He's visited Ottawa numerous times, dating back to the glory days of Le Hibou. His lyrics have been sung and studied by singer-songwriters for over 30 years. And locals still talk about his mesmerizing 2001 Ottawa Folk Festival headlining set.

Meet John Prine, folksinger.

"Well," he says of the description, "I would call myself a folksinger ... except most folk music I hear doesn't sound like mine. I'm my idea of a folksinger, but I'm also pretty heavily influenced by country music ... except the country music I hear these days."

It's a characteristically irreverent analysis of the situation from a man whose wry wit and original turn-of-phrase led early in his career to Prine's being afflicted with the 'new Dylan' label -- a potentially career-ending condition that has dogged everyone from Phil Ochs to Dan Bern.

At that time, the Maywood, Ill., native had risen from the coffee houses of Chicago to a modest recording career that found him sweetly singing slice-of-life tales like Hello in There and Paradise.

The voice, and attitude, take a gritty turn with 1975's Common Sense, an album whose gruff delivery has since become Prine's trademark.

"A lot of my early records are hard for me to listen to because I can tell how badly that kid wanted to get out of the studio," Prine says of his folk apprenticeship. "That's the first thing I hear in that voice: I was just learning to be comfortable in the studio and comfortable with my own voice. Luckily, the songs carried it through."

Yes, you could say that. Songs like Dear Abby, Christmas in Prison and Angel from Montgomery have carried Prine through some three decades, even as he has built on that legacy with acclaimed albums like The Missing Years and his most recent release, Fair and Square.

Throughout, Prine has refused to become complacent, challenging himself by recruiting tough-but-fair producers from MGs guitarist Steve Cropper to Sam Phillips.

"I was actually working at the time with his two sons Jerry and Nox," Prine recalls of his late-'70s Sun Studio sessions with Phillips, "and I guess Sam was going to the bank early one morning, saw the lights on in the studio, came in to see what was going on and thought my voice was so awful he'd stick around and try and fix it.

"So we tried about three days with Sam at the wheel. That was really neat. He was like a fire-and-brimstone preacher; he'd get really involved in the music."

An enjoyable experience, Phillips concludes. More so, perhaps than might have been an earlier, mooted project that would have seen Phil Spector at the wheel.

The pair got as far as writing a handful of songs, but Prine admits he likely "could not have gone through a whole album with Phil."

Fair and Square finds Prine in the producer's chair alongside pal Gary Paczosa. But it didn't start out that way.

"I originally called Nick Lowe up to do this record, but I only had two or three songs," Prine recalls.

"He said to call back when I had more and it was about two years before I wrote another song, so I was too embarrassed to call him up and say, 'Hey, I finally got one.' "

No matter. Prine knows Prine best.

Particularly now that he has become comfortable with his new voice -- the result of winning a recent battle with cancer.

"Like most people I know that have had any kind of scare with cancer and managed to get past it, you can't help but feel better about everything in general," Prine says of his current outlook on life.

"But with me it was kind of a double-change, because my voice lowered a little bit -- either from the radiation treatment or the surgery itself -- and I had to change keys on a lot of my old songs.

"It had never occurred to me to ever do that; I was still singing them where I wrote them when I was 18, which is way up there.

"But I changed the key and they all became brand new for me."

New to him, perhaps. But we all know them well.

They are, after all, folk songs.

Prine plays the Main Stage at Bluesfest Sunday night at 7:30.