John Prine – Austin, TX (06/25/80)

John Prine
“Live at the Armadillo 1980”
Armadillo World Headquarters, Austin, TX
1980-06-25

Lineage: SBD > ??? > WAV > “Dopler” Speed Correction > Track Splitting > FLAC Level 8

Setlist:

1. Spanish Pipedream
2. Iron Ore Betty
3. Fish and Whistle
4. Down by the Side of the Road
5. Living in the Future
6. One Red Rose
7. Illegal Smile
8. Sam Stone
9. That’s the Way That the World Goes ‘Round
10. There She Goes
11. I Had a Dream
12. No Name Girl
13. Far From Me
14. Storm Windows
15. Chinatown
16. Grandpa Was a Carpenter
17. Intro to The Bottomless Lake
18. The Bottomless Lake
19. Paradise
20. Automobile
21. Ubangi Stomp
22. Pretty Good
23. Hello in There
24. Please Don’t Bury Me
25. Sleepy Eyed Boy
26. Onomatopoeia
27. Sweet Revenge
28. Saigon
29. Mexican Home

Total Duration: 117 minutes and 23 seconds

Band:

John Prine – guitar, vocals
Bob Hoban – piano, organ, fiddle, mandolin
Leo LeBlanc – dobro, pedal steel guitar
Johnny Burns – lead guitar
Tommy “Pickles” Piekarski – bass
Angelo Varias – drums

Notes:

Coincidentally, lots of John Prine’s best sounding shows are from his “Chicago band” era in the late-70’s. To my ears, this is the best one among them – the stereo sound is so clear that you can hear Johnny Burns’ guitar on the left and Leo LeBlanc’s guitar on the right. Plus John Prine’s 1980 recordings are extremely rare, so this is a real gem to have. Johnny Burns, who led Prine’s band at the time, has been sharing a lot of John Prine memories on Facebook recently.

This concert promoted Prine’s “Storm Windows” album. It gave us the only known electric full-band recordings of “One Red Rose” and “Far From Me”, two songs that Prine almost always did solo acoustic. By the time this concert took place, Howard Levy has already left the band and was replaced by Bob Hoban and Leo LeBlanc.

Seahorse, from whom I got this show, said that this recording is believed to be uncirculated so far. The show sounds absolutely excellent, the only problem is that the tape runs at a slightly uneven speed, so the recording is sometimes a tad flat or sharp. I’ve done my best to correct the speed so the speed problem is now barely audible.

Do not sell this recording.
Enjoy and feel free to share it anywhere.
Support the artists by purchasing their official releases and going to their live shows.
If you’re tired of physical CDs, you can go to Prine’s Bandcamp website and purchase his albums in FLAC/ALAC/WAV lossless format: http://johnprine.bandcamp.com/
John McCutcheon wrote a very touching tribute song to Prine, so good that it moved me to tears. You can hear it at https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=691194858300006.