John Prine Comes To Hershey Theater March 3

Sherpa Concerts and National Shows 2 announce John Prine live at Hershey Theatre on Saturday, March 3 at 7 p.m. Prine will be joined by Leo Kottke.

Tickets for this show are $59.50 and $49.50 (processing fees apply) and are available online at www.TicketMaster.com and at all Ticketmaster outlets. Tickets can be charged by phone at 1-800-745-3000 or by calling Hershey Theatre at 717-534-3405.

Long considered a “songwriter’s songwriter,” Prine’s songs have been recorded by Joan Baez, Johnny Cash, John Denver, the Everly Brothers, Ben Harper, Kris Kristofferson, Bonnie Raitt, Carly Simon and many others.

His immeasurable accolades include two Grammys. He also has the distinction of being one of the few songwriters honored by the Library of Congress and appointed as a Poet Laureate by the United States government.

Long before the awards, the concerts and the many albums, Prine trudged through snow in the cold winters, delivering mail across childhood home of Maywood, a suburb of Chicago. "I always likened the mail route to a library with no books," he says. "I passed the time each day making up these little ditties." Many of the songs he penned on his route landed on his classic self-titled debut record.

Now, more than 40 years since his remarkable debut, Prine has released The Singing Mailman Delivers, a two-disc archival set featuring his earliest studio and live recordings dating back to 1970, a year before his debut album. These tracks reveal a younger Prine as an honest and unassuming songwriter, writing words on his mail route by day and moonlighting as a folk singer in Chicago clubs at night.

The album’s first disc features a recording from Chicago's WFMT-FM studio with Prine performing many of the songs from his first album; the second disc features a live recording from the Fifth Peg on Armitage Avenue in Chicago.

Acoustic guitarist Leo Kottke was born in Athens, Georgia, in 1945 and spent his childhood in 12 different states. He absorbed a variety of musical influences as a child, flirting with both violin and trombone before picking up the guitar at age 11.

In 1964 Kottke settled in the Twin Cities area and became a fixture at Minneapolis' Scholar Coffeehouse, which had been home to Bob Dylan. His debut album, Twelve String Blues, came out that year and was recorded on a Viking quarter-inch tape recorder.

Kottke's 1971 major-label debut, "Mudlark," positioned him in the singer/songwriter vein, despite his own wishes to remain an instrumental performer. Later, a 2002 collaboration with Phish bassist Mike Gordon, "Clone," caught audiences' attention and the pair collaborated with a recording entitled "Sixty-Six Steps."

Kottke has two Grammy nominations and a Doctorate in Music Performance from the Peck School of Music at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.

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