“John Prine Cassette Tape” is about those early tour days and road trips, driving beat-up minivans across the country. Back when all you had was the radio, and it would fade out somewhere between towns or provinces, leaving you with nothing but a worn-out cassette tape you’d played a thousand times. The vans we drove were relics themselves, barely hanging on for dear life… and honestly, so were we.
John Prine was one of those tapes. It travelled everywhere with us and somehow painted the lives we were living or wanted to live. I’ll never forget the day I sent my last van that still had a cassette player to the junkyard. It hit me too late that my beloved Prine tape was still inside. I mourned the cassette, but I think I was really mourning those days too, when music felt physical and permanent.
In this big ol’ “goofy” AI world, I think it’s worth hanging on to a little nostalgia. Getting lost in a moment, a long drive, or a song. This one goes out to all those old cassette tapes and CDs that sit somehwere lost in a scrapyard.
