'Mortality and love and pork chops': The roots of John Prine's 'Tree of Forgiveness'

John Prine already has concrete plans for the afterlife. "I'm gonna have a cocktail: vodka and ginger ale / Gonna smoke a cigarette that's nine miles long," he sings on "When I Get to Heaven," the final, rollicking track on stellar new album "The Tree of Forgiveness," due out April 13 on his own Oh Boy Records.

A cold, rainy March afternoon in Nashville is far from heavenly, but at Germantown Cafe — located just a few blocks away from his Butcher Shoppe Recording Studio — Prine orders that drink, which he dubbed the "Handsome Johnny" a few decades back.

Next to him on the bench seat is a cane, a souvenir from his recent knee surgery. With two knee replacements, a hip replacement and hardware in his elbow, he's Nashville's bionic man. "All the TSA guys know me," said the masterful singer-songwriter, whose compositions have been recorded by artists like Johnny Cash, Bonnie Raitt, Roy Acuff and Miranda Lambert.

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Though his body may set off every metal detector in the airport, Prine's heart is all human. It beats in every song on "The Tree of Forgiveness," his first album of original material since 2005's "Fair and Square," and the most personal record of his 47-year recording career. "I think that comes from age," he said. "You get to be 71, I guess you run out of other things to write about. You don’t see as good as you used to, you don’t hear as good, so maybe it’s time to write about yourself."

He made the album at Nashville's famed Studio A with Dave Cobb, who has produced acclaimed records for Prine pals Jason Isbell, Amanda Shires and Brandi Carlile, all of whom appear on "The Tree of Forgiveness."

Though he didn't have a theme in mind when working on the album, it's "been pointed out to me that the songs talk about mortality and love and pork chops,” Prine said. “I guess I’m the common thread.”

Born and raised in the Chicago suburbs, Prine's knack for telling stories started at home. "My mother came from a family of eight sisters and three brothers and they had a lot of stories," he remembered. "And when my dad was still alive, he knew how to get the attention of everybody in the bar."

His "When I Get to Heaven" plans involve them, too: "I'm going to go find my mom and dad, and good old brother Doug ... I want to see all my mama's sisters, because that's where all the love starts. I miss them all like crazy."

That sentimental streak drives him offstage as well. He’s fished the same river since he was 14 years old, and when Fiona, his wife of almost 22 years, is out of town, he replaces the lamp bulbs in their home with yellow bug lights because he likes the warm, “almost nostalgic” glow.

“It’s like living in ‘The Twilight Zone.’ You can’t read with a bug light,” she sighed.

“I can,” he retorted. “It’s like you’re reading books from yesteryear.”

He still has a boyish love for Christmas lights. While recording at Studio A last year, he brought a white plastic Christmas tree. Later, he sent another to Cobb's home. Both trees are still up. Laughed Cobb, "I got Prined."

When used as a verb, "Prine" has multiple definitions. To the man himself, it means to tweak a song's lyrics, like he did on "Boundless Love," co-written with Pat McLaughlin and Dan Auerbach.

"I called them up and told them I was going to 'John Prine the song up,'" he laughed. He made a few small changes — took out the word "food," added "pork chops" — and rewrote the second verse:

"Sometimes my old heart is like a washing machine It bounces around until my soul comes clean And when I'm clean and hung out to dry I'm gonna make you laugh until you cry"

The verse is a perfect description of Prine's songwriting, which veers from humorous to devastating, often in the same line.

“The second I stop writing, I’ll be in an asylum,” he said. “Writing, it makes you feel a little more normal to have a job. People you run into — like your barber or whatever — you tell them what you do for a living, they don’t really believe you.”

He didn't have trouble convincing his barber about his work during his latest haircut: A recent issue of GQ Style, featuring the troubadour as one of "15 Living Legends of Country Music," was in the waiting area.

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'A master class in humanity'

"I didn't have time to plan this record," said Prine. "Fiona and my son Jody (Whelan, who runs Oh Boy Records) told me it was time ... (and) I had about three weeks until we went into the studio."

After decades on the road, Prine's used to life in hotel rooms. So he took four guitars and multiple boxes of unfinished lyrics to a suite at the Omni Nashville Hotel. Then he bought another guitar and a ukulele, and spread the instruments and half-finished songs around the room. Then he got to work, writing new songs and editing old ones. When there was a lull, he’d head downstairs to check out the gift shop at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum next door.

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Before long, he was at Studio A. They tracked the whole album in just four days. It felt more like fun than work, though. There was a lot of laughter, and a lot of kazoo playing; both can be heard on the finished product.

“I didn’t know him very well going into the session, but I feel like I came out with a lifelong friend," said Cobb, who cites "When I Get to Heaven" as one of his favorite moments of the recording process: "There’s extremely poignant lyrics (in that song) that’ll just crush you and put a tear in your eye, and then there’s one line his father said to him: 'When you're dead, you're a dead peckerhead.' Every time that line came by, he’d fall out of his chair laughing. I loved it."

Cobb added, "John has his own system and his own way of doing things. He’s always happy, loving and just incredibly thoughtful. Hanging out with the guy is like a master class in humanity.”

Behind the wheel of his black Cadillac, Prine ruminates on a variety of topics, including bees (“I always thought it was totally unfair that they can both fly and sting you”), financial planning (“Sometimes when I write a song I think is great, I go out and spend the money before it’s even recorded”) and marriage (“Make your wife your manager. That really yuks things up”).

When he's not on the road, he spends his days getting his cars washed, going to Arnold's Country Kitchen for lunch and buying new reading glasses to replace the pairs inevitably left in some green room across the country. But his afternoons rattling around town will be in short supply for the next several months, because he's busier than ever.

The day "The Tree of Forgiveness" is released, Prine will be in New York, playing a sold-out show at Radio City Music Hall with Sturgill Simpson. He's got a new member of the band, multi-instrumentalist Fats Kaplin, and tour dates planned through the end of the year. He's slated to perform two shows at the Ryman Auditorium Oct. 5-6.

"I'm really proud of it," said Prine of the new album. "I couldn't think of anything that'd be more representative of where I'm at right now than this record ... I’m hoping everybody likes it as much as we do. Then I can take another 13 years ‘til the next one."

Prine will be 84 years old then. He smiles. "I’ll be right in my prime."

How to make a 'Handsome Johnny'

"I figured it should have a name," Prine says of his eponymous cocktail, which he dubbed the "Handsome Johnny" 20-some years ago. "Now the old cocktails are all the rage again, but (back then) you couldn’t get a Manhattan or a Rob Roy; they'd never heard of that stuff. So I thought I’d give my favorite drink a name and name it after me, and maybe it would catch on."

Prine's preferred vodka is Smirnoff Red Label, "the cheap stuff."

"The expensive kind — the blue label — that kills the bubbles in the ginger ale," he explains. "That's something you don’t want to do, otherwise you've got flat ginger ale."

His own recipe, made to be sipped while watching "Cash Cab" reruns and "Jeopardy" at the end of the day, uses diet ginger ale and plenty of ice. In the winter, he adds a slice of lime, and in the summer, lemon.

What's the best way to make a perfect Handsome Johnny? "As fast as you can."

Reach Juli Thanki at jthanki@tennessean.com or on Twitter @Juli Thanki.