Standard Songs for Average People

Music Legends John Prine & Mac Wiseman Join Forces on New Album

Mark Williams
Music Editor

John Prine and Mac Wiseman are as different as charcoal and diamonds: Prine’s jagged voice suggests the acoustic storytellers of his generation who used personality and phrasing to give their tales color. Wiseman, a bluegrass pioneer, is the Sinatra of mountain music -- a smooth and adventurous crooner whose smooth tone rides atop mandolins and fiddles like billowy clouds skimming tall pines and deep hollows. 

On their new album of duets, “Standard Songs for Average People,” these two music vets don’t harmonize as much as bring out the other’s distinctive vocal strengths. They’re more likely to trade lines than join together, but they sound delighted either way. This isn’t a duo set up as a star-trippin’ venture, nor is it meant as an artistic exercise to stretch their talents. It simply sounds like two well-traveled guys -— Prine is 60, Wiseman, 81 -— sharing a love of old songs and feeling inspired by each other’s company. 

All 14 songs are covers, the most recent of which dates back 35 years; Tom T. Hall’s “Old Dogs, Children and Watermelon Wine” and Kris Kristofferson’s tale of a ragged rambler, “Just the Other Side of Nowhere.” But those are the only songs on the album from the era when Prine was starting out -- and the only ones reminiscent of the kind of songs he writes. Most of the selections reach much further back -- from a rendition of Ernest Tubb’s “Blue Eyed Elaine” and Bing Crosby’s “Where the Blue of the Night.” 

In that sense, the album shares a lighthearted outlook with the recent album by Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson and Ray Price, “Last of the Breed,” or, for that matter, Jerry Lee Lewis’ duets album with various veterans, “Last Man Standing.” Maybe it’s a reaction to our turbulent times that these masters want to trade lines on buoyant songs that celebrate endearing aspects of love and life. Or maybe, when old guys sing together, it’s just more natural to put across a sunny lyric. 

Interestingly enough, the serious moments occur when Prine and Wiseman bow their heads on two contemplative hymns, “In the Garden” and “The Old Rugged Cross.” Otherwise, the two gents sound like they’re smiling throughout. They even give a jug-band treatment to “Pistol Packin’ Mama,” the album’s standout track. In it, Wiseman gives a doctorate lesson in how to vary phrasing in each stanza to give a song more flavor, while Prine sings his lines as if having the time of his life.

At this point, Prine and Wiseman have earned a right to lighten up and have a little fun. Give into the album’s charms, and it’ll have the same effect on you…

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