John Prine Record
record sleeve design
record design
custom wood-burned illustrations
copy writing
An homage to the late John Prine, Home to Muhlenberg is a fictitious EP promoting a benefit concert for the restoration of Muhlenberg County, Kentucky. John Prine wrote fondly of the area and mourned in his song "Paradise" about the impact of stip-mining in the area. When I was assigned a project designing a .45 vinyl record, I chose to study John Prine. This record, like Prine's music, takes me to a creaky front porch, rocking in the muggy summer heat and looking out over the meandering Green River.
Paradise
by John Prine
When I was a child my family would travel
Down to Western Kentucky where my parents were born
And there's a backwards old town that's often remembered
So many times that my memories are worn
And daddy, won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
Well, I'm sorry, my son, but you're too late in asking
Mister Peabody's coal train has hauled it away
Well, sometimes we'd travel right down the Green River
To the abandoned old prison down by Airdrie Hill
Where the air smelled like snakes and we'd shoot with our pistols
But empty pop bottles was all we would kill
And daddy, won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
Well, I'm sorry, my son, but you're too late in asking
Mister Peabody's coal train has hauled it away
Then the coal company came with the world's largest shovel
And they tortured the timber and stripped all the land
Well, they dug for their coal 'til the land was forsaken
Then they wrote it all down as the progress of man
And daddy, won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
Well, I'm sorry, my son, but you're too late in asking
Mister Peabody's coal train has hauled it away
When I die let my ashes float down the Green River
Let my soul roll on up to the Rochester Dam
I'll be halfway to Heaven with Paradise waitin'
Just five miles away from wherever I am
And daddy, won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
Well, I'm sorry, my son, but you're too late in asking
Mister Peabody's coal train has hauled it away
illustrating with fire
Using a wood burner to create the art for this album cover was an important part of the message I wanted to communicate. Wood-burning is a relief-style art. You create by taking away—by burning. The story being told in “Paradise” is certainly one of “taking away”: dynamite blasting through the landscape, stripping away the soil until much of the county was unrecognizable. To tell this story through illustration, I burned the scene into the front cover into a piece of plywood, then digitized it.
