John Prine plays the Michigan Theater on Saturday.

Although John Prine remains one of the most revered songwriters of the last half-century, his career these days is very different than it was back in the 1970s, when his unique brand of brilliance was first unveiled to the world.

Back then, Prine — who comes to the Michigan Theater on Saturday — was a prolific artist, both in terms of writing songs and recording them. Starting with his 1971 self-titled debut, Prine released seven albums in nine years, continually delivering literate songs full of incisive detail, hilarious turns of phrase, fearless emotional candor, frequently sweet sentiment and sometimes-harrowing scenarios of life on the fringes.

But after his 1980 release, “Storm Windows,” he downshifted into a slower pace when it came to writing and recording — releasing only two more albums of new songs that decade, and then two in the ‘90s, and only one in the ‘00s.

But over the last 20 years, he’s had some real incentives to slow down. In the early ‘90s, he remarried, and started a family in mid-life. His wife is an Ireland native, so for many years now, he and his family have spent most summers in the bucolic Irish countryside, and the rest of the time in Prine’s longtime Nashville home base. So, becoming a family man at that point in his life meant Prine began investing much of his time in his children, and less time writing songs and making records.

Then, in ’98, he was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer centered in his neck, requiring surgery — a frightening experience for anyone, obviously. But, since Prine sings for a living, such a diagnosis was daunting on another level: He was told by doctors that the cancer could spread to his throat, meaning there was a chance he might not be able to sing any more.

But he beat the cancer, and recovered, and regained his singing voice, which these days is now a raspier instrument than the nasal, Dylan-like twang he employed in the ‘70s.

Prine’s last studio album of new songs was “Fair & Square,” in 2005. That disc featured two cover tunes and six songs co-written by others — a new approach for a renowned writer who spent the bulk of his career writing solo. Then, last year, Prine released a live album, “John Prine: In Person & On Stage,” which showcased duets with two of Prine’s favorite singing partners — Emmylou Harris and Iris DeMent — as well as a duet with Sara Watkins of Nickel Creek fame. Other guests were Josh Ritter and Kane Welch Kaplan.

Harris added her luminous vocals to “Angel From Montgomery,” one of Prine’s most beloved songs, and one that has frequently been a duet vehicle in the past — he and Bonnie Raitt have sung duets on that song, onstage, several times.

DeMent lends her distinctive, high-lonesome warble to a duet performance of “In Spite Of Ourselves,” the title song from a duets album of country classics that Prine released in 1999.

The disc also contains live versions of other Prine breadwinners / classics like “Paradise,” “Spanish Pipedream,” “Mexican Home,” “Saddle in the Rain,” “Bottomless Lake,” “The Late John Garfield Blues” and the amusing, but unfortunately-always relevant, “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore.”

But just because his latest disc was a live album and not a new collection of studio recordings, that doesn’t mean Prine was loafing.

“Some people think putting out a live album is not that big a deal, but I worked on this for two years,” Prine told the Tennessean newspaper in Nashville. “Sequencing took six months. I went purely for performance, not to try and make sure that we had specific favorite songs.

And…..we’ll (later) have a DVD to back all this up, with the stories behind the songs.

“I’m getting a better idea about what it is people like about what I do, and what I like about what I do. I like talking, and people like to hear me talk. I’m going to incorporate that more and more into my songs, and maybe some more things like ‘Lake Marie,’ where it’s a story but it rocks. By the time I’m 85, I may find the perfect John Prine song.”

Part of Prine’s songwriting brilliance is the way he can convey volumes of emotional subtext with a deft, economical couplet. In fact, he once described his job as being similar to that of a hedge-trimmer — cutting away what’s “not supposed to be there.”

“I think the more the listener can contribute to the song, the better; the more they become part of the song, and they fill in the blanks,” Prine told American Songwriter. “Rather than tell them everything, you save your details for things that exist. Like, what color the ashtray is, how far away the doorway was. So when you’re talking about intangible things like emotions, the listener can fill in the blanks, and you just draw the foundation.”

Not long after the live disc came out, Prine’s label, Oh Boy Records, released a Prine tribute album — "Broken Hearts & Dirty Windows: Songs of John Prine" — which featured younger artists putting their own unique spin on their favorite Prine songs. That disc featured some strikingly compelling re-interpretations, like Justin Townes Earle’s “Far From Me,” Lambchop’s “Six O’Clock News,” My Morning Jacket’s “All the Best,” The Avett Brothers’ “Spanish Pipedream,” the Drive-By Truckers’ “Daddy’s Little Pumpkin” and “Wedding Day in Funeralville” by Conor Oberst And The Mystic Valley Band.

Indeed, at 64, Prine is still a hero to many of today’s younger singer-songwriters — and fans: Prine is performing at the youth-centric Bonnaroo Festival in June.

But back to the satisfaction Prine derives from time spent with his wife and children:

Back in ’05, when I last interviewed Prine, he had recently enjoyed a unique honor, when he became the first songwriter to ever be invited to read and perform his songs at the Library of Congress, at the invitation of Ted Kooser, the nation's poet laureate.

"At the end, Ted asked me to introduce my family," Prine told me at the time. "And when they stood up out in the audience, I was never so proud in my whole life."

Kevin Ransom, a free-lance writer who covers music for AnnArbor.com, first wrote about John Prine in 1991, for the Ann Arbor News. He can be reached at KevinRansom10@aol.com.