The Kingston Coffee House #35 “Wish You Were Here”
“Mind all your manners, be quiet as a mouse / Some day you’ll own a home, that’s as big as a house”
Mike Stevenson | The Kingston Coffee House | July 7, 2026
On tonight’s edition of The Kingston Coffee House, we’ll play extensively from John Prine’s The Missing Years which was Prine’s 10th studio album, released in 1991. It won the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album.
Today marks the 20th anniversary of the passing of Roger Keith “Syd” Barrett. The legendary co-founder and original frontman of Pink Floyd died at age 60 in his hometown of Cambridge, England. We begin the show with a tribute, Wish You Were Here.
Archived audio is available for 2 weeks after the original airdate
Swindlers who act like Kings. Brokers who break Everything
– The Band “A Change Is Gonna Come” (Sam Cooke) Moondog Matinee 1973
– John Doe & Exene Cervenka “See How We Are” Singing and Playing 2012
– Peter LaFarge “Ira Hayes” Ira Hayes and Other Ballads,1962
– Renee Fleming “The Scarlet Tide” (E Costello/T Bone Burnett) from The Fiddle and the Drum 2026
– Bobby Darin “Sing a Song of Freedom” Live at the Desert Inn, 1987
– John Mellencamp “Check It Out” The Lonesome Jubilee 1987
Wish You Were Here
– Television Personalities “I Know Where Syd Barrett Lives” Yes Darling, But Is It Art? 1985
– Syd Barrett “Bob Dylan Blues” An Introduction to Syd Barrett
– Pink Floyd “Jugband Blues” (S Barrett) A Saucerful of Secrets 1968
– Syd Barrett “Dominoes” (Takes 1 & 2) Barrett 1970
– Martha Wainwright “See Emily Play” (Syd Barrett) I Know You’re Married 2008
– Robyn Hitchcock “Astronomy Domine” (Syd Barrett) 2026
– Rosemary Standley & Dom La Nena “Wish You Were Here” (Waters, Gilmour) Ramages, 2020
“Lately, I’ve been diving back into the primal ocean of Syd Barrett songs. They’re so encoded in my DNA that at times they feel like my own compositions: but, if anything, the reverse is true: they wrote me, effectively. And I absorbed every note, nuance and line of the three albums that he recorded (the first with Pink Floyd) before he disappeared into himself in the early 1970s, never to return.” -Robyn Hitchcock
From Bob Dylan and The Band Before the Flood 1974
– “Lay Lady Lay” (recorded February 13, 1974, in Los Angeles)
– “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” (recorded 01-30 New York City)
– “You Go Your Way, I’ll Go Mine” (recorded February 13, 1974, in Los Angeles)
Meet the Boys
– Sierra Ferrell & Nick Shoulders “More and More” (Webb Pierce)
– “Meet the Boys” (dialogue from the film Little Ceasar, 1931)
From John Prine’s The Missing Years 1986
– “Picture Show”
– “All the Best”
– “ Everybody Wants to Feel Like You” (Prine, Keith Sykes)
– “It’s a Big Old Goofy World”
– The Nee Ningy Band- “Yellow Rose of Texas” Get Nung, 1981
– The Nee Ningy Band – “Have a Good Time” Get Nung, 1981
William Ruhlman wrote of the album “Prine took five years between his ninth studio album and this, his tenth—enough time to gather his strongest body of material in more than a decade…Prine’s gifts for emotional revelation and off-the-wall humor are on display in abundance.”
More from John Prine’s The Missing Years 1986
– “I Want to Be With You Always” (Lefty Frizell)
– “Unlonely”
-“Everything is Cool”
-“Jesus, the Missing Years”
From The Nee Ningy Band’s Get Nung! 1981
– “Bonapart’s Retreat” Get Nung!, 1981
– “Fiddlers a Dram” Get Nung!, 1981
– “Bamako Bop” Get Nung!, 1981
The Hobbledehoy Set (Music from England, Scotland, Ireland & Wales)
– Television Personalities “Favorite Films” Yes Darling, But Is It Art? 1985
– Jessie Reid “Little Sparks” title track, 2026
– Nick Drake “Poor Boy” Bryter Layter 1971
– Beth Orton “Otherside” title track 2026
– The King’s Singers “Skye Boat Song” (traditional)
– Josienne Clarke “We’re Never Coming Back” Far From Nowhere 2025
– Josienne Clarke “Fotheringay” (S Denny)
– John Martyn “Sandy Grey” London Conversation 1967
– June Tabor “The King of Rome” (Dave Sudbury) Aqaba 1988
– Laura Marling “Robin in the Rain” (Raffi) Laura Sings Raffi, 2026
– Syd Barrett “Effervescing Elephant” Barrett, 1970
The Coffee Shop is CLOSING
– (refrain) The Milk Carton Kids “Wish You Were Here”
– Lal Waterson “Stumbling On” Once in a Blue Moon”
NOTES and LINKS
– Ira Hayes (January 12, 1923 – January 24, 1955) was a member of the Pima (Akimel O’odham) tribe. He was born in Sacaton, Arizona, and grew up on the Gila River Indian Reservation in Pinal and Maricopa counties
Hayes was a United States Marine during World War II and fought in the Iwo Jima campaigns in the Pacific War. He was one of the six men who appeared in the iconic photograph Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima by photographer Joe Rosenthal.
After the war, Hayes suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and descended into alcoholism. On the morning of January 24, 1955, Hayes was found dead lying near an abandoned adobe hut near where he lived in Sacaton, Arizona.
-Greenwich Village-era folksinger Peter La Farge composed The Ballad of Ira Hayes. Bob Dylan once called him “one of the great unsung heroes” and the best protest-song writer of their era. Peter La Farge was born Oliver Albee La Farge in 1931 to Oliver La Farge, a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and anthropologist, and Wanden (née Matthews) La Farge, a Rhode Island heiress of the Perry family lineage. His parents divorced in 1937. | Read more about Peter La Farge’s connection to South County, Rhode Island
– Syd Barrett’s song “Bob Dylan Blues” was recorded during sessions for Barrett, but it was unreleased until it turned up in 2001. The song was included in The Best of Syd Barrett.
– Although often mistaken for a traditional ballad, “The King of Rome” is a modern English folk song written by Dave Sudbury in 1987. It tells the true, heart-warming story of Charlie Hudson, a working-class man from Derby whose champion pigeon won a grueling race from Rome to England.
– “A note about how the 1980s Providence-based band (The Nee Ningy Band) acquired its mysterious name. It seems they were performing some Irish and Appalachian tunes somewhere when an older gentleman approached them. He said something to this effect: “All that fiddle music sounds the same to me,” and holding his arms up as if to play air-fiddle, he continued, “—it all sounds like ‘nee-ningy nee-ningy nee-ningy nee-ningy.’” The name stuck. [read more] The members of the band included: Ted Porter, mandolin and vocal; Chris Turner, harmonica and cornetto; Rachel Maloney, fiddle; Robbie Phillips, tub bass; and Mance Grady, percussion.
– Sierra Ferrell and Nick Shoulders performance of “More and More” (a cover of the Webb Pierce classic) was released on June 9, 2022. It was filmed live as a Western AF session at the Bluebird Theater in Denver, Colorado | See the YouTube video
– The Nee Ningy Band song “Fiddler’s Dram” was recorded live at Cable Car Cinema, Providence, Rhode Island, in 1981. The beloved Cable Car Cinema at 204 S. Main St. in Providence, RI, officially closed its doors on May 27, 2018, ending a 42-year run. Known for its eclectic foreign and documentary films and cozy seating, the theater shut down due to rising rent, changing media habits, and a failure to reach a new lease agreement with its landlord, the Rhode Island School of Design.
… we thought they’d never end