[rating=3.50]
John Prine’s In Person & On Stage is nothing stellar but the live collection of tracks shows that the longtime singer-songwriter is still doing quite well for himself. With a tandem of guitarist Jason Wilber and bassist Dave Jacques fleshing out most of the 14 songs, Prine begins with the warm, toe-tapping “Spanish Pipedream” and rarely misses the mark on other gems like “Unwed Fathers,” “Paradise” and “Bear Creek Blues.”
Perhaps the best part of In Person though is the well placed cameos that forms a who’s who of alt.country circles: Iris DeMent, Emmylou Harris, Josh Ritter, Kevin Welch, Kieran Kane and Sara Watkins to name a few. And this works quite nicely when DeMent makes her imprint on the simple, folksy “In Spite Of Ourselves” while Watkins gives a stellar performance on “The Late John Garfield Blues.”
Whether he’s delivering nuggets like the lovely “Long Monday” or “She Is My Everything,” it’s hard not to think of Prine as falling somewhere between the late Townes Van Zant and Dylan, a bit more balanced than the former but still having a touch of humor Dylan rarely shows as heard on “The Bottomless Lake.” The highlight here has to be Harris’ contribution to “Angel From Montgomery,” yet the quality of all the material is hard to argue with.
