After being inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame earlier this month, John Prine was scheduled to play one of his only East Coast shows of the summer at the Rockland-Bergen Music Festival in Tappan, New York. But that changed today, when the festival was canceled due to unsafe conditions from heavy rain.
But Prine-heads are in luck. The songwriter will instead play a show on Sunday night at New York’s Webster Hall. “We didn’t want to change our flights since the [festival] was canceled, so we decided to play a surprise show,” Prine wrote on Instagram.
The club is far smaller than the venues he’s been playing on his Tree of Forgiveness tour, which opened at Radio City Music Hall, and will probably be considerably rowdier – it’s a standing-room venue, unlike the seated theaters he’s been playing on tour. Jay-Z recently played the venue to celebrate its renovation with a two-hour show of rare tracks.
Kelsey Waldon, who recently signed to Prine’s Oh Boy Records, will open the show, which just went on sale on Ticketmaster, and a portion of the proceeds will go to MusiCares. Prine will play another special show Colorado’s Red Rocks with the Colorado Symphony on July 28th, featuring string arrangements by producer Dave Cobb.
Last year, Prine shared his thoughts on his life and career in a Last Word interview. He said the best part of success is “being able to find a car on eBay and just buy it. I go window-shopping online and pick five cars I want, but I’ve got no place to put ’em. Even when I was a mailman, I thought success was, if you can get all your bills paid and you get to sleep late and your friends don’t talk about you, that’s success.”