John Prine’s family and friends announced on Tuesday (June 9) that they will finally be hosting a video memorial service for the late songwriting icon, who passed away back in April due to complications from the coronavirus.
Titled Picture Show: A Tribute Celebrating John Prine, the memorial is set to air Thursday at 6:30 p.m. CT. The two-hour special will be available on multiple social platforms including the musician’s Facebook, YouTube and Twitch channels, and is being organized with the help of Oh Boy Records, the independent label Prine founded in 1981.
The memorial will also feature appearances by a host of famous faces including Vince Gill, Jason Isbell, Kacey Musgraves, Bonnie Raitt, Rita Wilson, Eric Church, Brandi Carlile and dozens of other artists. Non-musical guests will also include Stephen Colbert, Brené Brown, Kevin Bacon, Kyra Sedgwick and more. During the service, fans can make donations to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, Alive Hospice and Make the Road New York in honor of the late musician.
“We thought doing this now was an opportunity for us all to come together,” Prine’s son Jody Whelan said in a statement to radio station WMOT. “The way we’re thinking of it now is that it’s the first thing we’re going to do. It’s not the last thing.
“We were blown away that everyone helped make this work,” he added. “It is a really challenging time for artists to get things done and sent in and be in the right headspace. The list of people we thought about reaching out to was very long. His entertainment career was about 50 years long. So he definitely touched a lot of different worlds.”
Watch a preview of Prine’s memorial special below.
