John Prine - Angel From Montgomery (instrumental)

Not really sure why I’m sharing this here, since there’s really no fancy picking at all, but… I grew up on John Prine, and I may be more of a shred guy today but he’s always been one of my favorite singer songwriters. I took the news that he’d died pretty hard, more than I expected, and I guess this was how I came to terms with it, taking a song of his I’d always loved and working out the vocal on guitar.

This is one of those songs that I can’t believe someone actually wrote, and every time I hear it the lyrics just kill me. Maybe a little more so these days. “If dreams were lightning, and thunder were desire, this old house woulda burnt down a long time ago…” Initially I planned to step on the gain halfway through and put some sort of a bluesy solo in there, but after I recorded the backing for this I ended up deleting the solo section I’d left myself - it just didn’t feel right.

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Thanks for sharing, this is great. John Prine is a definite gap in my musical knowledge, going to make a point to listen to a bunch of his stuff.

I’ll warn you, all the local radio stations playing songs of his as a tribute to his legacy have reminded me just how much crap he wrote too - he was one of those guys who early on got the tag of “the next Dylan” and he clearly really had a hard time with that… But even on his later albums, when he’s on, he’s on, and his first self-titled album is almost across the board brilliant. This song is spectacular, there’s a few others I like nearly as much, but even the ones I don’t love as much, there are momewnts that are just stupidying. There’s this tune, “Sam Stone,” about Vietnam, which I don’t love, exactly, but the chorus… “There’s a hole in daddy’s arm/where all the money goes… And Jesus Christ died for nothing, I suppose…” Damn…

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I love the Hendrixian noodling in the rhythm parts :slight_smile:

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That kind of stuff is always sort of a musical happy place for me - whenever I pick up a guitar that’s the sort of stuff that just comes out. When I was much younger and just learning how to play I spent a LOT of time working out some of the mechanics behind Jimi’s R&B rhythm playing (and then of course SRV’s take on it - his version of “Little Wing” is one of my favorite instrumentals) and it’s still sort of latent in there, I guess.

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