiona and their beautiful boys meant to him.”
 
Praise has continued pouring in. Chicago Tribune legend Rick Kogan offered, “In this book you get the man, in all his charming, introspective, self-deprecating and inspiring facets. It can serve as a biography, with the details of signposts and bumps on Prine’s road to fame.” The Los Angeles Times deemed it, “moving and insightful,” HITSDailyDouble.com headlined, “Gleason’s Prine Tome Digs Deep” and entertainment bible VARIETY declared, “to love and know Prine is to spend a lot of hours in his presence via Gleason’s essential compendium, which finds his observational candor, fierce, intelligence and genial warmth to be unwavering.”
 
“Whimsical, romantic, literary, simple, retrospective, forward-looking, all absolutely John Prine” PASTE opined, while Garden & Gun assessed, “the most concise record of Prine’s life in his own words that we have” and No Depression offered “PRINE ON PRINE brings John Prine to life in ways no single biography could ever do.” Even the international Globe & Mail raved, “the closest thing we will ever get to an autobiography of a genius wordsmith” in a wrap up of 12 Music Books This Fall that included Barbra Streisand and Britney Spears.
 
John Prine has come to be revered as Americana’s premiere songwriter/artist. With a strong empathy for the human condition, the Chicago-born and -raised daydreamer went on to become a voice who spoke for the unseen and an artist who gave gravitas to those society didn’t bother with. PRINE ON PRINE: Interviews & Encounters traces the man whose songs have been recorded by Bonnie Raitt, George Strait, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Loretta Lynn, Bettye LaVette, Miranda Lambert, Carly Simon, Susan Tedeschi, Johnny Cash and more across his five decade career was a labor of love for Gleason. 
 
“One of the best pieces of this book has been bringing together people who have such vibrant memories and experiences with John. So many memories, so much life are contained in the book and the conversations... and these panels are a way to share not just the research that went PRINE ON PRINE, but the fellowship that John fostered among those reporters, critics, and fellow artists, who make up the list of contributors. Every event has been an opportunity to take this book and go even deeper. I can’t wait for Saturday with Dave and Michael at the Nashville Library. The Southern Festival of Books rocks; I think John would be glad we’re part of it.”
 
Having created, edited and contributed to Woman, Walk The Line, the 2018 Belmont Book Award winning collection of essays about how female country artists profoundly impact individual lives with contributions from Taylor Swift, New York Times best-selling author Alice Randall, Rosanne Cash, Grammy-winning historian Holly George-Warren, poet Caroline Randall Williams, top James Beard Award winner Ronni Lundy, food activist Ali Berlow and more, Gleason understands curating a narrative can sometimes reach places a single reported narrative can’t. That was the goal for PRINE ON PRINE, and across myriad mediums, moments and conversations, a sense of the man across his truly lived life emerges.

Purchase the book HERE. 

Early Praise for PRINE ON PRINE: Interviews & Encounters:
As close to an autobiography as we’re going to get from John Prine, Prine On Prine captures the inimitable, whimsical voice of one of our greatest songwriters, from the beginning of his career to his final days, evolving from the shy, self-effacing, uncertain youngster film critic Roger Ebert discovered to the wise, cunning veteran who left a body of work probably second only to Dylan. Nashville legend Holly Gleason knew the man and assembled this brilliant collection with a knowing eye and loving heart.
            – Joel Selvin, Here Comes The Night: The Dark Soul of Bert Berns and the Dirty Business of Rhythm + Blues; Fare The Well: The Final Chapter of the Grateful Dead’s Long Strange Trip
 
I’m so grateful that Holly has put together this fantastic collection of the best interviews and articles about our beloved John Prine, spanning the whole six decades of his extraordinary career. For all of us who loves and miss him so, this book is truly a treasured gift.
            – Bonnie Raitt

Holly has created a beautiful collage by using John’s words to bring us into the center of his world where family music imagination and love reside with his struggle to remain that kid from Maywood whose curiosity birthed the beautiful songs and music he gifted to the world.
            – Fiona Prine

So much insight and so many great personal stories behind this legendary, super talent. If you’re a John Prine fan, you’re going to love this book. If you’re not, please read it and listen to his music. You will then no doubt be one.
            – George Strait

Listening to John Prine instantly jolts me to a higher vibration and feels like I’m walking on holy ground, free, fearless and naked as the eyes of a clown. He shakes me, wakes me, conjuring up emotions I didn’t know I had, reminding me that tenderness is a virtue. His words make me want to be a better person, to recognize myself in everyone’s eyes, to hold all humanity in high esteem - because we’re all in it together.  
Praise be to Holly Gleason for this oh so important, exquisitely curated collection. John Prine improved the world by being alive. Let’s do our best keep that big, beautiful ball rolling.
            – Pamela Des Barres, I’m With The Band and Lets Spend The Night Together
 
The brilliant genius of John Prine was not only the magic he had in writing  about everyday life for everyday people; but just as important was that his lyrics provoked you into thinking about everyday things that you may never have given much thought to and after he woke up those feelings, you realized you couldn’t have said it any better. The respect, admiration and love for Prine and his songs that Holly Gleason has is obvious not only in her eloquent introduction, but in the interviews she selected to pay proper homage to him.
            – Linda Moran, President & CEO, Songwriters Hall Of Fame
 
Nobody wrote songs like John Prine, filled with humor, humanity, and perfectly cock-eyed detail. But what this elegantly curated collection—culled from interviews, TV and radio appearances, and even recipes—reveals is that...well, that’s just who the guy was. Whether he’s at the Library of Congress or in the pages of Hot Rod magazine, Prine’s wit and fierce independence constantly shine through.
            – Alan Light, The Holy or the Broken: Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley &the Unlikely Ascent of “Hallelujah”
 
I’ve loved John Prine since I was a little girl. PRINE ON PRINE makes me feel like he’s been talking to me since he was a young man, and seeing him go through the phases of  his career is a real gift. Holly Gleason knew John, so she understood how to take these interviews, movie scripts, tv shows and recipes and create a sense of who he was when he got done writing or performing. Now even more than a legend, he feels like a favorite uncle.  
            – Miranda Lambert
 
With a deep understanding and knowledge of John Prine – the man and his music – Holly Gleason has searched every nook and cranny to curate a thoughtful biography of one of our greatest singer-songwriters. Her insightful text sets the scene as we experience Prine, the unfiltered raconteur, via five decades of media coverage, from major magazines to niche publications, television scripts to a recipe book, talk show appearances, movie roles and his PEN Award presentation. Prine on Prine is both revelatory and entertaining.
            – Holly George-Warren, Janis: Her Life & Music and A Man Called Destruction: The Life & Music of Alex Chilton
 
Reality can involve a lot of imagination, and no one was better at imagining and painting real pictures about people you felt you knew.  I enjoyed getting to know John more through Holly’s curation and writing.  A true master. 
            – Eric Church
 
This book is a stunner! Only the glorious Holly Gleason could assemble such a magnificent collection to celebrate the life and world-changing artistry of her friend John Prine. Perhaps the most joyful history book you’ll ever read. His music explodes from the pages.
            – Tom DeSavia, Under the Big Black Sun: A Personal History of LA Punk and More Fun In The New World: The Unmaking and Legacy of LA Punk
 
Holly Gleason is the 2023 Southern California Media Awards Entertainment Journalist of the Year, as well their winner for Music Criticism and Entertainment News Feature (Magazine). An author, journalist and academic whose work regularly appeared in Rolling Stone, Los Angeles Times, Musician,  Oxford American, Playboy, Interview and Miami Herald. The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame/Case Western Reserve Fellow is the 2019 Country Music Association Media Achievement Award winner, creator/contributor of the 2018 Belmont Book Award-winning Woman Walk The Line: How The Women of Country Music Changed Our Life,  co-author of Miranda Lambert’s New York Times best-seller Y’All Eat Yet: Welcome to the Pretty B*tchin' Kitchen and Prine on Prine: Interviews & Encounters, published by Chicago Review Press Sept. 2023.