Tommy Prine, Keith Sykes Pay Tribute to Father, Friend John Prine in Town He Dearly Loved

by Julian Spivey

Julian Spivey Photo

 
It was a fantastic night of good music and remembrance at the Ozark Highlands Theater at the Ozark Folk Center State Park in Mountain View, Ark. on Saturday, June 8, when singer-songwriters Tommy Prine and Keith Sykes got together to pay tribute to the late, great John Prine.
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For Tommy, a 28-year-old singer-songwriter from Nashville, it was a night to remember his songwriting legend of a father. For Sykes, it was a night to remember his longtime friend and multiple-time songwriting collaborator.

The small town of Mountain View, known as the folk capital of the world, was dear to John Prine. He first started coming to the town on family trips from their home in the suburbs of Chicago in the late ‘50s or early ’60s. It became a frequent source of relaxation for him, where he could fish, enjoy the outdoors and be among common folk.

The two songwriters would switch off throughout the evening playing their favorite John Prine songs and some of their original work – both were fantastic and fascinating to see. However, I couldn’t help but wonder if the audience didn’t feel tricked as the event was billed as a “John Prine Tribute Concert,” which to some might have implied an entire evening of John Prine songs. If some in the audience were upset by this they were polite and didn’t show it, which was nice because the event was being recorded for a future episode of the Ozark Highlands Radio show that can be found on local public radio stations or streaming online.

I would’ve liked to have heard a few more John Prine songs but I was also thrilled to see the terrific songwriting talent trickle down to his son, whose debut album This Far South came out last year.

Sykes began the show at roughly 7:20 p.m. with a performance of “Take a Look at My Heart,” a song John Prine co-wrote with John Mellencamp from his 1991 album The Missing Years.

Tommy’s first song was “Far From Me,” off John Prine’s self-titled 1971 debut, which he told the audience of roughly 1,000 people was his favorite of his dad’s and the greatest breakup song ever written, though he admitted he was certainly biased.

The duo would essentially play John Prine songs one after the other, then each an original song they’d written, then back to John Prine songs and so forth throughout the nearly two-hour show, with a short intermission in between.

Sykes played three songs during the show he had collaborated on with Prine: “Long Monday” off 2005’s Fair & Square, “You Got Gold” off The Missing Years and “Love, Love, Love” off 1985’s German Afternoons.  

Sykes also performed the sarcastic “The Accident (Things Could Be Worse)” off his sophomore album Sweet Revenge in 1973.

Tommy had my favorite John Prine covers of the evening, maybe feeling more at home with some of his dad’s best works, whereas Sykes wanted to highlight the numbers the two had co-written. Tommy performed two of my favorite John Prine songs, “Angel from Montgomery” and “Souvenirs.”  

I also found Tommy’s original numbers to have more substance than those performed by Sykes, though some within the audience seemed to prefer the more humorous numbers by Sykes.

Tommy performed a couple of beautiful songs that have not been released yet like “Purple Paint,” written for his wife, and “Piling Up.” But my favorite performances from him during the show were two I’ve already heard and been a fan of like “Mirror and a Kitchen Sink” off This Far South, and “Ships in the Harbor,” the first song he ever released in 2022, that likely left much of the audience teary-eyed when he got to the line toward the end that said: “I’d do anything just to talk to my father.”

Sykes certainly had some funny original songs during the evening like “Television,” which he said he wrote last year and hasn’t been released. It’s a humorous song about just wanting your family to leave you the hell alone so you can be distracted by the tube. “Horseflies” was also a comical song about hating horseflies. My favorite original from Sykes, however, was “Volcano,” one I’d seen performed multiple times before in concert by the man whom he co-wrote it with and made it into a classic, Jimmy Buffett.

Tommy Prine and Keith Sykes ended the night in the only way in which a John Prine tribute concert should end with a sing-along of “Paradise,” one of Prine’s most famous songs about childhood trips to Muhlenberg County, Ky.