The long-promised tribute night for the late John Prine is finally set to go ahead at McHugh’s Barrel Venue on Friday, 27th January.
John Prine, who passed away in 2020 due to Covid 19, was a multi grammy winning artist widely revered as one of the most gifted American singer songwriters of our time with the ability to channel humour and heartbreak into his observations on the human condition.
Northern Ireland band Illegal Smile are without doubt the foremost aficionados of Prine’s music in Europe and the UK. They have received standing ovations at all their concerts including The Empire Music Hall Belfast and The Belfast Guinness Blues Cafe, The Grand Social and Whelans in Dublin.
Illegal Smile reproduce John’s songs with the utmost sincerity and integrity in a way that those who understand the true quality of his work will undoubtedly appreciate.
Over five decades John Prine wrote rich, plain-spoken songs that chronicled the struggles and stories of everyday working people, changed the face of modern American roots music.
He was admired by Bob Dylan, Kris Kristofferson, and others for his songs that covered the full spectrum of the human experience.
Therse include “Hello in There,” about the devastating loneliness of an elderly couple; “Sam Stone,” a portrait of a drug-addicted Vietnam soldier suffering from PTSD; and “Paradise,” an ode to his parents’ strip-mined hometown of Paradise, Kentucky, which became an environmental anthem.
Prine tackled these topics with empathy and humour, with an eye for “the in-between spaces,” the moments people don’t talk about, he told Rolling Stone in 2017.
“Prine’s stuff is pure Proustian existentialism,” Dylan said in 2009. “Midwestern mind-trips to the nth degree.”
Doors open at 8.30pm on Friday, 27th January, and tickets for this unforgettable night are available at www.Ticketstop.ie
