John Prine is without question one of the greatest singer-songwriters in American history. He hasn’t rested on his immense laurels either. This year he rolled out yet another collection of tender, evocative and searching songs on his new album Tree Of Forgiveness. One of the more upbeat tunes from that album is a song called “Knockin’ On Your Screen Door,” the video for which he’s decided to share today.
Directed by David McClister, the video captures Prine in his current home of Nashville, Tennessee, singing the song on Broadway, the main entertainment thoroughfare in that town alongside one of country music’s newest singing lights Margo Price and her husband Jeremy Ivey. Price is hardly the only star that shows up in the clip, however. Squint hard enough and you’ll also pick out Black Keys leader Dan Auerbach playing along in a recording studio, as well as Jason Isbell, Sturgill Simpson and others.
In a recent interview with our own Steven Hyden, Prine talked about his writing process for how he makes a song. “I’m thinking of one thing while I’m writing about another,” he said. “When you’re writing, you’re thinking about form and meter and everything — that’s the skill part — but when you’re trying to actually come up with the part that comes out of nowhere, I can’t think about just that and do that. It doesn’t work that way for some reason.”
You can watch Prine’s “Knockin’ On Your Screen Door” in the video above and revisit our review of his live show here.
