“You’ll be waitin’ on a phone call at the wrong end of a broom:” John Prine’s Fair and Square gets a vinyl re-issue

There was no safety belt around Prine’s heart—no risk he wouldn’t take and seemingly no limit to his compassion. Uninterested in cultivating the mystery that shrouded many of his folk peers, Prine’s purview was what the writer Jim Gavin once referred to as “people who don’t know how to climb the pyramid of American success.” For all of Fair & Square’s loveliness—the album was co-produced with Gary Paczosa and resembles Nick Drake’s transporting work with producer Joe Boyd—the subtext of underdog rage remains.