A few weeks back (but what seems like a dif­fer­ent world now) we told you about the Play­ing for Change project, which fea­tures cov­ers of well loved pop songs played by a group of inter­na­tion­al musicians…the gim­mick being that each musi­cian is record­ed in their own coun­try and only come togeth­er in the mix.

Sud­den­ly, it seems that Play­ing for Change was ahead of the curve, because this is the way the entire world is liv­ing right now. Peo­ple are mak­ing art in quar­an­tine, join­ing togeth­er only through the mag­ic of 21st cen­tu­ry tech­nol­o­gy.

But in hon­or of the pass­ing of Bill With­ers, who left us last week at 81 (not, we should men­tion, because of COVID-19), here’s Play­ing for Change with their ver­sion of “Lean on Me.” With­ers’ mes­sage of love and com­mu­ni­ty is exact­ly what we need right now.

In a 2015 Rolling Stone pro­file Quest­love called him “the last African-Amer­i­can Everyman…Jordan’s ver­ti­cal jump has to be high­er than every­one. Michael Jack­son has to defy grav­i­ty. On the oth­er side of the coin, we’re often viewed as prim­i­tive ani­mals. We rarely land in the mid­dle. Bill With­ers is the clos­est thing black peo­ple have to a Bruce Spring­steen.”

That arti­cle adds that With­ers was so long out of the spot­light that many already thought he was dead. And now he’s passed dur­ing a grim time, it seemed like there was one full day to mourn him before the next round of mor­tal coil shuf­flings. (We’re here to cel­e­brate him for a lit­tle bit longer).

This cov­er fea­tures Renard Poché (New Orleans) on gui­tar, Rober­to Luvi (Livorno, Italy) on slide, Grand­pa Eliot (New Orleans), Clarence Bekker (Ams­ter­dam), Sar­i­tah (Mel­bourne, Aus­tralia), and Titi Tsira (Gugulethu, South Africa) on vocals, aid­ed by Keiko Koma­ki (Kagoshi­ma, Japan) on key­boards, Toby Williams (Chica­go) on drums, One eat One (Livorno, Italy) on elec­tron­ics, Mari­achi group Las Rosas Angeli­nas (Los Ange­les) on strings, Alan­na Vicente (Los Ange­les) on trom­bone, and the chil­dren of Tin­tale Vil­lage in Nepal on har­mo­ni­um.

The track was orig­i­nal­ly com­mis­sioned by the Bill & Melin­da Gates Foun­da­tion for The Art of Sav­ing a Life, which aims to tell the sto­ry of vac­cines and their impor­tance to chil­dren over the world. (I would hope that we under­stand the urgency of vac­cines right about now.)

Bill With­ers was an acci­den­tal hit­mak­er, a nat­ur­al tune­smith, who didn’t enter the busi­ness until his 30s and then dropped out of it less than ten years lat­er. No come­back tour, no duets with an up-and-com­ing star. (Though Quest­love was deter­mined to pro­duce one final album). What he has left is time­less, and his music is still there to get us through these trou­bling times.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Remem­ber­ing Amer­i­can Song­writ­ing Leg­end John Prine (RIP): “A True Folk Singer in the Best Folk Tra­di­tion”

Decon­struct­ing Ste­vie Wonder’s Ode to Jazz and His Hero Duke Elling­ton: A Great Break­down of “Sir Duke”

Musi­cians Around the World Play The Band’s Clas­sic Song, “The Weight,” with Help from Rob­bie Robert­son and Ringo Starr

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

“A friend called our new world ‘a ghost ship,’” wrote Nick Cave in a recent install­ment of his Red Hand Files blog. “She has recent­ly lost some­one dear to her and rec­og­nizes acute­ly the pre­mon­i­to­ry feel­ing of a world about to be shat­tered.” The expe­ri­ence has become dis­tress­ing­ly com­mon. We have all begun to lose peo­ple dear, if not near, to us—artists tak­en by the dis­ease before their time like Bill With­ers, whose “Lean on Me” is now more poignant than ever. What­ev­er else we’re faced with as the glob­al epi­dem­ic pro­gress­es, we are enter­ing a peri­od of deep mourn­ing that Cave encour­ages his fans to treat with seri­ous respect.

To the list of those we mourn, we now must add leg­endary singer and song­writer John Prine, who died from COVID-19 com­pli­ca­tions yes­ter­day. Prine was an artist who didn’t so much achieve fame as an almost indis­pens­able pres­ence in Amer­i­can cul­ture that runs much deep­er and will last longer. He wrote songs so good, Kris Kristof­fer­son once joked “we’ll have to break his thumbs.” (Kristof­fer­son dis­cov­ered him play­ing in the Chica­go folk scene in 1971. Their meet­ing was, said Prine in 2019, “a Cin­derel­la sto­ry.”) Prine could count him­self among Bob Dylan’s favorite song­writ­ers, and was some­times called “the next Dylan.” (In his Twit­ter trib­ute, Bruce Spring­steen writes, “John and I were ‘New Dylans’ togeth­er in the ear­ly 70s.)

Prine wrote with more folksy good humor than Dylan, how­ev­er, a much cheerier the­o­log­i­cal bent, and with more con­cern for telling sto­ries with straight­for­ward emo­tion­al impact, with­out veer­ing into sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty. But like Dylan, every song­writer in folk, blue­grass, and coun­try has paid homage to him as a muse and cov­ered his songs. Bon­nie Raitt made his “Angel in Mont­gomery” famous and called him “a true folk singer in the best folk tra­di­tion, cut­ting right to the heart of things, as pure and sim­ple as rain.”

As has many great folk singers, Prine paid ample trib­ute to his fore­bears: A.P. Carter, Hank Williams, “Cow­boy” Jack Clement, Tex Rit­ter.… build­ing a bridge between them and con­tem­po­rary song­writ­ers like the Avett Broth­ers, Bon Iver, Justin Townes Ear­le, and Jason Isbell, who have all cov­ered Prine songs. (See him with Sturgill Simp­son at the top.) He was indie before indie—breaking from the major labels in 1981 and estab­lish­ing his own label, Oh Boy Records. And he was gen­uine­ly “Amer­i­cana” in that he wrote of rur­al work­ing-class issues in a work­ing-class voice, inspired to pen his first major song “Par­adise” by the destruc­tion strip min­ing wrought upon his father’s Ken­tucky home­town.

“Par­adise” plays out like a John Sayles film, with local Green Riv­er ref­er­ences and images of shoot­ing pis­tols at snakes and pop bot­tles at “the aban­doned old prison down by Air­drie Hill.” The song’s third verse depicts the mind­less vio­lence of strip min­ing: “they tor­tured the tim­ber and stripped all the land,” he sings, “then they wrote it all down as the progress of man.” It was the first song he record­ed for his self-titled 1971 debut and estab­lished a long tra­di­tion of protest music both wist­ful and wit­ty, like the peren­ni­al­ly rel­e­vant “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heav­en Any­more,” which tells flag-wav­ing chau­vin­ists, “They’re already over­crowd­ed from your dirty lit­tle war.” He tells the sto­ry of writ­ing the song all the way back in 1968 in the live per­for­mance from 2010’s In Per­son & On Stage below.

Prine also wrote from the per­spec­tive of a vet­er­an (he served in the army in the 60s), whose coun­try had let him down in the Viet­nam deba­cle and sub­se­quent bloody mis­ad­ven­tures. In “The Great Com­pro­mise,” he used the alle­go­ry of a jilt­ed lover to express great dis­il­lu­sion­ment.

Many times I’d fought to pro­tect her
But this time she was goin’ too far
Now some folks they call me a cow­ard
Cause I left her at the dri­ve-in that night
But I’d druther have names thrown at me
Than to fight for a thing that ain’t right

I used to sleep at the foot of Old Glo­ry
And awake in the dawn’s ear­ly light
But much to my sur­prise
When I opened my eyes
I was a vic­tim of the great com­pro­mise

The song’s title and refrain ref­er­ence the 1787 Con­sti­tu­tion­al Con­ven­tion, sug­gest­ing that part of his awak­en­ing to the country’s flaws includes a recog­ni­tion that they had been built in from the start. “Sam Stone,” his por­trait of a Viet­nam vet dying slow from hero­in addic­tion, a song once cov­ered by John­ny Cash, per­fects the direct­ness and sim­ple lyri­cism of coun­try bal­lads to dev­as­tat­ing effect: “There’s a hole in daddy’s arm where all the mon­ey goes/Jesus Christ died for noth­in I sup­pose.”

Songs like “Sam Smith” and “Par­adise” grab hold with images and obser­va­tions that crys­tal­ize the kind of down-and-out Amer­i­can suf­fer­ing that fea­tures all the time in best­selling non­fic­tion books and long­form arti­cles, but nev­er gets addressed in any mean­ing­ful way. But Prine could also light­en up—a lot—with com­ic-roman­tic gems like “In Spite of Our­selves,” writ­ten for a film in which he starred as Bil­ly Bob Thornton’s broth­er. He record­ed the song as a duet with Iris DeMent, the title track for an album of cov­ers with oth­er famous women coun­try singers like Emmy­lou Har­ris, Lucin­da Williams, and Pat­ty Love­less.

Full of pro­fane, down­home humor (“he’s got more balls than a big brass mon­key”), the tune is rep­re­sen­ta­tive of one of Prine’s many song­writ­ing per­son­ae in a career impos­si­ble to sum up in a neat and tidy way. Suf­fice it to say that Prine’s death from COVID-19 at age 73—after his many decades cel­e­brat­ing and lament­ing the strug­gles of ordi­nary peo­ple and lam­bast­ing the greed and bel­liger­ence of the U.S. gov­ern­ment and corporations—underlines the plain truths of his songs with trag­ic irony. Prine sur­vived can­cer surgery in 1998 and the removal of a lung in 2013, yet he con­tin­ued to per­form into his final years, releas­ing a fol­low-up to In Spite of Our­selves in 2016 and his final album, The Tree of For­give­ness, in 2018, a “trunk­ful of supreme­ly gen­er­ous Amer­i­can music,” wrote Ian Crouch in a New York­er review. See his NPR Tiny Desk per­for­mance from 2018 below.

Anoth­er writer who had seen and doc­u­ment­ed what Prine had over the years might have grown bit­ter. But we can mourn his death know­ing that he seems to have had lit­tle unfin­ished busi­ness with his god or his fel­low human beings. “When I get to heav­en,” he speak-sings in the intro to one of his final record­ings, “I’m gonna shake God’s hand/Thank him for more bless­ings than one man can stand/Then I’m gonna get a guitar/And start a rock ‘n’ roll band/Check into a swell hotel/Ain’t the after­life grand?” We can hope, at least, if we’re so inclined, that it’s at least a kinder place than the world Prine left behind. And we can be grate­ful he left a lega­cy of time­less music that always seems to speak to the sad­ness, dis­ap­point­ment, anger, and raw, in-spite-of-it-all tragi­com­e­dy of the Amer­i­can predica­ment.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bill Mur­ray Explains How He Was Saved by John Prine      

Tom Pet­ty Takes You Inside His Song­writ­ing Craft

Bob Dylan Releas­es a Cryp­tic 17-Minute Song about the JFK Assas­si­na­tion: Hear a “Mur­der Most Foul”

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness