John Prine - Angel From Montgomery

I was not ready for John Prine when I first heard his song “Sam Stone” in high school. I would imagine that its content is over the heads of even the least ripped high school seniors. It certainly flew over mine. I took it to be another stoner’s anthem, a song to wear your scars to. As such, it didn’t really interest me. And since I was only into Zeppelin and Kanye’s first album at the time, I didn’t explore prine’s catalogue any further.

In 2010, the mentor of a close friend of mine passed away. It was an unexpected, sad, and unfair death. At the funeral, my friend played “angel from montgomery.” I did not attend, nor had I heard the song at that point, but the title stuck in my head. It was a strange image, and I built up certain expectations for the song – that it was about a lovely woman from montgomery, or something along those lines.

Of course, then I heard the song, and my expectations were shattered. The song is indeed about a woman, but a woman who wants to die out of sheer boredom, disappointed with where her life has taken her. It is a very sad song. Yet the old woman’s nostalgia and bitterness have been ground down and refined into a diamond-hard will to live in spite of wanting to die. I found it interesting that John Prine took on the personality of an old woman so well. He does it so casually that you don’t even think how weird the whole idea is.

As someone who has grown up listening to ’90s country arrangements, I am generally quick to dismiss the static, down-tempo, steel-guitar-laden recordings that characterize so much of country music. However, only the right side of my car stereo works, and listening in mono on my cassette stereo that day, I only got some guitar, drums, piano, and vocals. The recording feels like it was captured in a dusty corner of the house that is being described within the song. I don’t even know if this is the whole mix, but I loved it – full yet lean.

I wanted for my interpretation to preserve the spareness that I first perceived. I love John Prine’s biting vocal timbre, and I felt it would be just as exciting to lose some of the more conventional arrangement choices and let the structure speak for itself.