There’s a live version ‘Brusied Orange‘ where John Prine tells the story of how it was written. “This is about when I was about 14 and dusting pews in a church” he says to a giggling audience. “I got 50 bucks a month to dust the pews and wax the cross and cut the grass and shovel the snow. That’s why I lost the job, I guess, shovelling the snow… I was walking down one morning and the only other people around were the altar boys going to all the different churches, one of them got hit by a train one day and got hit real bad and there were about 10 or 11 mothers standing around in a circle and they were all grieving. They told one woman it was her son…I’ll never forget the looks on those other womens’ faces”. Considering his love of a good yarn, maybe that’s why Justin Vernon chose it as the b-side to his next single ‘Towers’. Originally recorded as part of a John Prine tribute in 2010, ‘Broken Hearts & Dirty Windows: Songs of John Prine’, the new 12″ is due out on January 23 via 4AD.
A NEW MUSIC BLOG
