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John Prine brought his exceptional song writing and guitar playing skills to a sold out show at the Ohio Theater Saturday night.

(Plain Dealer file)

John Prine and a three-piece band warmed up and wowed a sold-out Ohio Theater Saturday night playing no less than 20 songs from some of his 21 albums. Even though time and a bout with cancer have weakened his pipes a bit, he still sounded like unmistakably like the John Prine of yesteryear.

All I ever needed to know about John Prine was that he was Bob Dylan's favorite songwriter. He was mailman in Chicago in the late '60s when discovered by Kris Kristofferson or Roger Ebert, (depending on who you read) while playing open mic nights in small Chicago folk clubs.

Prine and his band hit the packed Ohio Theater stage at 9 p.m. on the dot and played for two solid hours from his own prodigiously impressive songbook. He opened with "Spanish Pipedream" and had the audience shouting out requests for the rest of the night.

Prine is such a natural and versatile musical stylist; it's no wonder songwriters and singers the world over are drawn to his material. He writes poems and pajama-grams. He writes narrative short stories and epic movie like mini operas.

He writes songs from women's point of view like no other male writer working today.

Bette Midler covered his song "Hello In There," on her first album, "The Divine Miss M." Bonnie Raitt made his song, "Angel from Montgomery," her own signature piece and Nanci Griffin recorded "Broken the Speed of the Sound of Loneliness" and it sounds as if she had written it herself.

His songs range from the silly to the sublime. And nobody does heartache like Prine. He can make the most prosaic rhymes sound like they came from God's lips.

He introduced his song "Fish and Whistle" saying "I wrote this song 30 years ago and I still don't know what it's about," getting a huge laugh from the crowd.

The chorus is a conversation with God that goes "You forgive us and we'll forgive you. We'll forgive each other until we both turn blue."

The song "Unwed Fathers" begins with the phrase "An Appalachian . . . Grey Hound station," which is the setting for a song about a pregnant teenage girl from the hills leaving town in shame. And it hits every poignant note. Prine's seemingly easy precision with words and images never fails to astound. Neither does his ability to get a laugh from the audience.

"This is a song request from a guy in Pittsburgh last night. I'm just getting to it. I hope he knows somehow by osmosis that I'm doing it now. It's a song I don't do very often. And you're about to find out why."

Prine and the band then went into the hilarious "Let's Talk Dirty in Hawaiian." Check it out on YouTube. It's worth the time if you need a laugh.

But the most heart-wrenching song of the night was Prine's "Hello in There." It was originally written 30 years ago as an admonishment to young people to be more aware of older people and their loneliness. Saturday night the audience, all very familiar wit the song from their youth, had become the older people the song was about.

At some point in the show an audience member down front requested the Prine song "Big Old Goofy World." Prine responded by saying, I wouldn't have it any other way." Then he played it.