Santa Barbara Independent
Chuck Prophet Talks London Calling, Fog City, Sings Like Hell
Like many of Sings Like Hell’s returning faces, Chuck Prophet embodies the notion of laidback California cool. In conversation, he’s all self-deprecating humor and Dude-like drawl, and in song, he exudes a swagger and Telecaster-heavy reverence for Americana that calls to mind that other Golden State-inspired great, Tom Petty. On Saturday, Prophet returns to the Lobero’s monthly concert series for another go at it, this time with wife-cum-opening act, Stephanie Finch.
While the show is just one of two currently scheduled dates for the San Francisco songwriter, he’s got no shortage of tunes—and stories—to share with fans this time around, namely his recently completed tribute tour to The Clash and a follow-up to his 2009 neo-political rocker, Let Freedom Ring! And though the singer is hesitant to nail down any concrete plans for a new record, he’s more than forthcoming with its details.
So your manager tells me you’re headed into the studio after we speak. Is that right? [Laughs.] I mean, I kind of have a studio that I… I’m always wrestling something to the ground or another, but I don’t think it’s necessarily a full, card-carrying album.
Where are you in the process? I’ve been writing a kind of San Francisco record. I made my last record in Mexico City and the previous one in Nashville, so I’ve just been [trying to] tap into the weirdness and energy and spontaneity that brought me here in the first place. It’s a pretty deep well of stuff to pull from. But I’ve made some demos; I’m kicking the songs around.
Folks called Let Freedom Ring! a “political album for nonpolitical people.” If you had to attach a slogan to what you’re working on now, what would it be? I don’t know if I could come up with anything that clever; that was pretty good, the political music for nonpolitical people. I might have actually started that rumor. I don’t know what I’m doing right now, though. I’m definitely looking backwards through the looking glass. San Francisco’s a place where people come from all over to wave their freak flag. The city itself does a kind of whammy on you when you’re young and you first come here. It’s a feeling that you can sort of end up chasing for the rest of your life, you know? The first hit.
Chuck Prophet, Stephanie Finch, and The Company Men
- Where: Lobero Theatre, 33 E. Canon Perdido St., Santa Barbara
- Cost: $35
- Age limit: Not available
You spent most of last month in Spain with this Clash tribute. Can you tell me a bit about your history with London Calling? I got it as a kid—I was already playing guitar; I was about 16. I didn’t have a library of music. Kids today can seek out any kind of weird culture or weird music that they can identify with, and that’s great, but when I was young, [that album] was a big deal. I bought it used, and at first, I didn’t really crack the code on it, but as I stuck with it, it became more mysterious, really, but every time I listened to it, more was revealed. It really was a perfect record in so many ways. As a kid, I was as interested in Bo Diddley as I was in contemporary music, and it was The Clash that opened that up. They were always one of those bands that had one eye on the road ahead of ’em and one eye on the rearview mirror.
You’ve played the Sings Like Hell series a number of times now. What keeps you coming back? We played it with Alejandro [Escovedo] one time, we played it another time with Kelly Willis, and I think we played it yet another time with The Gourds, so this might be our third or fourth time. I think the theater itself is glorious in its own way. It’s a great setting to hear music, and because it’s a community thing, I think people are more open-minded in a way. With a series, people get turned onto music that they might not normally be aware of. It’s fun in that way.
4•1•1
Chuck Prophet plays the Lobero Theatre (33 E. Canon Perdido St.) this Saturday, February 19, at 8 p.m. with Stephanie Finch & The Company Men. Call 963-0761 or visit singslikehell.com for info.
by ALY COMINGORE on February 18, 2011 • Filed under Interviews (¡Let Freedom Ring!)
Cincinnati.Com
No faking Prophet's kind of cool
If you can measure a person's character by the quality of his friends, Chuck Prophet is a lucky man.
The San Francisco singer-songwriter plays the Southgate House in Newport Thursday with one of those friends, Kim Richey. Earlier in the day, they will stop by WNKU-FM (89.7), where music director John Patrick once described Prophet as "the coolest guy we've ever had in here."
Testimonials are nice, but the proof is in the music. Prophet's latest album, "Let Freedom Ring!" is a meditation on our life and times, somewhat inspired by one his heroes.
"It was Hunter S. Thompson who really based his career on the life, death, rebirth and total disappearing of the American dream," Prophet says. "I was interested in that when I started writing songs for this album. I had the window open, and after about two or three songs, I realized that's where I was going."
In addition to his solo projects, Prophet is a trusted collaborator to folks like Richey and Alejandro Escovedo among others. He co-wrote more than half of the songs on Escovedo's 2010 "Street Songs of Love" and partnered on every one on 2008's "Real Animal."
"When we get in a room, we just never run out of things to talk about," Prophet says of Escovedo. "It's like touching two jumper cables together. The songs just kind of spill out of that. To Al's credit, he has the ability to make somebody feel like you've known him your whole life."
Prophet's whole life hasn't been spent basking in a cocoon of critical acclaim. He started living the rock 'n' roll lifestyle as a teenager, and fell victim to those temptations. But while he struggled with a drug problem, he also made good music with the band Green on Red, an early acolyte of the country punk sound.
"We really took that lifestyle thing as far we could," he remembers. "We were working with (Memphis musical legend) Jim Dickinson on a record called 'The Killer Inside Me,' which kind of split the band, brother vs. brother.
"While we were there, Alex (Chilton of the Box Tops and Big Star) would drop by. ... Big Star was like the Sex Pistols in their own way ... the influence that it had, just like the influence that the Velvet Underground had, Big Star had the same amount of influence."
Spending time with Dickinson (who died last year) and Chilton (who died this year) certainly influenced Prophet, but cool innately knows cool.
"The thing about Alex is ... he was cool. He didn't have to say a lot about (his life and music), and he never did a lot of explaining. There was nothing exaggerated at all. He was the coolest (guy) who ever lived."
Patrick might disagree. "(Prophet) is just cool. You can't fake cool."
by B Thompson on November 17, 2010 • Filed under Interviews (¡Let Freedom Ring!)
FOR THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Prophet of truth
By JOHN BECK
FOR THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Published: Thursday, January 14, 2010 at 3:00 a.m.
Last Modified: Tuesday, January 12, 2010 at 10:01 p.m.
When it came time to record a new album, Chuck Prophet packed up his guitars and headed south of the border for a Mexico City studio that was state-of-the-art circa 1958.
The result: “¡Let Freedom Ring!” is one of the most honest snapshots of troubled times to reach listeners in 2009.
From the stark opening riff of “Sonny Liston's Blues” (admittedly a rip-off of The Clash's “London Calling” intro without the morse code) to the striving strum and hum of “Leave the Window Open,” it's chock full of heartache, despair and the occasional breath of hope.
The Village Voice called it “a 'Born in the U.S.A.' for our time.” No Depression christened it “a new American anthem for the post-9/11 world.”
The San Francisco folk-rocker with the Tom Petty drawl and the wry sense of humor (2010 resolution: “Start smoking again and stop working out” ), Prophet keeps telling everybody “they're political songs for non-political people.”
Two decades after he split with Green on Red, the wide-eyed dreamer who fled Whittier for San Francisco is firmly entrenched as one of the most observant and honest songwriter's songwriter plying the trade today.
Maybe it's because he finally got his “breakthrough hit” out of the way back in 2002 with “Summertime Thing.” Or maybe it's because he kicked drugs and alcohol 11 years ago. Or his storied collaborations with Alejandro Escovedo, Cake, Warren Zevon, Jonathan Richman and Lucinda Williams.
Or maybe it's the way he pauses midway through the interview to ponder, “I know I don't have a job, but I'd have to think about whether or not I'm actually making a living.”
There's something about Chuck Prophet that begs to be studied.
Before the 46-year-old survivor takes the stage with his wife, keyboardist Stephanie Finch, and the rest of the Mission Express at the Mystic Theatre on Jan. 22, he took time out to talk.
Q: How'd you wind up in Mexico City in the middle of the swine-flu epidemic?
A: Well, we didn't plan the swine-flu part. But I had a batch of songs and I wanted to record them somewhere energized. The whole process of recording these days has gotten so complacent with all this technology being available to so many people. And I just wanted that feeling of recording like your life depended on it. So we got it.
Q: How much of a bonding experience was that with the power going out repeatedly and the mass hysteria going on outside?
A: That was actually cool because every take that you hear on the record there's a sense of triumph at the end. That kind of reminded me of the records I made as a teenager. We'd book a studio, like Hyde Street in the Tenderloin. We used to book the midnight sessions.
Q: How much do you think you paid for that back then?
A: A lot of money actually. Probably like $300. You can still get a lot of studios for $300 today lemme tell you. That's one of the things that hasn't changed. A good gig back in 1985 was $500 and a good gig in 2009 is still $500.
Q: That's your New Year's resolution — to get a $600 gig.
A: Or at least string together a few of them.
Q: Was there a moment in Mexico City when you thought, “Maybe this wasn't such a good idea?"
A: I can't say that I was scared, but there were nights when I was staring at the ceiling, thinking, “Oh boy, what have I done?"
Q: If I throw out a song title, can you tell me what comes to mind?
A: Hopefully.
Q: “Sonny Liston's Blues.”
A: To me, he's the perfect analogy for the American dream. He's part reality and part myth — always just out of reach. He had to open the record. There was a myth people had that they were going to be able to comfortably retire and they woke up one morning and realized that reality was not quite what was sold to them.
Q: What about “Barely Exist"?
A: Steve Earle once told me, “It's your job to keep your antennae up and find things that are absurd.” For me, the fact that we've spent a billion dollars building a bigger wall around this country and thousands of people die every year coming up from Mexico only for the opportunity to clean our toilets is just absurd.
Q: You haven't been a super-political songwriter over the years, what was it about the issues that got to you this time?
A: Well, I can't really say that this is some kind of battle cry. I'm not really a political guy. But what happened is I just kind of stood back and squinted and realized that all the people in the songs had one thing in common — that they were living in a particularly anxious, raw time. I mean I'm just a photographer. I just kind of shine a light on things.
Q: You're taking snapshots.
A: Yeah, in my own way. I just try to stay as truthful to it as possible.
Bay Area freelancer John Beck writes about entertainment for The Press Democrat. You can reach him at 707-280-8014 or john@sideshowvideo.com.
by John Beck on January 14, 2010 • Filed under Interviews (¡Let Freedom Ring!)
EQ
Let It Bleed : Recording In A Small Mexico City Studio Helped Chuck Prophet Get Aggressive
When San Francisco guitarist and singer Chuck Prophet set out to record ¡Let Freedom Ring! [Yep Roc] last spring, he assumed a change of environment, specifically Mexico City, would inspire him and add some manic energy to the album. He didn’t count on periodic power outages ruining takes at Estudio 19, the oldschool studio he picked to lay down tracks, nor a 6.4 earthquake shaking the building’s foundations. And nobody expects a pandemic. “What I didn’t predict was that the swine flu scare would start three days after we arrived,” Prophet says. “The CNN paranoia, if you crank that stuff up to 11, makes everybody start to feel a little off. People got itchy. We put on blue masks and had a driver take us to the studio.” Also, according to producer Greg Leisz, Prophet didn’t remember how small (roughly 12 feet by 20 feet) the high-ceiling main room was at Estudio 19. Reacting to his last record, Soap and Water, which included sections with arranged strings and a children’s choir, Prophet wanted to dial things down. The former member of ’80s L.A. cowpunk band Green on Red wanted a light touch and a raw performance. Normally, tight spaces complicate the situation. But with a few deft arrangements of equipment and a willingness to use bleed and leakage to their advantage, the musicians and engineers working on ¡Let Freedom Ring! made it sound both spacious and fully charged. “People think isolation is the way to go,” says Jason Carmer, who engineered the album. “But getting the bleed reinforces the stereo imagery. You can hear the guitars from the perspectives of all the mics in the room. I find that the bleed gives you great depth of field.” The whole album was recorded in one general formation in the main room to help capture a live feel. While there were some guitar overdubs later, and pedal steel and fiddle tracks were laid down separately to add extra color and tone to songs like “What Can a Mother Do,” the aim was to capture raw performances. Electrified opener “Sonny Liston’s Blues” was a completely live take. Chuck occupied the right corner. His guitar, usually a Squier Telecaster, which he favors for its simplicity, was plugged into a pedal board and run into an amp, usually a Fender Princeton Reverb or a Vox AC30, which stayed in the main room and was recorded through a RCA 77DX ribbon mic. An Ibanez AD-80 analog delay was sometimes plugged in to provide a vintage slapback feel on some of Prophet’s solos. Baffles were then set up to cover his Neumann U 47 vocal mic (run through a GML preamp with a Urei LA-3A compressor), chosen because the rich, warm sound worked well with Prophet’s Tom Petty-esque voice. “Both the mic and Chuck’s voice have character, so I wanted to capture that,” says Carmer. “It helped deliver the smashing, classic vocals of old records that we were looking for.” Drummer Ernest “Boom” Carter, who played on Springsteen’s “Born to Run,” set up a borrowed ’60s Gretsch drum kit across the room, miked with a mono U 87 placed between the beater and snare that “pulled it all in,” according to Carmer, and added a spaciousness to the recording. Guitarist Tom Ayres, bassist Rusty Miller, and Leisz, who occasionally added another guitar line, squeezed in the middle of the room. Their amps were placed in the machine room or lounge, with doors left slightly ajar to capture some bleed. Everything was tracked according to its orientation, says Carmer, which meant they could capture the reflection of the space. To accentuate the live energy in the room, lots of compression was added to the guitar tracks via Neve 1073s and UA 1176s. It really pricked up the guitar lines snaking through the rave-up “Where the Hell is Henry?” “The general modus operandi was to go for it and be aggressive,” says Carmer. “[Compression] helped give it an authentic feel but also trash it up a bit.” Prophet and others half-jokingly referred to the studio as a state-of-theart room from 1957, and while there’s some truth to that, the studio’s cache of vintage gear and mics added a lot of character. A vintage Ampeg SVT added powerful reverb, and Carmer especially enjoyed using Pultec EQP- 1As on kick, snare, toms, rooms, guitars, and bass. More importantly, the somewhat cramped space—from the overflowing studio to the courtyard where they’d eat tacos for lunch—gave them a sense of unity of purpose. “There was so much chaos outside the studio that when we got in there and the power was on and we could lay down a track, there was a certain teenage energy,” Prophet says. “It reminded me of being in the studio with my first band.” |
January 8, 2010 • Filed under Interviews (¡Let Freedom Ring!)
Village Voice
On the Haunting Songs of Chuck Prophet
Chuck Prophet's ¡Let Freedom Ring! is a Born in the U.S.A. for our time. Not that the Californian troubadour and self-described "hustler" behind this 25th-anniversary update of Bruce Springsteen's ode to the irony of the American Dream deliberately set out to cop the Boss's monumental mojo, but the similarities between the two records are uncanny. Both are concept albums of sorts that manifest patriotism through disenchantment, and both rely heavily on marginalized characters to expose socioeconomic woe.
"I've been saying they're political songs for non-political people," Prophet explains over the phone from his San Francisco home. "But what I really mean is that I'm not a particularly political person, but the characters in these songs are all living in a kind of anxious time."
¡LFR!'s title track—a nod not to the Liberty Bell but to the NYSE—exemplifies that anxiety through retirement-plan decimation. The buoyant, power-pop music deceptively suggests a feel-good anthem, but once the lyrics unfold, a Social Darwinistic tale is told, of Bernie Madoffs leeching off Average Joes—"The hawk cripples the dove," as Prophet puts it—who reduce their victims to blind-drunk poor boys. Elsewhere, "Barely Exist" continues the Springsteen parallel, with Prophet replacing the Boss's struggling blue-collar worker with a struggling Mexican immigrant. Over a fragile beat and sparse guitar notes, he sums up the day laborer's plight: "You gotta be strong/But when you got asbestos in your Kool-Aid for breakfast/There's no good way to look alive."
"I think we go too far out of our way to define ourselves by our borders," Prophet says. "Hundreds of people die every year trying to get into this country, just for the opportunity to clean our toilets and change our babies' diapers, and if it's somebody who's just trying to provide for their family, how can you criminalize that? And, really, isn't that the least of our problems right about now?"
The beauty of ¡LFR! lies in its raw, no-frills approach. Lightning-rod guitars spark a combustible rhythm section. Songs of radio-friendly length emerge from only a couple of live takes. Down-tempo and uptempo numbers play well in the same sandbox. Witty lyrics with rich imagery—it's hard to shake "By the time her shoes wore out/She was giving blood" from "What Can a Mother Do"—demonstrate a mastery of language, like the rock 'n' roll equivalent of folkie Todd Snider as delivered through Tom Petty's voice were it even more reliant on stoner/surfer cadences. Other gems include "Sonny Liston's Blues," a riff on the monstrous former boxing champ's loss to Muhammad Ali as symbolic of good over evil (replete with air-guitar-inspiring passages on a Gretsch that Prophet says was "strung up heavy"), and "Where the Hell Is Henry?," a 2'17" identity-theft gut punch about a con artist masquerading as a Kennedy.
Prophet recorded ¡LFR!—his ninth solo album in a career better known for its songwriting and producing contributions to the oeuvres of Alejandro Escovedo, Kelly Willis, and Warren Zevon, among others—in Mexico City, in a state-of-the-art (circa 1957) studio. The conditions were less than ideal (swine-flu mania, earthquakes, drug wars on the periphery), but Prophet says the duress made a band out of the ragtag crew. "One thing I could never have predicted is that in Mexico City, the power goes out, like, five times a day," he says. "And, of course, every time it would go out, it would be in the middle of a completely magical sort of Marquee Moon moment. And so every take you hear on the record, there's, like, triumph at the end of it."
Chuck Prophet plays the 92Y Tribeca November 27
by Michael Hoinski on November 10, 2009 • Filed under Interviews (¡Let Freedom Ring!)
SF Gate
S.F. songwriter Chuck Prophet looks back
Chuck Prophet isn't in a reflective mood today. It's early Wednesday morning and the San Francisco singer-songwriter has just returned from a hectic European tour in support of his latest album, "Let Freedom Ring." In just a few days, he'll launch the American leg."I don't know why you want to talk to me, I'm totally brain dead," he says by way of greeting. "I've gotten about three hours of sleep in the past 72 hours. There's actually drool running down the front of my shirt."
The former Green on Red front man, who plays at the Great American Music Hall next Sunday, is nearly two decades into his celebrated solo career and still taking huge risks. "Let Freedom Ring" was recorded in Mexico City with co-producer Greg Leisz this year just as the swine flu pandemic hit.
"Our timing couldn't have been worse," Prophet says. "Within three days of arriving, the city shut down. So we put on our blue masks and got to work."
The musician and the members of his band - including his wife, Stephanie Finch; guitarist Tom Ayres; bassist Rusty Miller; and drummer Ernest "Boom" Carter - were able to avoid the H1N1 virus but not the ensuing paranoia, giving his roots and rock tunes added edge.
"It was definitely an adventure," he says. "But it was recorded under such duress, it made a band out of us."
We asked Prophet, who has released more than a dozen full-length albums on his own and with his former outfit, to reminisce about his recording sessions.
Green on Red, "Gas Food Lodging" (1985)
"I just got my first passport and all we wanted to do was make a record and go out and play our songs. We met our producer Paul Cutler through a mutual friend, who was a pot dealer and worked five days and nights. It was totally effortless. We had a van and the label gave us a gas card. Those were good times."
Green on Red, "The Killer Inside Me" (1987)
"That was the record that split the band. It was bombastic and humorless. I remember on that tour we played in Athens, Greece, and Dan Stuart attacked somebody in the audience with his guitar and broke it. So we got a note from a doctor and canceled our final gig at the Astoria in London. It was something I never felt good about, so three years ago, when we had our reunion tour, we rescheduled that gig, and anybody who was supposed to be at that original gig could get in for free."
Chuck Prophet, "Brother Aldo" (1990)
"I just had my kite up, and the wind changed direction at the right time. It just kind of happened that myself and Stephanie and a bunch of other local songwriters were all sort of in bands that had gone out of business or collapsed or folded. We started a poker night at the Albion, and there was a healthy competition among us. We would play a gig one weekend and come back the next week and do the songs differently. But people ended up stealing each other's girlfriends and guitars, so it was scene that didn't last long."
Chuck Prophet, "Feast of Hearts" (1995)
"It's the record that cost the most and made the least. If I stand back and squint, it's got some pretty good songs. But it's where I just hit a wall. It was probably the first record where I worked with an outside producer (Steve Berlin), and we never really got in a groove. He just worked out of one side of his brain - I'm not sure what side, but it was the opposite of mine."
Chuck Prophet, "No Other Love" (2002)
"That was when we seriously started to think more about the States. Stephanie said I needed to dumb it down a little bit, so I wrote 'Summertime Thing' using the first three chords everybody learns on guitar. We were on tour with Lucinda Williams, and I was at a salad bar and heard it coming out of a speaker. It was a very strange feeling. From there it started getting some airplay and climbing past people like Sheryl Crow, the Wallflowers and Springsteen on the adult alternative charts. Heart later recorded 'No Other Love.' That record has more than paid the utility bills."
Chuck Prophet, "Age of Miracles" (2004)
"It was a fun record to make. I recorded it in a lot of different places. That song 'You Did' has been in 'True Blood.' It's just got a bunch of weird stuff on it - songs about marriage, miscarriages of justice and midgets. And that's just the M's."
Chuck Prophet, "Dreaming Waylon's Dreams" (2007)
"It's not an official record. One weekend. we got locked in the studio, and I was bragging how I could recite Waylon Jennings' 'Dreaming My Dreams' record by memory. So we started with one song, and by the end of the weekend we recorded the whole album. My friend, who was on tour with a bunch of new country acts, told me he bought it and put it on the tour bus and a fight broke out."
Chuck Prophet, "Let Freedom Ring" (2009)
"I found a studio in Mexico that was state of the art for 1958. In today's economy, that had it's appeal. In terms of perspective, I was writing that album just as the bottom was falling out of the wet sack of the American dream. We didn't really go for mariachi horns, but we were hoping to feed off the energy there. It's a city that hustles and bustles and vibrates beneath your feet. I thought, 'With these songs, why not?' " {sbox}
Chuck Prophet: 8 p.m. next Sun. Great American Music Hall, 859 O'Farrell St., San Francisco. $15. (415) 885-0750, http://www.gamh.com.
To hear Chuck Prophet's music, go to
chuckprophet.com.
Follow Aidin Vaziri at twitter.com/MusicSF. E-mail Aidin Vaziri at avaziri@sfchronicle.com{{PERIOD}}
by Aidin Vaziri on November 3, 2009 • Filed under Interviews (¡Let Freedom Ring!)
Spinner
Chuck Prophet Faced Swine Flu Fears in Mexico City
Music is universal, we know that much. But when Chuck Prophet rolled up his sleeves for his newest album, 'Let Freedom Ring!,' he decided to travel outside of America and cut the tracks in Mexico City. A few days into the process, swine flu started to spread -- both as a virus and as a media hot topic -- with Mexico City at the epicenter."I should say that Mexico City is an ancient and ailing metropolis, but at the same time it's booming. It rocks, it bustles, it's a hell-hole and it's paradise," Prophet tells Spinner. "Yes, it's also the capital of the second or third world, our own urban future -- almost sci-fi. It's not the place you want to be when the black plague comes down."
Neither Prophet nor anyone in his band or crew caught the illness but they did seem to be afflicted, at points, by another viral scare -- hype. "If you turn up the heat on the hype high enough, everyone starts feeling a little off," says Prophet. "You can't help but to take your own pulse every 10 minutes."
That kind of nervous energy can fuel an entire album. So with co-producer Greg Leisz (Wilco, John Fogerty) behind the knobs, Prophet braved exposure to H1N1 for the sake of art. "The amazing thing about Mexico City is that beyond the bustle, the grime and the chaos, everything gets done," he says. "There are commuter train lines that bring half a million people in and out of the city every day. Think about it. So I think ultimately that all the extraneous BS we went through just to get to the studio everyday and to get a take when the power didn't go out brought us all together and made a band out of us."
That may be so, but Yep Roc Records will still release 'Let Freedom Ring!' as a Chuck Prophet solo album when it drops on Oct. 27.
by Benjy Eisen on October 7, 2009 • Filed under Interviews (¡Let Freedom Ring!)
Nottingham.UK Thursday, September 17, 2009
PHILOSOPHY Chuck Prophet loves music, the 'healthiest addiction' he has ever had, for its own sake.
WHEN Chuck Prophet joined Green On Red as a teenager, he had no ambitions to be a rock 'n' roll star. "I grew up in a small town in California and I didn't even know anyone who'd been in a band or in a recording studio," he says. "I didn't get into music to buy my parents a yacht." Three decades later, music is all he's known. "It's the healthiest addiction I've ever had. And I've had a few." More of that later. With Green On Red, he recorded eight albums until leaving to pursue a solo career. That was 20 years ago. At the end of next month, he'll be releasing his eleventh solo effort Let Freedom Ring. "I didn't think I was going to do another one. But I wrote a batch of three or four songs, stood back and thought 'these songs may be going somewhere I've not been before'. "Once I knew the direction the album was going in it was easy." The album was partly inspired by Mexico City, where it was recorded. "It's only a three-hour flight from the west coast but might as well be the other side of the moon. It's a magically inspiring city full of opposites and extremes: friendly folks/corrupt cops, endless beauty/grime. "With the ink barely dry on a shoe-box full of songs we rolled tape – and with the punches – for eight days while enduring poorly-timed blackouts, shakedowns by the Policia and a 6.4 earthquake. "What really sticks in my mind was eating little tacos around a picnic table and smiling like idiots after plugging the guitars straight into the amps and blowing the roof off that tiny bamboo-lined room." Music is his passion and way of life these days. "Since I got clean from drugs and alcohol around eight years ago, my social life has revolved around making music with my friends." For the show at The Maze next week he'll be with The Mission Express: Stephie Finch, Kevin White, Todd Roper and James Deprato. Prophet has collaborated with a number of other songwriters but he has no preference whether he writes alone or with a partner. What does he believe makes a good song? "Nobody knows really. For me, I have my own values like honesty, but you need to be lucky too. It's a very mysterious thing. People can learn the craft of songwriting and learn how to go from a verse to a chorus but I don't know what it is about someone like Smokey Robinson that makes it different. "Someone like Leonard Cohen pours things from beaker to beaker over time and creates a master painting, but then a band like Art Brut can come out with their first album and every song is great. And I have no idea how they did it." As befits a man who is involved with music for music's sake, Prophet's take on success is pretty simple: "I try to be nice to my wife, cook myself a decent meal every once in a while and still hope to find a guitar that will stay in tune. That's about it."
by Staff on September 17, 2009 • Filed under Interviews
Cleveland Scene
Sharp-dressed Man
Sharp-dressed Man How Chuck Prophet Learned To Dress For Success By Brian Baker Singer-songwriter Chuck Prophet's reticence in the wake of his excellent 2007 album Soap and Water isn't unusual. "It's appallingly unfashionable to make records that hold together as an album, but I keep doing them - it's like hitting your dick with a hammer," says Prophet with a laugh. "People I talk to in the business say, 'Chuck, we really commend you for that. You go, man.' I still think that way, and I was pretty encouraged by the album I collaborated on with Alejandro [Escovedo] last year. That's how I go about making a record, from the outside in or from the inside out. If I can get three or four songs that take me somewhere I haven't been, then that's enough to keep me going." Prophet got more than just a warm, fuzzy feeling from his work on Escovedo's Real Animal last year. Escovedo advised Prophet to be more aggressive with promoters when setting his asking price for gigs. Prophet left their meeting with more than advice. "We're sitting in his kitchen and with musicians, it always goes right to the business," recalls Prophet. "Al's like, 'How's your agent doing for you?' And I'm like, 'I'm doing OK.' And he goes, 'Seriously, what do you get paid like in Chicago?' 'I don't know. I don't want to talk about it.' Eventually I told him, and he was like, 'Bro, bro, bro, you gotta be doing better than that.' He got up and went upstairs, and I heard him walking around, and I'm thinking, 'What the fuck is he doing up there?' He finally comes down 10 minutes later with three suits on hangers. He goes, 'Here, bro, take these with you. Sharpen up your act a little bit. Your fees will go up.' I started dressing nicer and they went up." As for a new album, Prophet seems to have three or four songs to get him going, so a new full-length in 2009 is a possibility. He's beginning to frame it up mentally. "When I got into music, I signed up for the adventure," he jokes. "Maybe I'll go to Mexico City and make an emo record. I haven't really formed it in my mind, but I'm kind of working on an uninhibited, quasi-political record for non-political people like myself. We're living in an anxious time, and I think it's a good time to let the world in a little bit." Prophet will likely debut at least a couple of new songs on his current tour, and based on his description, they seem like worthy additions to his already impressive catalog. "They're a little less boy/girl and more reflective of the times we're living in," says Prophet. "I've got a song called 'Paying My Respects to the Train' which might surface. I've got another one called 'Jesus Was a Social Drinker' that I like to play solo. I've got a song called 'Let Freedom Ring' which is a fun new song I'm excited about, so there's a cluster of things." For his appearance at the Beachland Tavern this week, Prophet will fly solo and acoustic, which allows him the freedom to perform songs that don't normally wind up in his set list. It also forces him to rethink songs that are typically muscled through by his touring band. "'Singer-songwriter' is a ghetto," says Prophet. "People stand back and squint, and we're indistinguishable from one another. It's rough out there. But it gives me an opportunity to try out new songs and different kinds of songs, like some of the more narrative, storytelling stuff that I don't have to get above the band. To be perfectly honest, it's not why I got into music - to play solo. I prefer to have a drummer to lean back on and get ahead and behind the beat and spar like that. But playing solo has its own thing. It's freer in a way. But it can be crushing when you suck."
by Brian Baker on January 15, 2009 • Filed under Interviews (Soap And Water)
Independant Weekly
We spoke to Chuck Prophet about "Always a Friend," the opening cut on Real Animal:
I suspect that you've known Alejandro a long time, probably even dating back to his Nuns days, but I think this is the first time you've written with him. What led to you work with him on his new record?
He had an idea that it would work. And he was right. He asked me to come out to his place in Wimberly, Texas. We then spent a year splitting time between my little office space in San Francisco and his garage-cum-manspace in Wimberly. It took us a while to get up to speed. But Al has this incredible faith and patience. He's very patient. I'm like, "What's with the whole patience thing?" He tells me, "Bro, that's the Mayan thing." There were days of us just laying around talking. We spent a lot of time laying on the carpet in the dark talking. And listening to Mott the Hoople records. And naps. Lots of naps. But when we got worked up into a lather, it would flow through us. I often thought that if someone were to see us-if someone were to look in the window at us when we're in the throes of it-they might be tempted to call the cops.
The full interview is here:
June 30, 2008 • 2 COMMENTS • Filed under Interviews (Real Animal)
SfGate
The lead singer of this San Francisco band was born a Prophet. "Hell, if I was going to pick my name, I wouldn't have picked Prophet, that's for sure," Chuck Prophet says of his surname. "As for the Mission Express, no one remembers." When it comes to being a musical visionary, Prophet also had no choice. He was born with the gift of a golden voice. His tower of songs goes back to his Orange County childhood, when he inherited his sister's acoustic guitar and learned to play "Heart of Gold" by Neil Young. "I've been trying to find a guitar that stays in tune ever since," says Prophet, who played in punk rock band Green on Red before going on to collaborate with folks such as Warren Zevon, Jonathan Richman and Cake. In 1990, Prophet released his first solo record, "Brother Aldo," on the British label Fire Records. "They gave me 500 British pounds (about $800). I couldn't believe it." Prophet more recently has played the talk show tour (including Letterman and Carson Daly) for his newest album, "Soap and Water." Now he is stoked to get back on a San Francisco stage. "I do still get a kick out of playing," he says. "I call my mom every week and say my prayers every night. I still love traveling around and meeting people - to wake up interested in what you're doing is really a blessing. Music is the healthiest addiction I've ever had. And I've had a few."
Lineup: Chuck Prophet, vocals, guitar; Stephie Finch, singing, Farfisa organ; Kevin White, bass guitar; Todd Roper, drums, vocals; James DePrado, guitar, sweater vest.
1. Chuck Prophet and the Mission Express' music should be filed between:
You mean alphabetically, right? All roads lead to Dylan, I suppose. To be filed between Bach and Dylan would be a real honor. That's where you'll find the Beach Boys ... and the Beatles, too, come to think of it.
2. The soundtrack to what movie would your music best match?
You mean like "Easy Rider" or "Sunset Boulevard"? Inspiration is in everything, in everyone. ... How about "Midnight Cowboy"? Boy, that's a great soundtrack. I'd be a fool to put myself next to that soundtrack. I could only aspire to such greatness.
3. If you could collaborate on a song with any person, living or dead, who would that be?
Peaches.
4. If a junior high school asked you to play a cover song at the next talent show, what song and school would you choose?
Washington Junior High, La Habra (Orange County). "Louie, Louie" - that song should be the national anthem. In a way, it already is.
5. What is the meaning of life?
Still searching. You can't see me right now, but if you could you'd see that I'm deep in thought. Deep, deep thought. I'd be happy just to get bumped up to first class on a transatlantic flight once more before I die. It happened a few years ago on Virgin. I was convinced if the plane went down, all the passengers in first class would somehow float away unscathed. It was a glorious flight; I almost didn't want it to end. I thought I saw God in my fresh squeezed orange juice. It was brief, but intense.
by Delfin Vigil on February 7, 2008 • 2 COMMENTS • Filed under Interviews
Austin Chronicle
Interview With a Prophet
Thinking man’s rocker Chuck Prophet rolls into the Continental Club Friday with Alejandro Escovedo, and I caught up with him Monday night as the van was traveling down I-10 near Fort Stockton, on its way toward Central Texas. We spoke about his latest disc, the indefinable Soap and Water (Yep Roc); his recent appearance on The Late Show With David Letterman; and the new album of songs he’s written with Escovedo.
Geezerville: I saw you on Letterman a week or so ago. What was that experience like? Had you appeared on that show before?
Chuck Prophet: We’d never done the show before. It was a cool experience for a number of reasons. We’re kind of a blues band. I don’t mean that we play the blues, but we travel in a van, and if your amp's too heavy [and] you can’t carry your own shit, don’t bring it. So we ended staying at a hotel around the corner, coming in the night before. We were in the studio at 10:45am. Loaded in the gear. Right around that time there was a guy loading in the tubular bells, and I watched five union guys arguing over where to put it. Then they argued over how to mic the thing. That was really kind of funny.
G: That version of the song you did, "Doubter Out of Jesus (All Over You)," was pretty different from what’s on the record. Is that the way you’re doing it live?
CP: It’s hard to get a definitive version of any song on a record. But that song has been one of the sleepers in our set. It’s the song from the record that just ended up asserting itself. It never got left off the set list, and we’ve been on the road for a few months. I thought it would be cool to have some horns on it. That was Tom "Bones" Malone who did the horn charts, who you might remember from the Blues Brothers, so that was kind of a thrill.
G: You had kind of a dazed look in your eyes when the song was over and Dave came over to shake your hand.
CP: Yeah, I didn’t know if I was allowed to engage [laughs]. "Dave there are a few things I’ve been meaning to ask you …"
G: It’s been three years since the last record. Was there a dry period, or did you just want to take your time?
CP: I kind of burnt myself out touring behind Age of Miracles. The tour probably went on for two or three weeks too long, I think, and that was a crucial two or three weeks. After that I fell out with New West. Being on New West was a bit like, after a while, like driving with the brakes on. They dropped me, and I spent the next year just goofing off and finding other stuff to do, which I think was great in the end.
G: Did that help you with this record?
CP: Dan Stuart from Green on Red and I used to say, whenever we were asked what came first, the music or the lyrics, "The advance came first." It wasn’t like anyone was waving an advance at me, you know. But I didn’t know if I would make another record. I never really do know if I’m going to make another record.
G: How much of this record was made in the studio?
CP: It was made in the studio just the way a film is made on a film set, I suppose.
G: The arrangements and sounds, are they something you had in your head when you were writing the song, or was it something you came upon when you were recording?
CP: Sometimes when I’m writing, I can hear the full arrangement in my head, and I get excited about it. But once you get on the film set and you’re making the movie, I have to be prepared to let go and take advantage of whatever gift you get from being there. It had a spine to it, but a lot of it was spontaneous. Brad Jones, who co-produced the record with me, and I would take a day to record one song and then spend two weeks arguing about what the one overdub should be. I was like, "I’ll get an all-boys Methodist choir in here tomorrow." That’s pretty typical of the way it was.
G: I’m glad you mentioned that, because I wanted to ask you about the inclusion of the choir on "Let’s Do Something Wrong." It’s a pretty funny moment when they join in.
CP: I’ve been listening to a group called the English Congregation, the Godspell soundtrack, things like that. The English Congregation made a couple of albums in the 1970s with a lot of group singing. I was playing some of that for Brad, and we were talking about choirs, and he said that when we got to Nashville, there were a lot of gospel choirs, and I said I was looking for people who could sing, but I don’t want people that sound like they’re singing. It was his suggestion to get the children’s choir, and it really added to the song in a way I didn’t see coming, because "Let’s do something wrong, let’s do something stupid" is so much more perverse when the kids are singing it. Kids don’t know that their actions have repercussions. They don’t have things like regret. You’ll find very few kids in recovery. They’re just pure. So I thought that was pretty fun.
G: How important are the lyrics? Some of the songs seem inscrutable to me; I’m not sure what you’re singing about, and I’m wondering if that’s intentional.
CP: I always have some kind of context, I think, even if only I know what it is. I guess that’s a struggle for anybody, whether it's lyrics or writing or painting. You want things to make sense; you just don’t want them to make too much sense.
G: The combination of the different ways you arrange instruments and the lyrics is what makes the album attractive. You were trying to do something different or trying to stretch from what you’ve done in the past. Would you agree with that?
CP: Sure, the songs have their own needs, and if you cast each one of them as a movie, you can’t help but think it’d be great to have Wilford Brimley walking in right about now. You also try to mix it up in a way that keeps you interested in what you're doing. So if I sort of tap into something that I haven’t done before, then I get more excited about it.
G: You recently wrote a bunch of songs with Alejandro Escovedo.
CP: We wrote an entire album together over the last year or so. We recorded over the holidays in Lexington, Kentucky, with Tony Visconti producing. It’s Al’s record, but I think he had me around as an insurance policy to make sure that everybody got the chords right.
G: Did he invite you to write with him?
CP: We’ve known each other for years, and we played a gig together. He said, "I’m going to make a new record, and I thought that maybe you and I could get together and write some songs." So I went out to Wimberley, Texas, for three or four days, and after three days, we hadn’t written one note. Then Al decided he wanted to go into town, and he stopped in this little antique store, and he was buying baskets and scarves. I was starting to get a little nervous. After we got in his pickup truck and started it up, he looked at me and said, "Hey brother, don’t worry about it; it’s all part of it." He’s got a lot of faith. I think that’s one of his biggest gifts. He’s got this enormous faith that we will pull something out of the air. And he was right; we always do. If we don’t, we just lie on the carpet and listen to Mott the Hoople records. That generally gets us through it. It’s going to be a great record, because the songs are pretty concrete. We name a lot of names.
G: It’s the story of his life, right?
CP: Well, we immediately found out we had things in common. We both grew up in Orange County. We both surfed the Huntington Pier. We both saw our first shows at the Golden Bear in Huntington Beach. It’s sort of an exploration of song through geography, love, life, death, loss, and whatever.
G: Are you going to be playing with him at the Continental Club on Friday?
CP: We haven’t spoken about it, but I’m hoping to. I have the feeling that’s the idea. I’m hoping that he’s up for as many of his new songs as possible.
by Jim Caligiuri on January 22, 2008 • 2 COMMENTS • Filed under Interviews (Soap And Water)
PureMusic
After interviewing Chuck yesterday and then last night and this morning capturing and compressing a whole show's worth of video, I'm satisfied that he's one of the few great original characters and knucklehead geniuses playing rock and roll today.
A quick trip to iTunes and the 150 great songs that are there to audition and dutifully buy relieves you of any excuse you have that resembles or begins, "Oh yeah, I've heard of him, but..." Because if you're sick of all the crap that's just a bunch of morons imitating each other imitating somebody great, listen to somebody great instead.
He's really funny, too, both onstage and in conversation. Between questions, sometimes the pause would be so long that I wondered if he'd hung up on me or was doing something unmentionable with the receiver. But when he'd finally return, it was almost always something good, sometimes something funny. I laughed a lot, loudly.
The interview is online here:
by Frank Goodman on December 15, 2007 • 2 COMMENTS • Filed under Interviews
Lexington Herald
Prophet's wisdom: On songwriting, recording and happiness
Soundbites from the performer, on the road, doing what he loves
As he makes his way across Germany -- specifically, from Berlin to Hanover -- Chuck Prophet is offering cell phone snippets of life on the road abroad.
His conversation isn't intended to seem like a scrapbook. It's just that the miracle of telecommunication technology isn't on anyone's side this day, regardless of which side of the Atlantic they happen to sit. One moment, Prophet is jubilantly deconstructing the songs -- or, more specifically, the inspirations behind them -- that make up his fine new album, Soap and Water. The next, the phone line goes dead, to be replaced by a severe recitation in German.
"It's a brave new world, my friend," Prophet says when conversation resumes.
The acclaimed San Francisco producer, writer, guitarist and concert artist began forging a devout indie following more than two decades ago in the Los Angeles garage-psychedelic-Americana band Green on Red. But through a solo recording career that began in 1990, Prophet developed an even more expansive pop sound that was as literate as it was lyrical.
In short, he sang a little like Tom Petty, wrote a lot like Tom Waits and rocked with an onstage abandon all his own, as evidenced generously by a string of Lexington concerts after the release in 2000 of his album The Hurting Business.
"It's my job, as a songwriter, to have my antenna up so I can look around for the right details," Prophet said. "And to be perfectly honest, I'm not always in the right head-space to wrestle every idea that floats by to the ground. I don't have that kind of energy."
Prophet compared the process of crafting an album from the ideas he does wrestle with to "honking your horn in a tunnel until you get bored."
"It's like you're spending your life chasing after this thrill," he said. "There's a buzz that comes from writing a song you get really excited about. But the buzz never lasts long. You're always left wondering where the next song will come from."
Kelly Willis, the veteran country-Americana artist whose newest album, Translated From Love, was produced by Prophet, says, "Chuck has always been involved when it comes to music. I have always really, really loved and connected with his instincts for songs. He is one of these people that live and breathes music and just instinctively knows what to do with a song."
Rather than elaborate further on the general discourse of songwriting, Prophet said he'd talk about specific songs he has penned, to offer more exact examples of how his pop smarts take on a tune.
What a great idea. Then the phone goes dead again and a recorded German scolding returns. A third call is placed, and renewed conversation accelerates. After all, another foreign tongue-lashing could break in at any moment.
The first tune Prophet detailed was Doubter Out of Jesus, a Soap and Water song that is a study of conversion more social than religious. It struts to an electric drum groove and swells with, of all things, the support singing of a Nashville children's choir.
"We were near the end of a recording session," he said. "Everybody had packed up the drums and basses and everything. A bunch of us were in the control room talking about what the album was missing. So I went through my notebook and pulled this song out. We just jammed on a riff using a drum machine. The whole thing was a freak accident. But when we brought in the children later on, everything went to another level."
Prophet also was asked to discuss Soap and Water's finale, Happy Ending.
"I was just fingerpicking around on the guitar on that one," he said. "I started thinking of it as the closing credits for a movie. I thought, 'This is great. I have the last song for the album. Now all I need is the first one."
As varied and curious as the creative process can be in crafting a song, designing a new life for his music every night onstage can be equally exciting. For Prophet, though, the rewards are numerous. Life on the road offers a chance to hook up with a combustible performance persona that his records seldom reveal in full. But there is a personal bonus as well. Prophet's longtime keyboardist, Stephanie Finch, is also his wife.
"Performance is kind of my addiction, I suppose. But in terms of addictions, it's the healthiest one I've ever had. I'm lucky to travel and hammer things out onstage with Stephanie. There's always something going on out on the bandstand.
"You know, people are always talking about the (music) industry being in the doldrums, that nobody is buying records anymore. For me, I feel like I'm just getting the hang of this. In that respect, I've never been happier."
by Walter Tunis on October 28, 2007 • 2 COMMENTS • Filed under Interviews
The Walsh Files
Chuck Prophet: "Nearer To You," Betty Harris. "From the aptly titled collection Soul Perfection. Or was it, Soul Imperfection? Greasy and Funky? You bet. Dramatic, too. Betty Harris sang with unbridled desire -- she ate the mic and chewed right through the tape with her white hot yearning. She sang like she had a capo around her throat, milking just a few words, wringing 'em out--as if she doesn't need words at all. Betty feeds you and leaves you hungry for more. And with the Meters backing her up, (particularly Leo Nocentelli playing the bent guitar fills around her pleas for love), those singles she cut in the 60's with Bert Berns and later with Alan Toussaint were pure unrequited, untamed, longing at it's best. It doesn't get any more heart-wrenching than "Nearer to You." Like a mystery I could never solve--I'll just have to keep listening.
by Jim Walsh on January 31, 2007 • 2 COMMENTS • Filed under Interviews
Harp
Green on Red
Valley Fever: Green on Red Live at The Rialto
(Brink Films)
Just over a year ago, Green on Red, the seminal 1980s Paisley Underground/alt-country/roots rock/whatever band, reconvened at Tucson’s Rialto Theater to celebrate Hotel Congress’ 20th anniversary as well as pay tribute to their fallen drummer, Alex Macnicol. The 16-song set was initially burdened by the band’s don’t-wanna-talk-about-it baggage, but shortly got to cookin’-and soon singer-songwriter-guitarist Dan Stuart’s jokes got better and the four remaining members smiled, sweated and played like it was 1985 all over again. Guitarist Chuck Prophet discussed the event with Harp.
HARP: Shall we speak of Green on Red’s "sloppy brilliance?"
Some people thought we were the saviors of rock ’n’ roll, and a lot of other people thought we were pathetic. I think they were both right.
There is kind of a Wild Bunch element to Green on Red. But there’s safety in numbers. We’re all tight enough to just embrace the sloppiness when it happens, you know. Before we played the show, we went to London and rescheduled a show that was meant to be the last show of our tour, before we basically imploded. We had a huddle backstage and Dan said, "Okay, we’re old. We know what to do."
HARP: Takes a big man to admit that.
Seriously, there were times when it meandered into brilliance and when it was pathetic.
HARP: Where were you brilliant and where were you pathetic?
Anybody that learned five cowboy chords at Catholic youth camp could probably play any of [Green on Red’s] songs. At the same time, there was something about the collective thing that happened when we all played together. But, you know, to be honest, there's really not a lot of things I want to revisit from 18 years ago. We had to do the reunion because we all know things about each other that we don’t want anyone to know.
HARP: You’ve been through a lot with these guys.
In the four years that we were really active toward the end, it was like we were running on the same nine-volt battery; things got pretty dim. We were all pretty dispirited and it got pretty unfriendly. But it didn’t take long to stand back and squint and remember the good stuff.
HARP: So will you play the Hotel Congress festival every year?
I think somebody started that rumor, in the "If you book it they will come" spirit, but we don’t wanna revisit that. Even though it had been a short time that we’d all been communicating, it didn’t take long before we started bristling at each other’s emails, I’ll tell you that.
HARP: So-how hard did you have to squint to see the good stuff?
Gee, Dr. Phil, I don’t know. Whatever it is, I guess we’re still workin’ through it. One thing I was thinking about today was how things have changed in the music business. One thing was, when we were touring around, our version of really making it was to have a gas card. And we had a gas card; we could fill up the van. In that way, we made it.
We get along creatively as humans, I think. There’s a certain brotherhood to Green on Red, but I think for the uninitiated, if they were to see us all together, somebody didn’t know us might think, "Gee, those guys don’t seem to like each other very much."
by Randy Harward on October 31, 2006 • 2 COMMENTS • Filed under Interviews (Valley Fever - Live at The Rialto)
UNCUT MAGAZINE
ABOUT "DYIN' ALL YOUNG"
CHUCK SPEAKS TO UNCUT MAGAZINE
I'm no spokesman for the hip hop tradition, but it seems to me it's all about lucky collisions and the search for that magic 'chocolate in the peanut butter' combination. Sometimes chance encounter is your friend. I started working with DJ's when they needed a guitar slinger. Some days all they asked me for was two bars of a swampy Tony Joe White-inspired riff. Out of these jams strange gifts came along.
In one form or another, sampling has been around forever. There's a blues tradition that's been doing it for hundreds of years. I've always believed it's not what you throw in the pot but what floats to the top after you bring it to a boil. In the past I might have thrown out the bone that sank to the bottom. That bone was the sample, and it stayed in.
There's something in OC's (the singer sampled) voice that tells me he's been there, seen it, and brought back the news about a generation on the front lines of a lot of needless bloodshed. There are very few bad seeds. People aren't born monsters, they get turned into them. Lot of kids never get one chance. Hell, I had too many to mention.
You learn something everyday if you're half awake. I never knew I would get such an education in sampling and litigation and all that other fun stuff, but that's another story.
February 28, 2005 • 2 COMMENTS • Filed under Interviews
Chicago Sun Times
Chuck Prophet, "Age of Miracles" (New West): Prophet's records always seem to find a way into my best-of lists. No one layers country, rock and 1960s soul idioms better than this former Green on Red guitarist. "Age of Mircales" includes the eerie/erotic "You Did (Bomp Shooby Dooby Bomp)," and "You Got Me Where You Want Me," a duet with wife Stephanie Finch, recalls the innocent charms of Sonny and Cher.
by Dave Hoeckstra on December 25, 2004 • 2 COMMENTS • Filed under Interviews
Seattle Weekly
Chuck Amok
Probably best known--"if at all," as he jokes--as the white-hot guitar slinger for '80s Paisley Underground turned alt-country avatars Green on Red, Chuck Prophet finally seems to be carving his own niche in the rock world after 20 years of scuffling. With a résumé that boasts collaborations with everyone from Cake to Kelly Willis and a string of exceptional albums under his belt, Prophet's name is begging to be uttered in the same breath as a cult of similarly styled, soulful storytellers: Dan Penn, Ry Cooder, and his spiritual mentor, Jim Dickinson.
Beginning his solo career at the dawn of the '90s with the country quaint Brother Aldo--a modest collection of late-night demos made for just a few hundred dollars--Prophet spent the next decade recording a succession of accomplished platters that won him acclaim throughout Europe but earned little attention in America. His stateside profile finally received a much-deserved boost with the release of 2000's The Hurting Business--a stirring mélange of new technology and old soul that earned raves across both continents. This year's equally ambitious follow-up, No Other Love, has pushed his burgeoning popularity even further, spawning a single, "Summertime Thing," that landed in the upper reaches of the AAA charts.
On the eve of his two-night Seattle stand, we caught up with the always engaging Prophet on the road in Minnesota, in the midst of a tour with the Mission Express--his crack backing band featuring wife Stephanie Finch (see main story) and longtime Bob Dylan drummer Winston Watson. A gifted raconteur and doyen of deadpan, Prophet weighs in on a variety of topics, from his long overdue success, to working with Warren Zevon, to his envy of Keith Richards' appendage.
Seattle Weekly: So the last time we spoke back in June you were getting your first bit of real exposure with "Summertime Thing"--which ended up becoming something of a hit.
Chuck Prophet: Yeah, it's been a weird summer, man. David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar made peace, Chuck Prophet had a song on the radio after 20 years in the business, . . . and we're going to war. You know, it always comes in threes.
Have you seen any change in the audiences at shows because of the airplay?
Yeah, I'd have to say it's had a profound effect on things. There seems to be an increase in the ratio of shapely young ladies to men with beards down in front. Of course, nobody's complaining about that--not even my wife.
I mean, it's just exciting for me to have my skinny foot in the door of pop culture. It's such a little sliver, but to go into, say, a supermarket like Whole Foods--or as we in the band like to call it, Whole Paycheck--and hear my voice coming out of the speaker above the salad bar, it's a total thrill.
You've also got your first big national TV appearance coming up (Oct. 8, on CBS' Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn).
Yeah, we just confirmed that. That's sent everybody in the camp here into a whirlwind of activity. Everybody's arguing about what they're going to wear. So it's chaos. We're actually gonna play the second single: the song with the uncompromisingly long title of "I Bow Down and Pray to Every Woman I See." Hallelujah!
Speaking of women, in addition to your wife, you've had great working relationships with a number of female artists--Kelly Willis, Kim Richey, and Lucinda Williams, who you recently opened a tour for.
Yeah, it would be impossible for us to even invent a better tour to be part of. Lucinda's got such a great audience, a really astute audience. And also, there's some kind of mysterious, magnetic, charismatic thing to Lucinda. It was just a joy to watch her every night. It was like going to church. Or going to school. Or both.
It's a weird coincidence but I was planning to ask you about working with Warren Zevon (Prophet played guitar on Zevon's 2000 album Life'll Kill Ya) and then news just came out that he has a terminal case of lung cancer.
I heard about it yesterday. (Long pause). I . . . I don't . . . words kinda fail me on that.
Working with him, though, he was intimidating in so many ways, but also astonishingly intelligent. It was just incredible to be around him. [laughs] He must've drank about a case of Mountain Dew a day--and you didn't want to be around when he ran out.
He really is one of the sharpest, funniest, wittiest people I've ever been around, and he truly intimidated the dog shit out of me. I tried to just kinda of blend into the wall when we were in the studio. But as acerbic as he is and as surly as he can be, he's also one of the sweetest guys, too. I don't know . . . it's tragic.
He's also a guy who didn't lose his edge when he had a taste of success. Obviously, yours is on a much more modest level, but has the relative success you've enjoyed with the last two albums changed the way you approach things at all?
It's taught me to follow my instincts. Because the way I've been making the last couple of records . . . I didn't go in with any expectations. More and more, I've found people who let me make my records--for better or for worse--and there's been very little meddling by anybody in the process. And I think that meddling has really fucked me up in the past.
But there must be some pressure on you as you look to write the next record?
It's funny, Dan Penn said that after he got his first song cut, he was never ever really happy from that moment on. He said, "I might be out swimming or waterskiing or on a boat somewhere, but I'm never really quite happy unless I'm in the process of wrestling a slick idea to the ground." And that's kinda what songwriting is all about. For me, as much as this [new] record has made a little bit of noise, you'd think it should give me some confidence. But the reality is, I'm such a superstitious, neurotic, irrational motherfucker that now I've got this constant low-level anxiety of "Where's the next one coming from?" [laughs]
And I hear people like Keith Richards do interviews and say [copping an English accent], "It's like you put up your antenna and the songs just come to you, man." And, I'm like "Damn, I gotta get one of those antennas."
by Bob Mehr on December 31, 2003 • 2 COMMENTS • Filed under Interviews
San Francisco Reader
Light Finally Shines on Chuck Prophet
There's been lots of water under the bridge since Chuck Prophet's band Green On Red tried to take the airwaves by storm in the 1980s. They wrote the right songs, had the right look, and performed a kick-ass live show. Big record labels rolled out the red carpet and extended Big Time contracts. But things just never panned out. Chuck quit the band, cleaned up his act, and throughout the '90s released critically-acclaimed, slim-selling CDs. But suddenly, Chuck Prophet's on the radio. "Summertime Thing" is a hit, and finally, finally, America's getting a taste of the genius of Chuck Prophet.
Jeff Troiano: What's happening, Chuck?
Chuck Prophet: Not much shaking here. I finally resurfaced after about six months of submarine duty.
How long have you been home?
I guess for about a week. I went to Nashville and did some work after the tour ended.
How do you like that Nashville scene these days?
Well, I dig it, you know, because for me as a writer, well, for a number of reasons. I don't really party anymore, so that's what's left of my social life-writing with other people. And Nashville is the last vestige of any sort of Brill Building spirit.
What kind of building?
The Brill Building was a place in New York where Carole King and Doc Palmis and Gerry Goffen wrote songs. If you got lucky, somebody might record one.
You've had some luck in that regard lately. Who's been cutting your tunes?
Well, I've had a bunch of obscure records over the years, but last year I did have a top-40 single by a girl named Cyndi Thomson. It caught on. Cyndi's a nice Christian girl, farm-fed, centerfold material. My friend Kim Richey and I wrote a song called "I'm Gone," actually upstairs from the Red Vic on Haight Street. It's kind of a '60s Tommy James kind of song. We made this real ghetto demo of it in this crappy studio with a cement floor, and we played it and cut it and put a few things on it, and we decided it needed bongos, and a year later it comes out on the Cyndi Thomson record-with bongos.
So they stayed true to the Haight Street feel?
Getting a song cut, even if the version strays off from what you had envisioned, is amazing. There's no such thing as a bad cover version of a song. It's a good day.
How do you get compensated when someone else makes a hit out of your song? Is that big money?
Well, yeah, there's sort of a bittersweet ending to that story that I'm not going to bore you with, as far as making bad business decisions. On a record like that, you should make some change. You get compensated for every time it's sold; you get your pennies for every time it's played on the radio. It's all gravy.
The reviews have been very positive for your new CD, "No Other Love." How's it selling?
This record was pretty rare. There was probably less blood on the floor after we finished this one than any of the others. We caught a little bit of a wave with the single on the radio. And for so many years we had just ignored North America, hoping it would just go away. Not that we were selling out stadiums or ballrooms across Europe, but Europe has always been good to us. Our single has allowed us to infiltrate pop culture, just a skinny little foot in the door. I heard it coming out of a little speaker in a salad bar in Philadelphia, which was rather cool. That helped a lot. And Lucinda Williams took us out on tour all summer; that really helped with record sales.
How did that happen with Lucinda?
My A&R guy, Peter Jasperson, is an old friend of hers. He played the record for her, she liked what she heard, looked up and said, "Do you think he'd come out on tour with me?" That was it.
How many shows did you do with her?
It might have been 20-some odd dates with her. She only plays three or four times a week, so we were out there for a couple of months in the Midwest and the East Coast.
What did you do with all of that downtime on the road?
We did everything we could do to keep up with her two buses. I tell ya', man, I mean sometimes there might be 800 miles between gigs, and I have an '88 Dodge Ram, so we spent a lot of time sucking her diesel, as they say. But the highlight of the whole thing for me was when we had this show at an amphitheater, and the weather was beautiful, and these beach balls were bouncing everywhere. Lucinda just kept looking at these things while she singing like a puppy, and she said, "Heck, I don't know. It's a summertime thing." But there were many nights when we'd play the gigs and we'd gather around the catering, and we'd have an official band meeting, and we'd say, "Okay, tonight, after we finish our set let's load up the van, get the union guys to help, and get the fuck out of here, and try to get in four hours tonight. So we'd make the grandiose plans and then, inevitably, when the time arrived, I'd look around for everybody and they'd be glued to the side of the stage watching Lucinda's first encore. Night after night, watching Lucinda is like going to church or going to school or both.
You tasted success in the past, during the Green On Red days. Did you ever have the big tour bus?
There were times. I mean, somebody else was paying for it. Yeah, we tasted success, but we were always well under the radar. We had a couple of major deals with labels, but we were always kind of stowaways for those labels. Eventually they'd have a board meeting and say, "Who the fuck are these guys?"
The new stuff seems to have lots of interesting influences. I hear a bit of hip-hop, some Middle Eastern, some sampling, and of course the roots-based stuff. How'd that happen?
As a songwriter, I'm a slave to traditional song craft, whatever I do. I mean, my heroes are still going to be Dylan and Carole King and Hank Williams. But for me, the process of making new records is a matter of constantly seeking new ways to cast the movie. I'm turned on by people like Moby and DJ Shadow, and I appreciate what those guys have been able to do by bending traditional song structures. As much as I admire that stuff, I'm still a "first verse, first chorus" kind of guy. I see some people out there taking some sort of modern approach and trying to shoehorn it into their songs, but that doesn't really work. You've got to listen to the song's needs and go with that.
How do you categorize your sound these days?
What I do is "American" music. You might call it "Americana." I just do what I do, throw in what interests me, what I gravitate toward, throw it into a pot, bring it to a boil, and I see what floats to the top. The European tradition of music is that you play music as it's written on the page; I'm not part of that tradition.
Which radio stations are playing "Summertime Thing"? What do you call that format?
There's a format called AAA-WXRT in Chicago; KFOG here in San Francisco; there are a lot of them, kind of like KFOG. KFOG has had an incredibly profound affect on the things here at Chuck Prophet, Inc. I mean, I've got my '88 Dodge Ram van with 250,000 miles on it; I've got a five-piece band; I've got a drummer with a teenage daughter, and radio has really helped. I'd heard about good things like this happening, and I'd read about it. It's just wonderful.
I heard something about a national TV appearance...
We did the Craig Kilborn Show. It was pretty exciting, pretty nerve-wracking. We had a rehearsal to set the camera moves and stuff, and you play it once through for the audience and that's it. It was cool. Craig is not at his best when you're playing, but I kept pointing over there and yelling at him, "Yo, Craigy, 'I bow down and pray to every woman I see. Can you feel me?'" So that was sort of my inside joke. But he was pretty cool. He tracked me down into my dressing room and said, "I'm hearing a little Iggy Pop in there." And I said, "Yeah." And he said, "I'm hearing a little bit of Dylan, a little Beck," and I said, "Yeah, yeah, yeah."
Who are you listening to these days?
"Leonard Cohen's Greatest Hits;" David Holmes' Organization; I like the new Cornershop record. I like a little bit of the new Dixie Chicks' record. I listen to a lot of old music and as much new stuff as I can. When it comes to songwriters, it's still Warren Zevon, John Prine, and Randy Newman for me.
What's it like doing what you do from here in San Francisco? Is it awkward sometimes? I mean, do you ever want to be in L.A. or living in Nashville?
No, I love it here. There's just something in the air here. It sounds kind of corny, but there's just a certain spirit and a certain quality to the light that I love. I moved here to go to college, and it has just always seemed like a place where people were waving their freak flags high. I've always been able to find a place to play and to work with some great musicians. And it's not an industry town; it's a town for freaks.
Who would you recommend that we listen to locally these days?
There's a guy in the Mission from Detroit, Kelly Stoltz. We played a gig with him, and he gave me a vinyl record that he'd recorded on his 8-track. It's probably one of the most beautiful things I've heard-that I can ever remember hearing. I'm all for Kelly Stoltz.
I'm going to throw a few names at you. In 10 words or less, tell me what you think. Here's the first one: Eminem.
Stone cold genius.
Joe Henry.
Madonna's brother-in-law.
Ryan Adams.
He's just an exceptionally talented puke.
Britney Spears.
No redemption there.
Bruce Robison.
Oh, writer of perhaps the best song to come out in 2002-"Traveling Soldier"-as covered by the Dixie Chicks. If it doesn't bring tears to your eyes, then just check yourself for a pulse.
Gram Parsons.
Beyond country rock; beyond rehab.
And last but not least, Mr. Bob Seger.
Vastly underrated.
Kelly Willis made the following quote about you: "If I could sing like anyone, I'd sing like Chuck Prophet." What do you think of that?
She was confused but I'm not gonna call her on it.
Do you care what anyone else thinks about your music?
I can't afford to care too much. I had a conversation with a friend the other who said, "Well, I guess everybody's happy now, now that the record's doing well." What do I fucking care? I'd never get anything done. And that's the kiss of death to start to care too much. Don't get me wrong-I want the love. But I don't wanna have to work to hard for it.
by Jeff Troiano on December 31, 2002 • 2 COMMENTS • Filed under Interviews
