William Prince – Reliever
Six Shooter Records/Glassnote Music – Out Now
Although I’d noted his name and was sensing a buzz about him in our domestic music press, until October 18th, 2017, I had not heard even a second of the music of William Prince. On that date I was at the Port Theatre in Nanaimo, BC, to see Tanya Tagaq – a truly astonishing live performer if you’ve not had the pleasure – and William Prince was opening the show. The venue’s stage is large enough to comfortably accommodate a full orchestra, so one might think it could swallow a solo artist with an acoustic guitar, but for 30 spellbinding minutes, Prince made it his home, creating a situation of rare intimacy for a performance space of such a size. He projected as a sweet, humble man, and had the entire audience rapt from the first seconds of the set opener. And, my goodness, that voice…
In recent memory I can only recall three instances of an opening set receiving standing ovations, being for This Is The Kit supporting The National, Dengue Fever opening for Tinariwen – both in Vancouver – and the sublime half-hour delivered by Prince that evening in Nanaimo. The tracks he performed were all from his independently released sleeper hit of a debut album, Earthly Days (2015), which scooped the Contemporary Roots Album of the Year Juno Award in 2017. (While based in Winnipeg, as a born-and-raised member of Manitoba’s largest First Nation, the Peguis – 190 km north of Winnipeg – Prince was also nominated in the Indigenous Music Album of the Year category, though lost out on this occasion to the excellent, genre-blending Quantum Tangle).
Straddling folk and country music in, as he states, “a gospel framework,” Prince is a compelling storytelling songwriter that has justifiably been compared to John Prine, Townes Van Zandt and Kris Kristofferson, relating his tales in an expressive, lived-in baritone not a million miles from (or even representing a blend of) Charlie Rich, Randy Travis, Jamey Johnson, Tom T. Hall, George Jones and Colter Wall. Epitomizing the overused term ‘honeyed’ for a warm voice like his, I could listen to Prince sing all day – as, it appears, could Canadian legends Bruce Cockburn and Neil Young, Prince champions both. He has opened for Young in an experience he described, in understandable genuine awe, as “one of many dreams coming true.”
Five years on from his exquisite debut comes Reliever, issued on the consistently excellent Toronto independent, Six Shooter Records, who also reissued his debut last year. While Earthly Days was amazingly laid down in just ten days, while of course feasible it’s hard to imagine that such a beautifully crafted offering as Reliever was hammered out at such a pace.
Opening with The Spark, which, with its gentle wash of background strings would, like several other cuts here, slot nicely into the mood of Bruce Springsteen’s Western Stars, the following Wasted is Reliever’s first instant earworm. At 2:44 it’s an all too brief but delightful acoustic shuffle, the lyric preaching making the most of every day – even in the simplest, most mundane ways – a life philosophy I try my utmost to adhere to. Next up is the wondrous title track which, simply put, is just over four minutes of utterly sublime country balladry. It is on the slower, emotional material like this and the following Always Have What We Had that Prince’s deeply soulful delivery really grabs at the heartstrings and elicits a frisson.
Leave It by The Sea is another such song, heavily loaded with a deeply personal lyric concerning the mental offloading of suffocating emotional baggage, by the sea, in none other than my former hometown of Brighton, where in 2017 he appeared at The Great Escape Festival. With its powerful refrain of “I’ve never been so lost, no, no,” it’s not difficult for me to visualize Prince, standing on Brighton’s stony beach, staring at the sea as he tries to make sense of “the ruins of (his) past.” I have been there, so to speak, and more than once, so if ever any song has spoken directly to me, it is this one.
Recorded at the historic RCA Studio A in Nashville and The Song Shop in Winnipeg, Reliever was produced at the former by six-time Grammy-winning Dave Cobb (Chris Stapleton / Sturgill Simpson / Jason Isbell), and, in Winnipeg, by acclaimed country artist Scott Nolan, whose songs have been covered by Mary Gauthier, Hayes Carll and others. Cobb, Nolan and their engineers have done a beautiful job, and the same can be said for the bands assembled for this release. Across the two locations, the supporting cast includes musicians who have between them worked with The Highwomen, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Lindi Ortega, Brandi Carlile, The Wailin’ Jennys, Corb Lund and Broken Social Scene among many. With such an experienced and skilled line-up, one would expect quality performances, and that’s exactly what Reliever delivers.
In conclusion, I am moved not only by Prince’s stately songs but also by his eloquent message in the sleeve-notes. We all know that music holds the transformative power to inspire and motivate and, in this respect, with his personal food-for-thought philosophy, Prince lends comfort and offers hope to any listener struggling through life’s trials and tribulations:
“These songs were born in a time of great challenge. Where these songs sound hopeless, let them be a testament to resilience. When they move slow, it is for better observation of the lesson at hand. Where they sound joyous and confident, picture the light breaking like the dawn, just after it was darkest. Songs continue to save me. They continue to provide relief. May these songs do for others what they have done for me.”
https://www.williamprincemusic.com/