Just about everything

I’m lying around my hotel room. And I’ve got the cable TV going. Cameras are following Sting and Trudie as they parade about their 400-year-old Italian villa. For Sting and Trudie, the villa is a “summer house.” For you and me, it’s available too! As a thousand-dollar an hour Airbnb apparently. You know, for weddings and birthdays and Oscar parties and that kind of thing. They’ve even got their own honeybees on the property. There’s a vineyard too. And they make their own wine. The wines are named after Sting songs: “Roxanne,” “Message in a Bottle.” Sting says, “Sexy name, sexy wine.”

They ask Sting what he loves about the place, and he says, “Just about everything.”

I decide I’ve seen about enough - turn that off and fire up some music. I turn off the lights and put on headphones and dial up Radioooooo: http://radiooooo.com, an app I got turned on to by Tommy Dunbar. It turns your phone screen into a globe. Click anywhere on the map and hear music from that region or country. Like a musical treasure map. Click on Sweden for example, and pick a decade in the twentieth century, and a mood (fast, slow, weird). Boom! Here comes the weird 60s Swedish jams. Sixties Thailand is another favorite. 50s Italian pop. German disco from the 70s. Algerian Afro Cuban highlife jams from the 80s have the coolest guitarists (Cheba Fadela? Unreal!!!). Roland must have sold every one of those guitarists a JC-120 amp.

Radioooooo is magic. I don’t know who curates this stuff, but I’m spellbound. I may not be chilling in a private jet stocked with Dom Pérignon 30,000 feet above my next gig, but I’m out here by the interstate in my lonely room and I’m f*cking time-traveling. I don’t know what could make it better. Maybe a glass of “Roxanne?” No chance! My sexy wine days are behind me! But, no newsletter would be complete without a call back.

Meanwhile, I’m on to another joint. Even breaking in some songs from “The Land That Time Forgot.” (You heard it here first.) Without a band behind me. No net. Just a man and his guitar, and hopefully a sound guy or gal. Throw in a bartender and doorman and you in the audience, and the guy trying not to look at his cell phone so obviously, and me trying to remember where I left my wallet, and the owner of the club with a second mortgage on it, and we’re in business. Monkey business. Hope to see you out there.

PS: In case it got past you, I filmed a travel show for Southwest Air and Luck Reunion. A kind of Anthony Bourdain styled show where you can ride shotgun with me and Aaron Lee Tasjan through the backstreets of San Francisco. The Luck Reunion team are brilliant. This ain’t some insidious internet trash. There are real production values. I think you’ll enjoy it. https://southwest.fm/sites-and-sounds/episode-3/

1/28/2020 COLUMBUS OH NATALIE’S GRANDVIEW* 1/29/2020 PITTSBURGH PA CLUB CAFE*

1/29/2020 PITTSBURGH PA CLUB CAFE*

1/30/2020 HARRISBURG PA NOTE WINE BAR*

1/31/2020 SELLERSVILLE PA SELLERSVILLE THEATER*

2/1/2020 VIENNA VA JAMMIN JAVA*

2/28/2020 DENVER CO SWALLOW HILL/DANIELS HALL*

2/29/2020 FORT COLLINS CO MAGIC RAT*

3/13/2020 AUSTIN TX CONTINENTAL CLUB**

3/14/2020 AUSTIN TX CONTINENTAL CLUB**

3/14/2020 AUSTIN TX CONTINENTAL CLUB**

CHUCK PROPHET SOLO*

CHUCK PROPHET SOLO - CO-BILL WITH JOSH ROUSE #

CHUCK PROPHET SOLO - SUPPORT TO JESSE MALIN ***

CHUCK PROPHET & THE MISSION EXPRESS **

6/4/2020 OSLO Norway NO LOADED FESTIVAL **