019 Singing Mailman Transcript (John Prine)

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Michael: This person died in 2020 age 73. He met his wife in Ireland while on tour in 1988.

Friend: Okay. I'll answer or he's a musician can't be bought out. Can't be the edge.

Michael: I'll give you a hint. It's not a member of U2.

Friend: And Morrison still lie. Whereas I know

Michael: Bob Dylan once described his art as quote, pure prowl Stijn existentialism,

Friend: Proustian, existentialism. I know exactly what that means is Peter frampton or like whoa, and

Michael: love that guess, not Peter Frampton. He was a relative unknown in 1970. When Kris Kristofferson first heard him play one night at a Chicago.

Friend: Oh, wow. I remember hearing that story and I'm just failing to place who this is.

Michael: Roger Ebert, the film critic for the Chicago sun times wrote his first review under the headline quote, singing mailman who delivers a powerful message in a few words,

Friend: male and man, a little redundant from Roger old blue eyes. It's Frank Sinatra. He's been dead for awhile

Michael: in 2020. He died of coronavirus.

Friend: Oh, John Prine.

Michael: Today's dead. Celebrity is John Prine.

Um, Brian, you know, every article you read about it, they talk about your lyrics and the images they conjure up in the pictures they paint and the emotions they touch. I liked the idea of just writing and making up stuff. I never thought it would lead to anything other than just enjoying. Because all I do is daydream all day.

Anyway, when did the thought of adding music to all these words that you were writing? Come along? When I was 14, my brother taught me three chords on the guitar and I just make up these songs and sing them until I got tired of them and then make up some more. And I started making them up to impress girls,

welcome to famous and gravy. I'm Michael Osborne

Amit: and I'm Amit Kapoor.

Michael: And on this show, we go through a series of categories about multiple aspects of a famous person's life. We want to figure out the things in life that we would actually desire and ultimately answer a big question. What I want that life today, John Prine died 2020 age 73 category one grading the first line of their obituary.

John Prine, the raspy voiced country folk singer who's ingenious lyrics to songs by turns poignant, angry and comic made him a favorite of Bob Dylan, Kris Kristofferson, and others died on Tuesday in Nashville. He was 73 Amit. I liked the words. Good adjectives, ingenious. I particular genius pointing then raspy voiced all descriptive and the emotional range of his songs, poignant, angry and comic.

That's a nice trio of adjectives to describe his lyrics. It came out of the gate really hot. This really worked for me the first half of it, but it didn't set. It made him a favorite of two famous people. And. You didn't say, you know, five decades of great songwriting. It didn't speak to the fandom. I mean, it said country folk singer, but it didn't really get at the breadth of his catalog.

The choice of these names, Dylan and Kristofferson and others.

Yeah. Yeah. Instead of bowing out with others, they could have said like millions of

Prine heads. Exactly. Not to mention fans or something like that. The other thing is that they don't mention like Springsteen or Sturgill Simpson or Todd Snyder or Bonnie Raitt.

You could increase the list. Ad nauseum. Dylan, I think is an interesting choice. I think that's the thing to actually really talk about because of the comparisons Kristofferson, I think has to be there in there because of his story. But otherwise, Kris Kristofferson wouldn't normally appear in the first line of somebody else's obituary as a culture makers maker.

What do you think about these nods to other things.

Amit: I think it's good to have Dylan's worship is worthy of being an obituary. I don't like the and others. So I think the nods are good. I think it is limited. Yes. If there were room, you could put Springsteen, Bonnie Raitt and all that. If you're going to choose to those aren't bad ones, the, and others, I don't

Michael: like, I mean, this has come up in other obituaries that we've done on the show where it references other sort of nearest neighbor.

I can't remember if like William Shatner was mentioned in the moist obituary, or if Lenny Bruce was mentioned in Joan Rivers is, I don't

Amit: think Dolly Parton might've been mentioned in Kenny's. Oh no. Kenny was no, no nothing was mentioned.

Michael: Okay. No Kenny's was for me the most disappointing and we can to return to that very soon.

We absolutely. There's something about referencing other people in the first line that I don't love, or maybe I'm just unresolved. And what I

Amit: do like about that though, is they said Kris Kristofferson and Bob Dylan. So one thing about John Prine that I've sort of gained to appreciate is that he crossed the genres in not his music, but in who liked him, right?

Who were his fans, and to have both Bob Dylan and Kris Kristofferson, you know, a lot of music vials is that word music, files, music, nerds, music nerds can see a very quick comparison between Bob Dylan and Kris Kristofferson, but to a lot of people, Bob Dylan is, you know, sixties, counterculture music and Kris Kristofferson is a highway man country music.

Pretty disparate, but that does speak pretty well to who likes John Prine by choosing those two, it does speak to a breadth. It does. However, still kind of leave out the dedicated fans, which he did have hugely dedicated fans, not a massive worldwide, uh, hundreds of

Michael: millions fan base. And this is something I think is going to come up a lot in this conversation.

I mean, he was a singer songwriter, singer songwriter, right? Like he was like, people are comics, comics. Right? Exactly. And this is where I'm just not sure how I feel about it. Does that undercut fans of his who are not songwriters you and I,

Amit: for example, right. And also the breadth of his career. I mean, essentially going from 1970 to death.

Okay. Now we're going back to Kenny Rogers, so died on Tuesday. He died of the coronavirus. That's correct. On Tuesday. And in my memory, he was the first celebrity that at least I cared about to die of. COVID-19

Michael: it's a pretty short list of people who else is on that list. I wrote it down and things helping you to do this.

I did,

Amit: because I mean, when he died April 7th, am I correct?

Michael: Kimra if it's April 7th, I know it's April of 2020. Okay. So this

Amit: was actually the period that we are all at home. This is, this is the

Michael: beginning of the pandemic is peak peak fear. Also, we don't have a good idea at all of how long it's going to last.

We don't have at the end of the world, or if it's the end of the world, we don't have an idea of its severity, you know, and we're taking measures and everybody just refreshing their browsers and their newsfeeds, you know, constantly to see like, what have we learned? What have we learned? What have we learned?

I'm dying to know who you got on this list. Okay. This is not

Amit: in chronological order. Okay. Uh, John Davis, who was one of the real voices of milli Vanilli. I just love that Don Wells who played Marianne on Gilligan's island. Oh, Charlie pride. Also a country folk singer was a victim of COVID-19 tiny Lister who played Debo and Friday.

Oh, the big guy. Yeah. He died of COVID no shot, Tom Seaver. The legendary pitcher. I remember that Herman Cain. We all know about, yes. Nick Cordero, the Broadway star, Roy Horn of Siegfried.

Michael: Really you'd be a good one for the show.

Amit: Yes. Ann Glenn, wife of John Glenn, Ellis Marsalis, Branford Marsalis, and his father, and also a jazz musician.

Wow. Adams Slessinger front man for fountains of Wayne. And last I wrote was Floyd Kardos, who is a celebrity chef known for the Indian restaurant top law in Bombay bread company in New York, mattered to me because it was Sandy

Michael: and celebrity. So that's the list of celebrities.

Amit: It's a short list of celebrities, at least that I recognized that died from COVID-19.

Wow. Extracted from a people magazine

Michael: article. Now we brought this allude to, should speak to the Kennedy Rogers issue because Kenny Rogers died essentially a month prior, two weeks

Amit: as

Michael: they two and a half weeks. And as listeners can go back in here, I was furious at the scant treatment. His first line of obituary got in the New York times, two weeks later, they did a pretty good job of honoring John Prine in this first line of the eventual.

It was Rogers. Roger's regret it's Kenny

Amit: Rogers regret Kenny. I was, I was coining a phrase that wasn't yet part of our commonplace nomenclature girls,

Michael: the things we did in March of 2012 wished we had

Amit: the dedicated, famous and gravy fans just got it instantly. We

Michael: like to think I'm one of those. Well, let's talk about the first line of John.

Amit: So what I said died on Tuesday, was there an obligation to say died from complications of the coronavirus on Tuesday?

Michael: That's an interesting question that makes it a little bit more newsy.

Amit: I see an it, and we've talked about this. It shouldn't

Michael: be newsy. I think that's right. I think that we are honoring the life and trying to not peg it too much in time, or I have too much to say about the commentary of what this death means in the moment.

We're trying to honor the entire life with the first line of the obituary. I just

Amit: found a text message that I sent to my friend Blake on April 7th, 2020. So Blake and I were both American studies majors in college. We took a class that was an autobiography class. Uh, it is a very interesting that you read other people's autobiographies and you also work on yours.

My God, I'm just not realizing the similarities are seriously. Um, I guess we need, um, but I didn't know any of this. I texted to Blake. I said, uh, one dude in our auto bio class, senior year wrote in an assignment about going to showdown saloon and listening to John Prine on the jukebox. After reading it, I looked up or whatever.

The 1998 equivalent of look up was and became a.

Michael: I think that's a good segue. We're already bleeding over it. Yeah. Shall we move on?

Amit: Yes.

Michael: Amit Michael. Well, we fucked up when we recorded the John Prine episode, somehow we forgot to grade the first line of his obituary before moving on to five things I love about you. I think our listeners would be furious if we didn't deal with this, they wouldn't be in who would want to upset our listener.

I'm ready. I've got my score. I think I'm going to go on a, um, the others part of it bothers me. I wish there was more about fandom, but actually it really captures a lot. Yeah.

Amit: So fuck you for taking my score. Um, but I'm also giving it a name.

Michael: Like I have to beat you to the punch because this is what happened.

I

Amit: know, uh, definitely the dock is for the and others, but I give a lot of weight to the adjectives that

Michael: they use Engenia. Ingenious. Yeah.

Amit: You

Michael: can't hand that out to anybody. Yeah, I agree. Okay. Thanks for hopping on the call. Okay. All right. Category two, five things. I love about you here on it. And I worked together to come up with five reasons why we love this person and why we want to be talking about them.

I'm going to let you lead off this time. I think you came armed with. I want to hear what you got.

Amit: I'm going with the obvious, the mailman. Yeah.

Michael: That's online that he was

Amit: a mailman as he started his career. And I'm not just saying that as a fun piece of trivia. There's actually a lot of things I like about it.

So say

Michael: more about that. I totally knew you were going to do this and I wanted to hear everything you have to say. So this is

Amit: multifaceted. Okay. One, I fantasize about being a mailman often and I've had friends tell me I should be a mailman. So what I like about it, and I think how Prine describes it is exactly what I fantasize about it.

And it's just keeping your body engaged in busy, but allowing your imagination to roam, there's

Michael: really not much to do in your mailman. I used to like in my mail rack to a library with no books, it was like a, my imagination was free to roam. I wrote a lot of my first record walking down the mail

Amit: route and that's what he was doing when he was discovered in that Chicago nightclub.

Michael: So I wrote down as a five thing. I love about you reflective that he's a reflective man. However, I wrote that down and imagining him being a reflective mailman. I heard it in another interview. Him say that after his music career took off, he would often write songs while driving around in the country.

He's like, I wrote more songs driving than I did with a guitar in my hand. And it was the same sort of thing. It was like sort of slow down and let inspiration come to you in a kind of reflective process. What do you think it, should it be its own thing?

Amit: No, I think it fits very well. It speaks to a specific kind of artistry, which is what I love.

Like I don't care much for the idea of just like sitting on the back porch and picking out a guitar until you come up with a song. I love the idea of being engaged otherwise and letting inspiration find you. Amen. And it also speaks to the fact that. Everybody is an artist and anybody can be an artist.

If you are in such a position that you are doing it well, and you're engaged physically or even mentally, but your imagination is still roaming. And that, that can eventually become an artist career. That is what I love about

Michael: it. I wholeheartedly agree. And I think the reason I wrote down reflective is that I do feel like one of the realities of 21st century life is that we have to fight for reflective space, that the opportunity to be unplugged, to disengage, to do something as mundane as delivering mail, which is not to display.

You know, male men and women around America or anything like that, but that's sort of harder to claim that sort of, I'm not on my phone time. And I do love that about that was like a fundamental part of his creative process. It reminds

Amit: me of something else, Andy Kaufman, the comedian. So when he was like climbing and peaking, he washed dishes at a New York restaurant as a regular job.

And part of the reason he gave it, some people may argue for performance art, right? Because he's this person making probably now millions of dollars, but it's also, he doesn't believe inspiration can happen without the doing of something like,

Michael: wow, I didn't know that story. Yeah. There is a period in John Price.

Early career where he's moonlighting or he's playing open mics around Chicago. And he's still a mailman during the day. And that when he signs a record label, he's like, I'm out of here. I'm not going to do this anymore. It's not like he romance over excessively romanticized, his mailman, you know,

Amit: career.

Totally. He told Terry Gross. Uh, I was never happier than the day I left the post office.

Michael: So let's not get too romantic about it. All right. Should I take thing number two? I wrote blended accent. I wasn't sure where he was from. I assumed it was the south and thought he was

Amit: one of us.

Michael: Yeah. Something like that.

I just always assumed that it was Kentucky West Virginia, Appalachian, somehow, which is where his family was from. But he grew up in the Chicago suburbs and certainly there's a Southern clang and a lot of his music, but I couldn't place it within the south specifically. And so to learn that Chicago was.

This really important setting for his whole story. It's like, oh, I do hear some of that Chicago Midwestern accent in there as well. I really enjoy a blended accent. Certainly an international blended accent. I like hearing somebody's voice mag. Where are you from? And I love when the answer is two places when it's, I'm not just from this one place, but my voice was informed by two very different dialects are two very different geographies.

So I love that about John Prine. That's

Amit: great. Yeah, maybe he does consider Kentucky the family home. Yes. Right. It's where his, I don't know if his father's family or both sides of the family are from, so his heart very much resides in Kentucky, but the voice is pure Chicago.

Michael: Don't you like that? When you meet people who have an accent that you can't.

And that kind of great.

Yes,

Amit: my mother's totally got one of those. There were formative years in Uganda and Sweden, and there was just crazy things being thrown into that, like stew of an accent. I might

Michael: have to call your mom. She will miss every trivia

Amit: quiz

Michael: question. It's something else to talk to her about that.

Amit: Okay. So if you're going to reduce that to something you love, it's just something that you love as an aesthetic because it's pleasant.

Michael: Yeah. But it's also something I sort of relate to. My Texas accent comes and goes, you put me in a room of southerners and it comes screaming out. However, my accent is something that I can put on or take off like a hat.

You know, I like people who have, you know, roots in many places and they can get both those places and they embody both those. Yup. Uh, why don't

Amit: you take thing three, number three, I'm going to go kindness. Kindness is huge to me when I don't know what it's all about or when I'm really confused and existential dread, I fall back on kindness as the thing that makes the world go round.

And it sounds like Prine was unconditionally kind to everybody, to his contemporaries, to his fans. And I'll just say it with one thing. It was a quote that Todd Snyder said, and Todd Snyder said John Prine and Willie Nelson, or the most revered people in the history of backstage.

Michael: I had summarizes a lot. I love Todd Snyder, by the way, number four, number four, I wrote humor, but especially the use of Jesus in his lyrics.

Whenever he references Jesus, there's kind of this like folksy take on who Jesus was. I got the idea for this song. I'm yesterday. Somebody was telling me at a party. There was all these missing years in the life of Jesus. He was missing from the time he was 12 and tell him he was 30. And I said, you mean, uh, like nobody knew where he was.

And he said, nobody, one of the most influential and controversial figures in the history of mankind, nobody knows where he was for 18 years.

Amit: The missing years. And he was a very devout Christian. This was not like, you know, tongue in cheek, Jesus,

Michael: this wasn't talking to new

Amit: Christians. This was talking about Jesus in reverence, but also in this kind of playful

Michael: way, I to say like, there's a version of Christianity that I find, I don't want to say attractive.

Like I'm not an inherent, you know, I'm not, I wouldn't call myself a Christian, even if I was raised in the faith, but I like the preachers who talk about Jesus in terms of a more like friendly relationship. Like this is what I get out of my conversations with this guy. And they're imagining these conversations in their head.

That version is so much more interesting to me than, than when Jesus was on the mountain. And he bespoke to all these people in, I equate them to you or whatever. Like, I don't like that version. I like the more like let's sit down and have a cup of coffee, Jesus, Yogi Berra relationship with Jesus, something like that.

And John. Does

Amit: that to build on that? I like the middle ground of John prime, as it relates to being a very devout Christian and being known as a country folk singer songwriter. And you pair those two together and you think you're going to get Toby Keith or Alan Jackson. But what you got is John Prine.

You got a guy that can still be a devout Christian who loves Jesus and everything that he stands for, but chooses his issues. He was an ardent vocal critic of George W. Bush and things that he doesn't. Believing. This was a guy that has a lot of what appears to be liberal values and a lot of what appears to be conservative values.

You don't have to pick sides, they don't label you just because you're a Christian country singer. And I think that is something

Michael: that's awesome about John Price. I saw some interesting takes on like, how do we understand, you know, the divisions in America today through the lens of a folk singer, like John Prine.

And I think that this religious element plays into it. Will

Amit: you

Michael: get involved in the current political dialogue and till the fanatical, right? What real values are? That's a leading question. Yeah. If that's what you set out to do, most of you would fail. You got to keep in mind that politics don't come first.

Even for the people whose politics you don't like, maybe they got the same kind of white shirt on you. Do you know if you're looking for the big picture you got. Really small frame sometime. That's the way I approached that. If I was trying to tell somebody something that I totally didn't agree with them and thought that they were gonna listen well, anyway, that's number four.

I spans. Right. So what do you got for number five?

Amit: I will go resilience tough as a motherfucker. Yeah. Cancer twice. Yep. Debilitating hip problems. I mean the first cancer, he lost a portion of his jaw,

Michael: which is a portion of his neck. Yeah.

Amit: These are all career ending type of things for a lot of people. But the resilience of that man to keep going and not accept a feat, that is something to love out of.

Michael: There is an idea that floats around out there with some spiritual circles, that whatever challenges we face in life, we encounter them when we're meant to encounter them. I guess it's a sort of idea of fate. Um, and so, you know, John Prine beats cancer twice, maybe at a point in life when he's ready to face cancer.

Amit: Yeah. So it's a reframing of the obstacle, surviving,

Michael: something like that. Everything becomes extremely vivid and alive, but everything kind of came

Amit: into

focus

Michael: for me in ways. I suppose you had a similar experience that all happened and everything I'd done before songs that I'd known thousands of times, I wasn't tired of them, but it was like getting a paint job or something.

Like some of them, I felt like I was hearing him for the first time. Uh, taught me a few lessons that I needed to be taught. We're all gonna face this shit. We're all going to face life and death challenges. We're all going to face. Some version of

Amit: multiple cancers are losing children. We will all lose

Michael: parents.

Right. And as much as resilience is a desirable quality, I mean, obviously it's a desirable quality, but I also, I guess I'm just trying to dig a little deeper into how much we know we do or do not have of that until we get to it. You know what I mean?

Amit: Get to it, apply it and are looking at it in the rear view window.

And I guess what I'm saying right now is I want a little more of that resilience and belief resilience comes from reframing the problem and also just accepting that. It's there. It happened. You, you can mourn it. You can lament it. You can feel sad about it, but that does not change that it happened.

Right. Uh Chumba Womba talked about this.

Michael: so it was just about to ask a different question. Boy, it threw me off. Okay. So let's recap. Um, thing, number one was mailman and artistry two. I said blended accent three. You said kindness. Four. I said humor, especially the invocation of Jesus and five tumble Womba yes. All right. Let's move on. Category three Malcovich Malcovich Scattergories category is named after the movie being John Malcovich in which people take up portal and to John Malcovich his mind, and they have a front row seat to his experiences who I

Amit: got here.

Actually, I had three, the made itself call, but I landed on. One because I think it's the most uniquely John Bryan one. Okay. So are you familiar with the Tom Hanks typewriter? No. So the story here is Tom Hanks loves typewriters. A lot of people know this about Tom Hanks. He wrote a book about typewriters music, huge typewriter fan.

Okay. And Tom Hanks also loves John Prine. Yeah. Okay. John Prine loves typewriters. He writes his songs out on typewriters still up until 2020. And so in the few years before his death, Tom Hanks unexpectedly sends John Prine a type one. In the mail and as John prions wife describes it is that he was just over the moon, giddy excited as a school girl because John Prine also loves Tom Hanks.

So one hero sends another hero, a gift that is both common to what they love and what I see in that and why it's a Malcovich moment is very pure. Non-romantic non-sexual intimacy. It's admiration. Intimacy. Yeah. It's I love your work so much. I love your work so much. I love typewriters. I hear you love typewriters.

Here's one.

Michael: That's the, one of my favorite Malcovich moments of all time. That is beautiful. That is beautiful. Thank you for that. Okay. You're Malcovich moment. Okay. He wrote a song called I want to dance with you. I can't remember if it made it to an album or not, but it's sort of like came out and was gathering dust for about 10 years when nobody made much of it.

And the midnight is he gets diagnosed with cancer. This is after he becomes a father for the first time too. And you know, with cancer, uh, he's got insurance and he's got some money, but it's not a lot. And there's a question about how he's going to pay for his treatment, but he's not sweating it. And he's, and we'll get to this more in another category.

He doesn't really think or care that much about money, but there is a moment after he's begun treatment and he's getting radiation on his neck and his throat's really sore and it gets into a car and the song comes on the radio and it's being played by George. And it winds up being a massive hit. And he said that song alone paid for my cancer treatment.

That's my Malcovich moment. He gets in the car and here's George Strait plan on of his songs and probably knows at that point. Oh, okay, good. I'm not going to have to sweat how I'm going to pay for this cancer treatment. George Strait singing my song today. And no matter that, the fact that my throat is hurting, I think it's gonna be.

I don't want to be the candy hazard tape to,

I don't care what they say. Other lovers, just swollen dance with you. Alright. Category for love and marriage. How many marriages also, how many kids and is there anything public about these relationships? His first wife and Carol they're married in 1966 high school, sweetheart. The marriage starts to fall apart in the late seventies.

And the divorce is finalized in the early eighties. John is 20 or so when they get married in 34 ish, when they finalize the divorce, no kids from that, no kids that I saw from that second wife, Rachel pier from 1984 to 1988, John is 38 when they're married and then divorced around the time 32, she was a bass player.

They met in session. I believe finally, his third wife, Fiona Whelan. They met in 1988 as his second marriage is falling apart and they get married finally in 1996. And they're together until his death. There are two biological children. The term Irish cleanse gets brought up. She's Irish, of course, but they're born like 10 months apart, both boys.

She also has a son from a previous relationship and he had. So John Prine is around age 50 until this death at age 73. And Fiona

Amit: was significantly younger. I think that's

Michael: right. Although, uh, I tried to find that out. I didn't actually get an age on her, but yes. And he's, you know, not an old father, but an

Amit: older fighter.

She is somewhere like 12 to 18 years younger.

Michael: That sounds about right. I'm sure this is knowable, but yeah, I've kind of given up on looking at it age appropriate.

Amit: I know, because the story was really cute except for the fact that it sounds like it was overlapping to his previous marriage, which was already on the rocks and maybe possibly they were separated, but he essentially he's on tour in Dublin and he's at an after party and he just meets her and she knows who he is, but barely and thinks he's cute.

And he asked her to lunch the next day and he's on tour and he just literally shows up to her office the next day and says, I'm here to take you to lunch.

Michael: That's cute. That is how these marriages are described that the first two words. Good marriages and he got it right. The third time around. It does sound like if you don't know, it was the love of his life.

The first

Amit: one's pretty long though. And that's during his career

Michael: trajectory, I don't know what to make of this summit. I mean, I, you know, I think one thing I look for when we go through this category is lessons learned has our dead celebrity chosen somebody who they can imagine going through the trials and tribulations of a marriage with, and sort of sticking it out was the initial decision, you know, right or wrong.

Oftentimes when you see multiple marriages, you're like, oh, kind of a mess. And this is not that story. This is multiple marriages. And the third one was. The one, and it sounded like a very healthy, fruitful relationship and led to children so forth. He also did say, and they're just on the children for, I just want to get this in here.

The fatherhood for him was a real turning point in his life. I heard him say in an interview, he felt like an odd ball. And that the experience of becoming a dad brought his feet to the ground and he felt a sort of purpose of like, oh, this is what it's about. And this sort of shared humanity. That's something I really relate to.

I got to say, when I became a dad, I absolutely felt like, oh, I have this in common with so many other people in the world. And I liked hearing John Prine say that anyway, what'd you make of me?

Amit: The first one is just, I guess, is where I'm most curious. Cause it was long. It was during his career trajectory, his complete change of career from being in the service and being a mailman to then being a paid musician.

But it still lasted a long time. So let's say you have a relationship, whether it's a marriage or not, and you have people on two different trajectories. So you have one person who is all of a sudden famous, or at least they're becoming wealthy and whatnot. And then you have a partner who is sharing in that, but they are not experiencing the same thing.

What does it take to make that work?

Michael: I think that's a really excellent question. One of my favorite outages around marriage is that being in love and making it work is not about two people staring longingly into each other's eyes. It's about two people staring forward in the same direction. I don't know if she felt empowered or felt sidelined by the growth of his career during the 1970s.

Yeah, I

Amit: think the onus and I'm not talking about John Prine here. I'm just talking about in general. I think the onus is on the one that is rising is to make absolutely certain that your partner is being held by the hand and staring

Michael: in the same direction. I wonder, I mean, I read a biography of him. She didn't get a whole lot of mention in here now that we're talking about it.

I wish that's been a little bit more time seeing if I could figure out what happened there. Know. Anything else we want to comment on, on the loving marriages here.

Amit: I agree with you that it sounds like to love came at the end with Fiona. It sounds like fatherhood was his biggest blessing in life and I'm glad it wrapped up really well.

I would like to know just how he felt about the first two. Were they regrets or were they just lessons to the ultimate path

Michael: and necessary lessons? Yeah, I think that's a good question. I don't know. That's an unanswerable question. Oh, it's not answered here. That's for sure. All right. Let's move on.

Category five. Nope. Google the net worth of any dead celebrity and you will get an answer. What'd you find?

Amit: I found the Michael, I was wearing sweet spot, 10 million, $10 million. That's your new favorite number?

Michael: It's just the right amount. It's just such a nice, comfortable amount. It's a nice house. It's a good neighborhood.

It's safety and security, but it's also not like, fuck with your head money, you know, and it's not fuck you money necessarily. I mean, rich, it's definitely

Amit: red. I don't know where I sit on it. Where you sit on it. From what I understand is it's not corruptible rich.

Michael: I think that's right. Here's what I would say about 10 million today.

I don't think I need any more of that. It's the ceiling. I don't even know if I want that much. I don't think anybody necessarily quote unquote needs that much. Right. But more than that, and I start to squirm less than that. Trying a lesson that can be stupendous less than that. It can be incredible.

Absolutely. 9 million, 1 million. I mean, those are, these are good numbers, right. But it's

Amit: really truly making it, you know what it

Michael: is to me, it's the Forrest Gump of, we don't have to think about money anymore. So that's one less thing.

Amit: So I want to ask something, you said it's not fuck you money. So one of the things that I left out from the five things I love about you about John Prine was the record label away records, which he founded in 81 because he thought all the other labels through.

Nashville at the time, just ultimately led to commercialization

Michael: and corruption. Yeah. Yes. Although he was clear on the interviews, I heard about them. It wasn't like ill will against those record labels. It was sort of like, they didn't know what to do with him because they had this commercialization machine and it didn't quite fit with who he was in the art he was making.

Amit: So in 1989, Sony offered to buy it. I think they offered maybe a few times to buy it. I don't know if with what they offered to buy it, but he said, no, that's not why I created it. And that's still not why it exists. So it's not that he had the fuck you money, but he had the fuck you attitude.

Michael: Although I don't know that I'd call it a fuck you attitude.

Fuck you. Yeah, something like that. Like, I'm just not going to sweat about this. I heard him say in another interview, look, I don't worry about money. I don't run to catch airplanes, which I like. That's perfect. It's just like, I have to go through life, somewhat indifferent to this and feeling like it just relates to the George Strait Malcovich moment for me that, you know, it's going to be okay and it's going to work out and I don't need to lose sleep on this and I can make a good living if I need to.

And I'm being rewarded and I'm grateful for that. It's a healthy relationship with money. I awesome. So I'm say I'm no damn good with money. Like I said, if I wrote a song that was good, I'd spend the money before I even recorded it, which is great. You know? So I don't know. I not only do I like the number 10 million, but I like his overall.

Relationship with wealth. Yeah. I want to talk

Amit: about one other money story, which was the Paris show in? Um, I believe that's even was in 20, 20, like months before he died. Yeah. Cause he'd always wanted to play. Paris has always wanted to play Paris. He'd played other places in Europe and he just never played in Paris.

He wanted to play there and his manager and all and said it

Michael: was not a hit in France.

Amit: The French didn't love him. Maybe there would be ex-pats and a few other just like aficionados. And there's basically said, this is going to be a nightclub gig and you will lose money. And he was like, great. I want to stay at the four seasons.

But he had that ability because he wanted to play Paris. Didn't matter what the intake was, cost him way more. To do then he actually earned from it and it actually turned out, I think, to believe his last life performance,

Michael: that may be right, actually, that would make sense. Like, what does money buy you? I want it to buy experiences right.

And opportunity. That's what freedom is really right. Free experiences

Amit: that can do the exact same thing right. To the heart. But there are certain other experiences that can just give you more of that. And they do cost

Michael: money. Yeah. Category six Sampson, Saturday night live or halls of fame. This category is a measure of how famous a person.

We include both guest appearances on SNL or the Simpsons as well as impersonations. I think we can go through this pretty quick. Lots of halls of fame. I don't have them all listed out. I know country music hall of fame. I think that there's a Nashville songwriters hall of fame. There's an Americana

Amit: recording association.

Michael: He's got accolades, galore, lifetime achievements with a Grammy lifetime achievement, that sort of

Amit: thing. Yeah. And did win best new artist in 1972 won the Grammy.

Michael: Right. So he is revered and he has made it into those halls of fame, credit, Starling critics, journaling. So with Sarah and I live an early fan of his, with John Belushi, who was part of the original.

Yeah. Well, Chicago, I think John Belushi when he was in second city would see John Prine late at night. And so John Belushi apparently like made an impassioned case in that I think it was in the first season. So he convinces Lauren Michaels to do it. And John Prine is a very early musical guests on Saturday night live.

So I didn't see him show up again. And there was no Simpsons. I didn't foresee. Yeah. I couldn't find any Simpsons. So I actually took that as. Validation again for our category criteria, a famous that he is in these halls of fame is important that he wasn't SNL in the early years is interesting, but kind of almost like SNL trivia and the fact that he never showed up on the Simpsons.

I there's a lot of people who have no idea who John Prine is. And then there's other people who, if you do know him, you know, he's on the Mount Rushmore of great American singer songwriters. So there was something about his absence from the Simpsons here that I felt actually was a fairly good representation of his overall.

Amit: Yeah of the rightness of his fame. Exactly, exactly. Cause you know, the Simpsons writers' room is full of a bunch of Harvard grads and eggheads and music nerds. And surely there were several of them that were John Prine fans and they could find lots of reasons to stick references in most of them. But you know, there probably must also be a filter that enough people have to get the joke that's right.

And I don't think he passed that. That's right.

Michael: All right. Category seven. Over, under, in this category, we look at the life expectancy for the year that somebody was born to see if they beat the house odds. And as a measure of grace, what do you think over or under?

Amit: I was born in 1946 and died at 73.

Correct. Can I take even money?

Michael: The life expectancy for a man in the us in 1946 or 72.7 years. Wow. And he died at 73. This is where I thought I might ask the question about how you felt about his Corona virus.

Amit: I think what sucks about it is the critics, darling, that he had all these people that loved him and all the outpouring had to be digital.

You know, like there could have been just beautiful, beautiful live tributes and memorials

Michael: that couldn't happen. Did not get a chance to grieve him properly. It would have been a fun trip to like do a road trip to Nashville. Yeah. Let's talk about great. What do you want to say about how gracefully he aged?

Amit: I think this goes back to resilience. I think he did it. I mean, his appearance changed completely. If you look at the surgery. Yeah. Like if you looked at pictures of nineties, John Bryan versus pictures of two thousands, John Bryan, not only in the facial structure, but his body also changed a lot with it.

And, you know, I made the comment that Alex, Rebecca aged very linearly, John Prine did not. This is as a result of, of these diseases. Yeah. But I think he did it gracefully. I think he pivoted with each one. He certainly took the change of the tone of voice. He kept going. He kept amassing fans, younger and younger.

You know, he wasn't that deep in the fatherhood either after he had

Michael: that. I really liked the fact that in spite of ourselves comes out after. You know, that song communicates resilience.

Amit: She takes a licking and keeps

Michael: on ticking. I'm never going to let her

Amit: though.

Michael: We lay in that position on a rain against honey, where the big door,

I know this is right off of our face. There won't be nothing, but they all hearts right. There is a, still a sort of love of life. There is a level of marriage that there is a celebration of what it means to be in love that is written after he's battled cancer. And after that neck surgery and after the cancer treated.

Amit: I think another good story about this comes from that Paris show. So, you know, he played the show in Paris that he always wanted to do. He was still very weak because of the hip, but after the show, he and Fiona stayed around Paris for a few days. They watch like movies in their hotel room and she went all over town and just brought him back gifts because he likes gifts.

And you know, 73 years old, the man had no idea. He would be dying in two months, but he was still like reaping and all the joy he could.

Michael: Yeah. And that's grace. I don't know

Amit: if it's grace, but what I think is desirable is being exactly where you want to be. And I got the

Michael: feeling he did. I got the same feeling.

Let's pause for word from our response.

Amit: Michael is frugality a desirable

Michael: quality in life frugality. I mean, like not draining the bank account every time I go and make a purchase, no, like

Amit: I don't buy

Michael: sneakers and lesser on sale. I see. Yes. Is the answer to that. I like a good deal. Who doesn't when I make a purchase, I want it to be at a reasonable cost, whether it's on sale for sneakers or whether it's at a place like half price books, there is a

Amit: place that you can get books at sneaker discounts

Michael: there sure is, but it's called half price books.

In fact, one of the things I love about going to half price books is. Every time I go to the store and I get a nice stack of books and I carry it to the counter. I'm always thinking like, is that number on the register going to be really high? And it's always less than expected. It's a really exciting thing to go in there and feel like I got all these books at this great deal.

Amit: And you know, what, half price books to sell rating. 50 years of buying and selling books, movies, and music. There are over 120 stores and you can find out more@hpb.com.

Michael: Hey, I'm Giana. Dimitrio from the so sorry for your loss podcast. I bet you already know what we talk about with that title. That's right. We talk about grief and much like your friends here at famous and gravy. We weave in how celebrities interact with that to highlighting the grief in the news each week and going over topics surrounding grief, that should be talked about more, but just aren't.

If you've experienced a loss and want to join a community of others who have to come on over to so sorry for a loss podcast, we are not your average grief group. That's so sorry for your loss podcast, wherever you listen to your podcasts and find me on social at so sorry with Giana. Most of what we've learned thus far as based on relatively easy to obtain public information, the next series of categories, we're going to be a little more speculative.

We're going to try and imagine what the inner life of this person was really like. The first of the inner life categories is man in the mirror. What did this person think about their own reflection? Amit?

Amit: Ultimately, I'm going to say, yes, it changed severely, right. But the man liked life. Yeah. And I think his body was just a vessel to go through life.

And I think that's how he saw it the whole time he made self-deprecating jokes about when he got bigger. I remember in the Terry Gross interview, she said, uh, well, do you look at your fingers as you play the guitar? And he said, no, my belly is too big. I can't, but I don't think he really gave a damn, you know, I think maybe he wanted to look good for his spouse.

Don't think he cared about looking good for the cameras. It was important to him to be able to stand up at shows. But I think he just looked back and he just saw a living person in about.

Michael: I agree. And I think we actually know this because he speaks to it a little bit and an interview he did with Anna sail on death, sex and money.

Oh, after you had your surgery, your cancer surgery and your physical appearance changed, were you aware of people responding to you differently? At first it was just kids, you know? Cause kids are honest. They look at the back of our neck adults that just act like nothing happened. Yeah. I got used to it, you know, cause I don't have to look at it a lot.

They like, you know, other people do, but I always started who I am is from inside of me. You know, that's the person that I've lived with since I was a child. And what you see in the mirror. It's kind of cool, but you just see in one dimension, you know, it's like, uh, I used to just cutting the front of my hair.

I never call them the back of it because I'm never walking by me. Yeah. You know what I heard in that, that the reflection in the mirror only gives you so much information. Like, what I hear with John Prine is a guy who he knows his eyes are pointed out, or that they can only point inward it's so much, and that the mirror is lying to you.

It is not showing you what others, see, it's not showing you the back of your head where scars may exist, where your mullet may be growing out. So I agree with you wholeheartedly that I think he was okay with his reflection because I think he understood its limitations.

Amit: Yeah. I think this goes again to your response to resilience is that a slight shift in perspective has a grander shift in gratitude.

Michael: All right. Next category, outgoing message.

Amit: You have reached the voicemail box.

Michael: We want to imagine, how do we think they felt about the sound of their own voice when they heard it on an answering machine or outgoing voicemail, would they even have recorded it or would they have used the default setting?

What do you think?

Amit: Definitely.

Michael: I went the other way. Okay. I don't think he's self critical of it, but I think he is not enamored with it, but there's a story about when he's getting radiation treatment on his throat, where there one of the attending physicians got a little radiation shield around his vocal chords and he kinda is like, have you ever heard me saying, you know, maybe we just scrap the whole thing and start fresh.

Right. I think he wasn't wild about the sound of his musical voice. I think he's at peace with it. So I want a slight, no, I think all other things being equal. I think he might've really wanted to have a great singing voice. Even if the quirkiness of the one we got is part of what gives him his sort of lore and street cred.

Amit: Yeah. So I had a, yes, pretty much the exact same reason. I like your point of that. Maybe he did want to have this beautiful crooning, like a Ray lay Montana. And the other reasons for my, yes, it's kind of the same as the man in the mirror. Like he is a singer. Yes. But he was a storyteller first and the voice was just

Michael: a vessel.

So one of the reasons we asked these two questions is I think we're trying to prod at self-acceptance and insecurity. So if the question is about that, I think he had a tremendous amount of self-acceptance and was, you know, relatively secure. I think he had some insecurities, but

Amit: unfulfilled desire, maybe that's there.

That's

Michael: buried in your answer. I mean, I don't know. I was just trying to have a hot take, I guess I

Amit: like it. And the other part of the question is, you know, was he too important to record his own message? I don't think so. Yeah. I don't think so either. I think he would take jokes about it. He might even like do like a George Costanza, like believer, not John isn't at home.

Like I can see that I could see him having

Michael: fun with it. Yeah. I agree with that. All right. Next category, regrets, public or private. What we really want to know is what, if anything kept this person awake at night? I don't have a lot here. I struggled a lot too. I think the marriage thing is in question and I wish maybe we'd done a little bit more research on it.

It's sorta surprised find I

Amit: tried. I couldn't find a whole lot.

Michael: That's one where I have major questions about, you know, the first two marriages. I did find one other that's sort of buried in his, I can't remember if it was an interview or is in the biography. I read, I do think that he thinks he might have been signed to a record label a little early, that it was really only eight months between when he starts playing around the clubs in Chicago.

And there's this famed night where Steve Goodman, the singer songwriter, who he's buddies with. Kris Kristofferson and Paul Anka to come and see a late night show. And apparently they show up after John Bryan has already done his gig. And they're like, when you get up there and play a few more and he does get up there and plays to the small audience and Kris Kristofferson says that was so damn good.

Can you do it all again from that moment on pretty soon, like his career is off that debut album received a rave reviews. Yeah. Got a whole lot. And how did that affect to gain the ulcers? It put me in the hospital, but six times in three years with the stomach disorders, it was like really a big change in my life.

I was not planning on doing this for 11 and it didn't want to stay at the post. I was forever, but it was okay for them. But I don't think that I didn't think people that grew up, like I could get into show business. Okay, what's possible. This is the thing I've been sort of struggling a little bit with John Prine too.

My favorite album is his first one, but I feel like this is a really common phenomenon in music that an artist's first album is their best and that fame and the attention and the live shows and celebrity and so forth makes it harder for an artist to get back in touch with the thing that made them great.

I think John Prine has a sustained wonderful career. I think his music stays relevant and good, but I also think his first album is his best. And I wonder if he had remained obscure for another four or five years. If there wouldn't been a couple more albums like that.

Amit: Yeah. And you where you're not talking about necessarily as peaking early, it's just doing your best work.

Early. And I think there's a lesson there that goes beyond musicians, right? It has to do with careers and everything. Like we're in this culture now, which is romanticizing the 20 something and 30 something millionaires that have startups or crypto and whatnot. But we're all going to be around for a long haul to have, you know, so many peaks so early is, I just don't think that's a great story, unless, unless you match it later on.

So let's try to take this into a lesson for our listeners who do every profession, but singer

Michael: songwriting, or maybe they are singer songwriters,

Amit: and let's hope we have one out there, but what does that mean for them? What are you saying to them? I

Michael: know a lot of people who I think have creative impulses who have a hard time.

Sticking with their creative endeavors, because they feel that pressure to be commercially and financially successful at it. And I think that that can come at the risk of corrupting the art itself or the creative instinct itself. So I think the lesson, if there is one for our listeners, is that if you're doing something creative with your life, stick with it and treat it as an act of self-love and it may not make you money, but it's still a valuable, wonderful thing to be doing no matter what it is.

And then we all need that in our lives. You know, even if you're only making an hour a week for it or

Amit: whatever. Yeah. That's the interesting thing, right? It may be a small percentage of what you perceive as your time commitment, but it's a very large percentage of your love commitment, and that's, what's important.

And

Michael: I don't think it's exactly a regret for John Prine, but I think it's kinda, I just don't see a lot of regret there. I mean, you could say smoking cigarettes and it didn't necessarily lead to his throat cancer. Yeah. You know, his last song and his last album, he talks about smoking a cigarette

nine

Amit: miles.

Yeah. When he gets to heaven, he's going to soak a nine miles cigarette.

Michael: He talks about how much he misses cigarettes, but he didn't have to quit, you know, in the late nineties and may not have directly led to his cancer, but it might be a part of it. But I don't know. That's pretty trite. I mean, we're kind of grasping if that's, when we're going to dry.

Amit: I think it's impossible to not have regrets. I think there are just so many private with him that I couldn't speculate on more than what you

Michael: just said. Next category. Good dreams, bad dreams. This isn't about personal perception so much as does this person have a haunted look in the eye, something that suggests inner turmoil, inner demons or unresolved trauma.

I went good on that. I tried to look for the bad. I didn't see it.

Amit: Yeah. I also went good. It's weird. I had bad dreams last night. They do.

Michael: Yeah. I don't see. I don't know why it's no good at this. I didn't see

Amit: complete clarity in the eye. Yeah. But not enough to sway me the other way. Like there are some of those eyes that you see and you're like, Ooh, I see it.

What's

Michael: interesting though, is that he is able to tell stories of pain, heartache, trauma. Like I think he understands it. He's got the emotional intelligence, right. But if you have the mental

Amit: clarity to tell those stories, so coherently, you've got resolved inside of you and you are going to bed with that wild mailman, that imagination that generally can be, get good dreams.

Michael: All right. Both went good. I don't know where to

Amit: put this. How have we not even mentioned the Roger Ebert's.

Michael: Oh, my God. They're right. Like we just did. Roger. That was the last I know I've already had. Like, I was almost disappointed cause I, like, I just assumed it was going to

Amit: come up sometime. But here we are.

We're like the vendor because on deck and we haven't talked about the Roger Ebert story

at

Michael: the particular time that he wrote a review on me. I was a mailman step. I was a singing this one night a week. And Roger had walked around on a movie that he was supposed to review for the next day and Chicago Sun-Times.

And he, instead of reviewing the movie, he, uh, said he walked into this pub to get a beer because the popcorn was too salty and the movie theater, and somebody told him to go in the back room and listened to this kid. I was the kid and he wrote a full page on, uh, singing mailman delivers the message. I think that's great.

And I never had an empty seat at. Like I say, I was still making my living as a mailman and I was singing after that three nights a week and two shows a night and there was a line outside and, uh, things just got better from there on, that's almost a Tom Hanks typewriter moment, but we had to

Amit: get the Ebert story and I thought it would just fall naturally, but it's

Michael: hard to know where it goes.

I mean, the guy's got a really rich life. Second to last category, cocktail, coffee or cannabis. This is where we ask which one would we most want to do with our dead celebrity? Maybe a question of what drugs sounds like the most fun to partake with this person. Or it may be that there's some residual curiosity and we feel like a certain drug might affect.

Some essential insight about them. What did you

Amit: have here? I went coffee with John Prine. Cause I see this man's life and I'm taking it all back to resilience and I'm taking it all back to perspective and the man in the mirror. And I just, there's a clarity that that guy sees in a way that he sees the world and the way that he just sees life and his ability to jumble one by it.

I just want that advice. You know, I want to say John, like a, you like telling your stories, I'm gonna tell you mine and you tell me how I move forward. And I wanted to do that over a

Michael: cough. That's beautiful. It's like let's connect so I can glean some of your wisdom a little bit and help me make sense of me.

Yep. I could see John Prine writing a great song about you. That's about as high a compliment as I can play anybody. Thank you. I want to drink with John Prine. He had a drink that he called the handsome Johnny, which was apparently a vodka and diet ginger. You know, I don't drink anymore, but I heard that.

And like, that sounds like a good chart. I don't know, man. I don't know why I w I think it's the storyteller thing. I don't think I want caffeine, cause I don't want to sort of accelerated conversation even though you know me, he is a genius. I think, I think I want to hang out with some sort of like, I want to hear about his story, but I also want to hear like the other stories he's observed.

I mean, one thing I really like about his music is that he makes fictional characters very real and vivid to me and that he surfaces something that's like essential about America and American culture. And I kind of feel like we could do that over a handsome Johnny, you know? Okay. We're here. Final category.

The VanDerBeek named after James VanDerBeek. He said in varsity blues, I don't want your life. Big question is, do you want this life Amit? Do you want John prions life? So I'm going for. No, no, no. Do you want me to go? I got something to say, uh,

Amit: yeah, for no reason other than just, you know, batter up, do it.

Michael: I don't know how I could say no to this.

What's not to like, I don't know. I don't want cancer twice, but I think that the shitty check is in the mail. And at some point it's going to show up in life. God willing the level of acceptance humor. Resiliency the respect among your peers, that hadn't really come up in the conversation much, but to like have other people in the profession say you're really good at what you do.

I don't know if it's more important than the fans necessarily, but like professionally, whatever I'm doing, I kind of want to be acknowledged and admired by other peers more than I want to be acknowledged and admire by anonymous fans. You know, I want people to understand the craft, to say you do that well, that somehow is more meaningful, which is in the first line of his obituary.

I don't see the case against, so maybe I'll hold a little space to hear if you've got something to respond to in there. But I think I'm a pretty emphatic. Yes. And I don't see why not.

Amit: Yeah. You always look to me for the counterpoint here.

Michael: You tend to be more creative about something that might be missing.

I need your help identifying a blind spot.

Amit: I don't have a ton with this guy. The diseases are awful, you know, taking that long of a journey until you settle on. True love. It sounds like it'd be painful before that, but it sounds like it was also a journey, especially for a storyteller. I sure as hell don't want to die at the beginning of a pandemic.

One of a guilty fantasies I have is after I die, that you know, my friends and family all gather around to celebrate. I don't want them in a dark funeral hall. Yeah. I think that sucks. It's not enough to take away everything else because to be credited as an authentic poignant storyteller, the man had breath.

The man did not believe in divisiveness. He just believed in humanity. And it seems like he conducted himself through everything that way and seemed to like find a way to have fun and everything. I love this pair of story at the end. I'm a pretty emphatic. Yes. I want your life, John

Michael: Prine. I want to make sure we're not conflating things on our show because I do think that the north star of this show is about desirability.

We're both clearly fan. Of John Prine, but this isn't a yes to the VanDerBeek because of that fandom, is it? Or maybe it doesn't matter on famous and gravy. What I think we are doing is looking at the characteristics that people embody their human decisions in the context, in which they make those decisions and their humanity, something like

Amit: that.

Yeah. And the reason that we do heroes is because there's information about heroes, right? It's a hard thing. And we got to work on this to like succinct the message. But yeah, I think it's fair to say on famous and gravy, we look at the human condition of what are otherwise heroes.

Michael: Yeah. I don't think it's just about fandom.

I think that this is actually about decisions made and the model that he represents.

Amit: Right. I mean, it happens to co-exist with fandom when it comes to John

Michael: Prine, but it's coincidentally.

Amit: No, it's not entirely coincidental, right? Because

Michael: the art wouldn't speak to you. If it wasn't desire,

Amit: the kindness and the resilience lends

Michael: to good songwriting.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I'm really good with this being an emphatic. Yes. For both of us. And let's leave it at that. John Prine, I'll say one last thing here. Really glad we did this one. Cause like I said earlier, I didn't grieve him when he died and I didn't realize that I needed to grieve him. Now that I've taken a close look at all this.

Like this could have been overlooked and I'm actually grateful for the opportunity to grieve his loss.

Amit: So the reason I had you listen to that Kacey Musgraves song, as you know, I said, when these public figures die, I do always play the music. What I played in that April of 2020 was that live version of Kacey Musgraves in Nashville, burn run with John Prine, probably one of those zoom nights with friends that, you know, we drank a lot.

And then, you know, sort of at the end, I'm feeling kind of nostalgic for John Bryan and I just supposed to play that song 10 times. So thank you, Casey.

Michael: all right. I think we're there. The part of the gates Amit, you are John prime. You've died. You've gone to. St. Peter stands before you, I know you got a whole song about what's waiting for you on the other side of heaven, the floor is yours.

Amit: So my wife gave a quote after I died. That was saying, when John gets to heaven, he just wants it to be like, life was on our, and really that's why I want in, I want on the other side of those gates to be the life I had, you know, and all the people that were around it and us to be together and have a big party under a tent and also eat hot dogs and ice cream.

I was a storyteller in life. And the stories I told were just about the human condition and what the listeners got from. It was. A range of emotion and vitality that life is alive, that we are all alive, that we are all by that alone. Actually already in a version of heaven. Let me in.

Michael: Thanks so much for listening to this episode of famous and gravy. If you're enjoying our podcast, please tell people, like, tell your friends, tell everybody to listen to our show. We are trying to build as many listeners as we can. You can go to apple podcasts to rate and review us that does help people find us.

We're also on Twitter, where our Twitter handle is at famous and gravy. And please sign up for our newsletter. It's on our website, famous and gravy.com. Famous and gravy was created by Amit Kapoor and me, Michael. This episode was produced by Jacob Weiss, original theme music by Kevin Strang. And thanks also to our sponsor half price books.

Thank you for listening, and we will see you next time again. Tell people about our show. Thanks.