Old rivers

We lost one of our great songwriters last year when John Prine succumbed to COVID-19. Prine’s wife Fiona died only days after he did, also from the coronavirus.

In “Hello in There”, Prine captured the most terrible and terrifying parts of aging: isolation, irrelevance, invisibility. And he did it matter-of-factly, in both melody and lyrics.

Here’s Joan Baez singing it shortly before his death.