NASHVILEL, TN. (Oh Boy Records) - While
John Prine moves at his own pace, it's obvious that his music moves far faster than the plain-spoken singer/songwriter. Having reached stores last week, Fair &
Square - 9 years in the making - marked the Grammy-winning artist's biggest first week sales and arrived at No 2 on Billboard's highly competitive Independents chart behind r&b group
Mint Condition and No 55 on the all genre Top 200, sandwiched between country superstars
Kenny Chesney and Tim McGraw.
"When they called to tell me, I just kinda laughed," said the aw-shucks former mailman who became the first musician to read and perform at the Library of Congress - at the invitation of Pulitzer Prize-winning U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser. "I mean, it's kinda goofy, but it's really cool, too. You make your record and it's just you and the people in your life - and you know you like it pretty well, but the idea that so many people responded, well, that's great. I guess they all like it pretty well, too."
The initial count of 17,543 pieces scanned first week do not include the 1,488 that were sold off Prine's website - which brings his first week's tally to over 19,000! Given the slow build of most roots, Americana and songwriter-driven records, this is an impressive start for a record that's earning some equally impressive notice.
Beyond the covers of No Depression, American Songwriter and The Nashville Scene, Fair & Square has been hailed in USA Today with a 3 1/2 star review that proclaimed, "Prine's craggy, conversational voice dispenses wisdom with a wink and hides humor inside ruminations on fame, home and his lover's Cadillac-black hair," Billboard as a Critic's Choice "Nine years is too long without a fresh batch of John Prine originals, but the so-dang-human Fair & Square is worth the wait... quintessential blue-collar Prine: humorous, witty, poignant, lovely and all deliver with conversational ease" and Tracks offered of the 12 tracks, "they roll along like languorously a conversation with an old friend over glasses of whiskey."
Recently featured on NPR's "Morning Edition," Fair & Square also became the fastest album to hit No 1 on the Americana charts - taking a mere three weeks to scale to the top. With Rolling Stone, The Los Angeles Times, The Village Voice, Harp, Paste, The Washington Post, New Yorker and many more to come, John Prine may've taken nine years off, but the deeply human writer has hardly been forgotten.
With tour dates throughout the summer, a few surprises up his sleeve - and a record that's more than living up to John Prine's iconic stature as a distinctly American voice, Fair & Square is on its way. Look for it - and the ragged voiced troubadour - somewhere, somewhen soon.
