Review: Tommy Prine, The Louisiana – ‘Heartbreaking, hopeful, gorgeous’

Tommy Prine is on a journey. Not just the one that has taken him from his Nashville home, around the UK, and into Bristol.

This journey is a little more profound. Tommy Prine is a man trying to work out who he is.

His biography is easy to find but that’s only a part of Prine’s story. He’s the son of John Prine, one of the finest American songwriters ever, an Americana touchstone.

John Prine died in 2020 of Covid related complications and it is that moment that seems to have changed his son. He admits that, up until that point, he was doing the wrong things with the wrong crowd and it took a friend to convince him that being a musician was what he should do.

Tonight, he plays songs from his debut album, This Far South, and it’s like watching a man carve open his heart, lay everything out on the stage and then hesitantly, falteringly try to put it all back in a slightly better order. It is heartbreaking, hopeful, gorgeous.

Like all great songwriters, just like his dad, Tommy Prine tells stories. Boyhood has the warmest glow of childhood, brotherhood and tree climbing.

It’s a simple tale that tells us everything about relationships, about growing up, about love and loss. As with most of the songs tonight it’s not built around some sing-along chorus, instead it’s built around honesty and sincerity. An acoustic guitar, a life-bruised voice and a whole stack of wonderful words.

The title track of the album is a brutal piece of self-realisation. The understanding that things have gone wrong but he’s never going that “far south” again.

Prine plays his guitar as though it’s a part of him and sings with that heart-open honesty. It’s slow but not sad, hurt but determined, almost broken but strong.

On Piling Up we start to see the damage that difficult life choices have done. Here he sings with the gentle slacker bewilderment of Evan Dando at his most reflective, beating himself up for being so hopeless.

There are tiny sparks of humour amongst the self-hate though, a little grin here and there, the signs of a man coming to terms with the tricky stuff.

Time and time again Prine slides the odd line into a song that directly addresses his dad. When he does it feels as though you’ve just been kicked in the stomach.

On By the Way he sings “people say I look just like you”, the beautiful Ships in the Harbour carries the simple “I’d do anything to talk to my father”.

It’s so quiet in The Louisiana that you can almost hear hearts explode. The sound of Prine trying to make sense of his life, of coming to terms with the tricky stuff, is just lovely.

I Love You, Always is a tender love song for his wife and gains an “awww!” from the front row who hang on his every word.

It is, however, the last track of the night, Cash Carter Hill, that provides the catharsis. Written at Mother Maybelle Carter’s home (arguably the actual home of country music) it speaks of finding your own path, stepping out from the shadows, of cresting the hill.

It has a fearsome power that culminates in crashing acoustic chords. It’s the sound of a man putting his heart back together, the sound of coping, the sound of hope.

Main photo: Gavin McNamara

Read next:

• Review: Jake Xerses Fussell, Strange Brew – ‘Like taking a dip in a cool creek’
• Review: Karen Jonas, Hen & Chicken – ‘Vulnerability, warmth, intelligence and nostalgia’
• Review: King Princes, Marble Factory – ‘She has become a queer icon’

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