FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Media – Leading Edges, 601.483.9810, [email protected] Performance – MSU Riley Center Box Office, 601.696.2200, [email protected]

Legendary Songwriter John Prine Comes to MSU Riley Center on October 26

MERIDIAN, MS –Singer-songwriter John Prine, an American treasure, brings his sharply observed, sympathetically hilarious songs about people and their vulnerabilities to the MSU Riley Center on Friday, October 26, at 7:30 p.m.

At age 71, Prine is riding the success of “The Tree of Forgiveness,” his first album of new music in 13 years. Released earlier this year, it became his highest-charting album ever after. Prine got his start at open-mic nights during the late 1960s Chicago folk-music boom. Today, he’s a revered Nashville songwriter. For his entire half- century career, he has sung deceptively simple stories about the kind of people you meet every day.

Such songs as “Paradise,” “Angel from Montgomery,” “Sam Stone” and “Speed of the Sound of Loneliness” touch both the mind and the heart. Even in the midst of pain, they make you smile. No less an authority than Bob Dylan has called them “Midwestern mind trips to the nth degree.” Surgery in 1996 for neck cancer caused a permanent head tilt. It also affected Prine’s voice, but maybe for the better, adding a warm purr to soften his down-home nasal twang.

Prine’s fans love him fiercely. Someone else who loves him fiercely – Fiona, his wife – explains why: “He’s the real deal; he’s organic. He is always in his body, always in the moment. Sometimes it drives me crazy, and sometimes it’s the most beautiful, wonderful thing in the world.”

For fans of: John Hiatt, Lyle Lovett, Robert Earl Keen

Tickets are $88 and $82 at the MSU Riley Center Box Office, which is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. Tickets can be purchased online at www.msurileycenter.com or by phone at 601.696.2200.

###