John Prine has a new album due out April 13th called The Tree of Forgiveness. I have to admit I didn’t know who John Prine was, nor had I ever heard a song of his until a few weeks ago when he was on Live From Here on NPR.

I highly recommend listening to the recording of that January 20th show. I’d been searching for new music to get my year started and I found John and a duo called Sylvan Esso who also played that day.

I listened to the show on Saturday in between grocery store stops and didn’t even catch his name correctly, but I committed enough of the lyrics of the song to memory to try frantically searching for him on Google later that night.

Lucky for me, NPR re-airs the show the following day so I was able to listen to it in its entirety and write down his name and the name of the song. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since.

But information about the new album, and the song, were hard to come by since it had not officially been released. John even “conceals” the name of the album when he talks about it on the show.

This week the name of the album was released along with the single that he sang which is called “Summer’s End.” You can listen to it and read the lyrics here. I immediately pre-ordered the album on vinyl, and I’ve already listened to the song about a dozen times. And will probably listen to it 100 times before the album arrives.

It’s just a great song. And it’s what I needed right now. The lyrics are heartfelt, and haunting. Give it a listen and let me know what the song does for you.

Were you a John Prine fan before?  I’m so glad I came across him. I’ve been enjoying some of his other stuff in the meantime. Like I said, he’s just kind of the music I needed in my life right now.