Hear Zac Brown Band, Kacey Musgraves Cover John Prine’s ‘All the Best’
Kacey Musgraves teams up with Zac Brown Band for a heartbreaking cover of John Prine’s “All the Best.” The final track on the band’s upcoming Welcome Home, “All the Best” makes its debut today, three weeks before the album’s release date.
“I’m stripped down and naked on a fence for this album,” Brown told Rolling Stone Country earlier this year. “It’s as honest and personal as it can be. It’s about my life, the people in my life, my history and where I’m going.”
Appropriately, Brown and company put their own spin on “All the Best,” which first appeared on Prine’s Grammy-winning album The Missing Years in 1991. Heavy on harmonies and light on instrumentation, Welcome Home‘s revised version feels less like one lonely man’s lament and more like a communal outcry of heartbreak and loneliness, with three singers – Musgraves, Brown and John Driskell Hopkins – leaning on one another for musical and emotional support. If it loses a bit of Prine’s pissed-off punch, it gains a sort of longing loveliness.
Driven forward by acoustic guitar and a barely audible percussive pulse, “All the Best” sets the stage for Welcome Home‘s back-to-basics sound. The band worked with producer Dave Cobb, focusing not on the wide, genre-jumping appeal of their recent work, but the Southern soul, country twang and beach-friendly bounce of their earliest hits. The record arrives May 12th.
Prine, meanwhile, has announced a new round of tour dates for the fall.