You Got Gold: A Celebration of John Prine

Studio: Oh Boy Pictures
Director: Michael John Warren

Nov 24, 2025 By Mark Moody Web Exclusive

No one wants to talk about COVID anymore, and that’s understandable. The last time I received a COVID vaccine, some three years ago or so, the pharmacist asked me why I was getting one. That seemed like an odd thing for someone in the medical profession to ask. I reminded her that lots and lots of people had died. As political as the topic has become over time, people tend to forget the refrigerated trucks outside the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York City that were brought in because the morgues were beyond capacity. Everyone in America was scared and knew someone personally who had died as time rolled on. That’s a grim thing to bring up in a movie review, but the man at the center of You Got Gold—namely, singer-songwriter John Prine—could write a grim song. See “Sam Stone” for that. But he also wrote many wry, observational, and hilarious ones. Some of the songs were all of those things simmered together (see “Lake Marie” for that).

When COVID first struck our shores in January of 2020, no one anticipated we would be in a nationwide (and worldwide, for that matter) lockdown by March. There wasn’t a heck of a lot to do after you’d seen all episodes of Netflix’s Tiger King, but to have driveway drinking parties with your “safe” circle of friends and follow the news. In the music world, Fountains of Wayne frontman Adam Schlesinger died of COVID on April 1, 2020. Prine would pass a few days later on April 7. Beloved by many, including my family and our best friends, his fans were stunned. (I wrote Prine’s obituary piece for this site.) Though a two-time cancer survivor and a medically compromised individual, it was still hard to believe that COVID got John Prine.

Not long after Prine passed, a cobbled-together “home recorded” concert film was put together called Picture Show: A Tribute Celebrating John Prine, which aired for a few days on YouTube barely two months after Prine left us. It was great. Though fans were still stunned by his absence, it was a comfort to see footage of older (Bonnie Raitt) and younger (Kurt Vile) comrades of his playing his songs. A spoken-word tribute from Bill Murray also brought a smile. Prine’s loss was still an open wound at the time, so “bittersweet” was probably the best term to describe it.

Several years on, in October of 2022, a series of concerts, primarily at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium, was put together around the occasion of what would have been Prine’s 76th birthday. Director Michael John Warren (JAY-Z: Fade to Black, Freediver) brings together a spliced concert movie from the highlights pulled over two nights at the historic venue. Prine’s widow, Fiona Whelan Prine, is one of the film’s producers and appears on screen a few times as well. The performances throughout are tightly and pristinely shot but shine mostly as a result of Prine’s material and the artists who interpret it. You Got Gold is primarily given over to the captured live performances but is also interspersed with talking-head remembrances of the artists—including some who don’t perform in the film (Mary Chapin Carpenter, Alejandro Escovedo)—and fans, as well as archival footage of Prine himself.

The performers range from the old guard (Bonnie Raitt, Bob Weir) to the next-gen (Jason Isbell, Brandi Carlile) to the next-gen’s next-gen (Kacey Musgraves, Tyler Childers). And as appropriate as it is to span that range, the younger artists steal the show. In part because Prine’s music can bridge any age gap, but seeing how deeply his music connects with the younger generation is particularly touching. Tyler Childers’ recollection of first hearing Prine blasting from his J.V. baseball coach’s pickup truck is one of the more impactful tales included here. And his read-out of what would have to be considered a lesser Prine song, “Yes I Guess They Oughta Name a Drink After You,” is riveting in spite of it being something of a novelty.

Shortly after Childers’ performance, the run from Kacey Musgraves’ self-written “Walk in Peace” to Swamp Dogg’s “Sam Stone” is by far the film’s most effective. Musgraves tells a quick story about a “spiritual experience” shortly after Prine’s passing that inspired her song. Part of the lyric, “You told me to trust in the path, though it’s hard to see,” is as tear-jerking a moment as there is among the many here. After Musgraves’ short song, the pinnacle of You Got Gold arrives in The Milk Carton Kids’ cover of “Storm Windows,” Kurt Vile’s aw-shucks rendition of “How Lucky,” and then I’m With Her’s bluegrass-tinged “Unwed Fathers.” Sarah Jarosz’s lead vocal on the latter blows anyone else’s on stage well out of the water. It goes to prove, as with any star-studded concert or compilation album, the artists you’ve heard of the least are likely to be the best—or they wouldn’t have made the cut in the first place. A nod here to The War and Treaty’s gospel-shout rendition of “Knockin’ on Your Screen Door,” on that note.

Of Prine’s contemporaries, Bonnie Raitt’s recollection of their friendship is particularly sweet. And her duet with Carlile on a song she’s probably sung a million times, “Angel From Montgomery,” hits as fresh as anything here. Carlile’s opening “I Remember Everything,” flanked by the harmonizing members of Lucius, is an emotional highlight to get the eyes wet for the rest of the film. A song from his last album shows that Prine still had it right till the end. “Swimming pools of butterflies that slip right through the net” is a prime example of his razor-sharp observational skills. As Mary Chapin Carpenter explains in her interview snippet, she views Prine as the Ernest Hemingway of songwriting—exhibiting an economy in writing where no word is wasted. She says it all with that.

In places, the older artists lean toward Prine’s earlier material, and it can lead to a loss of momentum—certainly something that would never be said about Prine’s own performances right to his last days. Lucinda Williams (who has had her own health struggles) delivers a self-penned “What Could Go Wrong” that is, like Prine’s best work, heartfelt, funny, and maudlin all at the same time, but with a downshift in energy. And in a couple of places, songs are interrupted for mini-interviews or switch from one artist’s rendition of a song to finish with another’s. Swamp Dogg’s gospel-tinged start on “Sam Stone” is much more interesting than Nathaniel Rateliff’s by-the-book finish, and those handful of transitions are jarring. But of the “gray hairs,” in addition to Raitt, Dwight Yoakam’s hardcore honky-tonk rendition of “Spanish Pipedream” surprisingly kicks ass. Yoakam and Prine’s son, Tommy, share verses on the all-artist sing-along of “Paradise” at the end of the film. Tommy’s closing verse is both tear-filled and tinged with some sense of indignity as well, as in “How dare you take my father away from me too soon.”

Most of all, You Got Gold is to be treasured as a remembrance and honor to one of the finest songwriters the world has ever seen, but also to Prine’s playfulness in his last days. Isbell recalls a 2016 New Year’s Eve concert at the Grand Ole Opry (across town from where this was filmed) where Prine insisted on a midnight balloon drop. Isbell was joking about the drop possibly coming on one of the darkest songs, whether that be Prine’s “Sam Stone” or his own “Elephant.” Ironically, I was at that show and don’t recall what song the balloon drop occurred on, but I did see the only glimpse I’ve ever seen of a grumpy John Prine. At the stroke of midnight, Musgraves interrupted Prine mid-song for a champagne toast, and Prine waved her off. Prine had his sip of champagne somewhere around 12:02.

The You Got Gold concerts have continued each year since these acts were recorded. COVID may have gotten John Prine, but he lived much longer than it did and will be remembered eternally. Our grandkids may never be able to mentally grasp what the world experienced from 2020 to 2023, but they sure as hell will connect with a Prine song recorded 50+ years before their birth—whether it be how it came to Tyler Childers’ ears at baseball practice or because someone’s grandfather plays them “Long Monday” (that’s my favorite Prine song) on a record player many years on. Unlike COVID-19, that makes John Prine immortal, and You Got Gold proves that over and over again. (www.yougotgoldmovie.com)

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