ORDINARY PEOPLE : John Prine Makes Front Porch-Style Singing a Profound Art

In the opening lines of his latest album, “The Missing Years,” John Prine introduces us to “a young man from a small town, with a very large imagination.”

The album, like much of Prine’s 21-year body of work, serves as a good example of where a pop songwriter can go when he immerses himself in the flow of ordinary things, yet brings his imagination along.

Prine is no pop hero. He won’t fly around a stage like Axl Rose or Garth Brooks. But he will take you through the thorny thickets of everyday life with a bit of humor and a homespun, sandpapery voice that sounds like something Bob Dylan tried on once, then tossed aside. Where Rose, Brooks, and other mega-stars typically answer the needs of audiences who want icons bigger than themselves, Prine is a front-porch singer whose art reflects back in life-size images the kinds of experiences that are ordinary but also universal and profound.

On occasion, though, Prine will venture beyond the everyday and tap into the realm of myth. As apt a description of himself as those album-opening lines might be, the “young man” in question in the song “Picture Show” is James Dean, whose “very large imagination” led him to a leap and then a crash.

By the end of the album, in a very large leap of imagination, Prine is fancifully filling in some cracks in the Gospel narrative, speculating wryly in “Jesus the Missing Years” on what Nazareth’s favorite son did during the unchronicled part of his career: “He discovered the Beatles, he recorded with the Stones, once he even opened up a three-way package for old George Jones.”

Prine may be folksy, but he is not casual. “Great Rain,” the tense blues that stands apart from the rest of an album made up mostly of easygoing, folk- and country-flavored rambles, is a symbolic piece that seems to be about artistic inspiration, or, more exactly, how a would-be artist can be left stranded by an ungenerous muse. When Prine sings “I was standing by the river, talking to a young Mark Twain,” he’s as far from everyday pursuits as you can go.

In “The Sins of Memphisto,” Prine sounds in one verse as if he’s been communing with Marcel Proust, the great French novelist who obsessed over the nature of artistic inspiration. Prine depicts a man caught up in and worn down by the worries and demands of daily life who, suddenly and for no clear reason, is seized by an illumination. “As if by magic or remote control, he finds a piece of a puzzle that he missed in his soul.”

Prine isn’t one to self-consciously wave the flag of high art, though. “It’s a Big Old Goofy World” is a sendup of the songwriter’s art, a continuous concatenation of cliches that winds up with a funny poke at himself:

So I’m sitting in a hotel, trying to write a song,

My head is just as empty as the day is long.

Why it’s clear as a bell I should have gone to school,

I’d be wise as an owl, ‘stead of stubborn as a mule.

The rest of the time, Prine sings about love--how hard it is to grasp, how easy it is to neglect and lose, how wounding, how vital--in a way that seems truly lived, carefully thought out, and never stretches for melodramatic effect.

Prine came out of the Chicago folk club scene in 1971 with a debut album, “John Prine,” that was so strong it nearly lived up to the “new Dylan” tags attached to it. One of its many peaks is the aching, world-weary “Angel From Montgomery,” which subsequently became (and still remains) the best song in Bonnie Raitt’s repertoire. Few, if any, songs by male (or, for that matter, female) authors have more convincingly portrayed a woman’s inner thoughts.

Prine may not have matched the overall consistency of that first album in his 11 subsequent releases, but he has maintained a level of quality that makes him a respected songwriter’s songwriter (the cast of unobtrusively employed guest backup singers on “The Missing Years” includes Raitt, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty and Phil Everly). Prine’s last four albums (including a live release recorded largely at the Coach House) have come out on his own Oh Boy Records label.

Being his own boss has allowed him to keep to his own relaxed pace (three studio albums in the past 11 years), but it also has ensured quality control.

Prine will be backed in his Coach House shows by Duane Jarvis, plus Phil Parlapiano and Bill Bonk, two multi-instrumentalists who have performed on their own as the Brothers Figaro. Opening his shows is Liz Byrnes, a fellow former-Illinoisan who shares management with Prine and sang backup on “The Sins of Memphisto.”

Who: John Prine.

When: Tuesday, July 7, through Thursday, July 9, at 8 p.m. With Liz Byrnes.

Where: The Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano.

Whereabouts: Interstate 5 to the San Juan Creek Road exit. Left onto Camino Capistrano. The Coach House is in the Esplanade Plaza.

Wherewithal: $26.50.

Where to call: (714) 496-8930.