Such a soulful country ballad, love the heartfelt lyrics and twangy guitars!

Same Thing Happened To Me - Songfacts 

(Writers: John Prine, Gary Nicholson         Original performance: John Prine) 

There’s not a lot to be found about the background to this song except that Gary Nicholson appears to have collaborated with John Prine to write six numbers (including this one) for John Prine’s album ‘Lost Dogs and Mixed Blessing’. Of the album itself, Wiki says:

“Lost Dogs and Mixed Blessings was produced by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers bassist Howie Epstein, who produced Prine's 1991 Grammy Winning comeback album The Missing Years. The album features several songs Prine co-wrote with Nashville veteran Gary Nicholson and includes contributions from guitarist Waddy Wachtel and Marianne Faithfull.”

The reason I came to do this song was that my brother Kevin over on Vancouver Island has been a lifelong fan of John Prine and had the idea that that he and me and our other two musical brothers might make a record together and that this song could be a fun and light hearted one to do. So around 3 years ago I laid down a basic backing track for us to build the various performances around, and it never got any further than that. And then we lost the most wonderful John Prine to Covid19. So I always knew I’d do something with it one day and here we are.  Brother Kev did lay down an acoustic guitar part way back then and I’ve manage to weave that into the mix. And I invited an old friend (Amanda O) who had never done any recording work before to sing the harmony parts with me in verses 2 & 4. She did a fab job despite this being a first for her. And as ever, my regular musical collaborator Paul ‘Country Boy’ Jennings brings his special magic to the bass playing. For the rest I wanted the arrangement/production to be light hearted and quirky (the clues are there anyway on the original John Prine recording). So, we’ve got rhythm guitar licks, lead guitar solo, wah wah stuff weaving in and out, acoustic slide guitar, and a Hammond organ. The ping-pong guitar synched to the beat was done much as I suspect the original was: you add a delay bus and route to it from the guitar track. You sync the delay with the beat and set it to full wet and no dry signal. And then you pan the dry guitar track fully one way (left I think) and the delay bus fully the other. Simples 😉 

Right, that’s enough of that, hope you like the track, God bless you John Prine and may you look down with approval on this modest offering, a BIG thanks to brother Kev for gifting us the idea of this song, hope listeners enjoy it and please share if you do. TTFN.

Mike O’Neill
12th May 2023

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Same Thing Happened To Me (John Prine; Gary Nicholson)(The Clana Boys)

The new album from Goodnight, Texas due out on August 5 on Tallest Man Records. 

http://hiwearegoodnighttexashowareyou.com 
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Same Thing Happened To Me (John Prine; Gary Nicholson)(The Clana Boys)

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