It was only in retrospect I realized I talked to John Prine on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. While President George W. Bush spent Veterans’ Day getting America ready to make new veterans, Prine talked about “Sam Stone,” his sympathetic depiction of a heroin-addicted veteran as a result of his time in Vietnam. Since John Prine came out in 1971, he has made a career of writing songs that treat even the most marginal people with the sort of warmth, intelli...