 Chuck Prophet
His emails are all aptly signed with the Mark Twain quote, “As soon as you realize it’s all insane, it all makes sense”. In an industry filled with heroin-shaped prima donnas and blood-leeching businessmen, Chuck Prophet is a thorn tree. He’s a thorn tree in the gardens of a game that he’s played and that’s played him, ultimately refusing to give up on what makes him breathe: rock and roll.
Chuck Prophet’s career in music began much like the careers of others. He was a kid with a guitar. Here’s the difference: By the time he was fifteen years old he could do more with it than most would be able to do in a lifetime. Legendary producer and musician Jim Dickinson (The Rolling Stones, The Replacements, Big Star, Bob Dylan) was once asked how this kid could pull off the stuff he did. Dickinson simply replied, “What do you expect from somebody who got his cherry popped at the funny farm when he was fourteen?”
His first endeavor away from his sleepy hometown of Whittier, California was straight to the absurdity that is San Francisco. He almost immediately joined the seminal cosmic country rock band Green On Red and spent 8 years and as many albums playing and touring with them. Once called by the New York Times “By far one of the best bands in the United States for almost an entire decade,” he spent his youth touring Europe and the US; watching himself grow up on the road. Trial by fire? Horse shit. He could play and sing and write like a musical time bomb and he kept himself alive long enough to find crack cocaine, the drug that finally brought him to his knees ten years ago. He’s been clean ever since. They say ‘cleanliness is next to godliness’ but one can’t be so sure when measuring Chuck’s manic activities. He was saved from addiction but he’s far from being saved from himself.
You want stories? They’re everywhere. Chuck, over ten years ago, once jumped from one San Francisco rooftop onto another and fell three stories through a skylight onto the cement floor of a mechanic’s garage; all in an attempt to impress a girl and get into his apartment (that he had locked himself out of). He was high. The stories are endless. His long-suffering wife and musical partner Stephanie Finch can assure any disbeliever of that. You get clean and you cut it out, right? Nah. Chuck simply tells me, “I don’t want to embarrass my parents anymore than I already have.” The recording of Chuck’s latest record has incurred him a smashed car windshield and, at last count, 27 parking tickets, to which he simply states, "I know I'm in the throes of a new record when I can't remember where I parked my car."
He can’t get it right. Chuck, in his Green On Red days was often called, in quotation marks, Billy The Kid. He signed to New West records in 2002. Then, two albums into a five album deal, he found himself dropped in August 2006. How does Chuck feel about it. Who knows? He’s no Ryan Adams. Mike Lembo, Chuck’s manager from 1995 through 2000 stole all of Chuck’s publishing rights from underneath him. To add nothing but insult to injury Lembo threw away all of Chuck’s master recordings. Chuck eventually got his publishing rights back. How does he feel about the whole thing? Broken glass and cement floors hurt much worse. So what did hurt? Mike made Chuck lie about his age, forever keeping him several years behind. In talking to Chuck you can tell it’s not the “making” him do it that bothered him so much, it’s that he went along with it. Chuck Prophet is 43 years old. There, now you know. But anyone who's been around him can assure you, he's still a fucking kid.
Chuck’s encyclopedic knowledge of rock and roll and The American Songbook at large is weighty and impressive. He’s not a student, though. He tells me he, “doesn’t understand why people are so down on Dylan’s eighties records” with heart. He’s not drawn to the stories and music because of any intellectual need to know; he’s drawn to it like a moth to flame, like a razor to the vein. He can’t live without it and has never quite figured out how to live within it. He does, though. He wrestles the demons that have pursued him since he was a kid and he brilliantly strangles his guitar in protest, sings his own repentances, and writes like a man who, like William Faulkner suggested, should “only seek to outdo (himself)”.
His fans within the music community are vast. Lucinda Williams, after hearing his 2002 release “No Other Love” immediately looked at Peter Jespersen and asked, “Can I take him on tour with me?” He joined Lucinda’s tour for the final two months, struggling to keep up with her bus in his 1988 Dodge Ram with over 250k miles, playing sold-out houses and even Central Park. On one fateful night he was served papers. He was served papers, onstage. Prophet’s take on the matter, “Tommy Stinson may or may not be the living embodiment of rock and roll as Jim Dickinson claimed, but at that moment I was up there.” He means so well, but he can’t help but embarrass his folks a bit.
He’s written songs with Dan Penn and innumerable others, has been recently writing with Alejandro Escovedo, produced the most recent Kelly Willis record (who once said “If I could sing like anybody I’d like to sing like Chuck Prophet” – in response Chuck almost blushingly says “I’ll have to straighten her out on that one”), and has had his songs recorded by the likes of Solomon Burke, Kim Richey, Jim Dickinson, and even Heart. He’s played on the recordings of Warren Zevon, Jonathan Richman, Cake, Bob Neuwirth, Penelope Houston, Kelly Willis, and many others. In writing on what he was currently listening to in 2004, Stephen King (that’s right, Stephen King), wrote of Chuck’s tune “Rise”: "What does this song mean? I have no idea. But it's lovely, incantatory and mysterious. God bless Chuck Prophet." Yes sir, God bless him indeed.
With seven previous solo records in twice as many years, his last being the brilliant “Age Of Miracles” in 2004, Chuck’s new album, “Soap and Water”, is objectively his best. Of course, you’re not supposed to “objectively” make claims such as this, but it is. Why? Because, like Seth Morgan writes, Chuck’s been jailin’. He’s learned to sleep when others couldn’t and in the process has written what others can’t. “When I return from those European tours, I resist adjusting my body clock as long as possible. I get a cheap thrill watching the sun come up on my kitchen table while I’m working on songs... Hey, it works for the monks!”
In “Would You Love Me?”, he sings: “Sittin’ in a movie and I’m staring at a screen, they’re dragging Jesus from the town, it don’t look good to me, Well if I had a bucket, or better yet a spoon, I go down to that river baby, I’d bring that river home to you.” In “Happy Ending”, he cries, “I memorized my favorite scenes, all the lines come right to me, and now the tears are really mine, the moon is just another lie, Winners lose, heroes fall, it don’t make no sense at all.” On the title track, atop the shrill of the farfisa organs and single coil guitars -- a kind of Jackson meets Fight Club -- the sweet and sour, hi-heel sneakers, pink boxing gloves showdown of a duet. Couple tension has never sounded like so much fun. John Travolta and Olivia on crack? Nah! just too many years touring in vans. Chuck has said that in many ways this album pays homage to Alex Chilton. Once at a concert before performing a Chilton song, Chuck said, “When I first heard Alex Chilton I wanted to BE Alex Chilton. No, fuck that, I wanted to make it with him.” Alex has found and lost himself repeatedly over the years, but he’s never stopped being Alex Chilton. Neither has Chuck, and in his own words Chuck says of “Soap and Water”, “People start making records to flatter themselves. I’ve got nothing to lose. I’m just now getting good.” He’s right and at the same time so terribly wrong. He’s always been good, but he’s never been this brilliant. This is a record of redemption and soul; it’s got the heart of a lion and the scars of the saints. It’s filed with uneasy salvation and ultimately the thorny blood of Chuck Prophet.
-- John Murry Soap and Water
Much like his work with seminal L.A. band Green on Red, Chuck Prophet's first new album in three years, Soap and Water, defies categorization. Soap and Water moves deftly from Americana and rock to R&B, molding styles at will. A true renaissance rocker, Prophet is a writer, producer and musician who helped define Los Angeles' Paisley Underground scene and open the door for alt.country's rise to prominence in the 1990s. Prophet's dark undercurrents and mythic persona have coupled with his seat-of-the-pants creative philosophy to make him one of the most sought-after songwriters in music today. He's laid down sessions with Warren Zevon, had his songs recorded by Solomon Burke and produced/written for Kelly Willis, yet Prophet is at his most potently distilled when writing and recording for his solo projects. "When I get some kind of inspirational virus, I follow it through to its conclusion." In the case of Chuck Prophet, it's the Soap and Water that's contagious.  Junior Boogie
About Junior Boogie
Junior Boogie shared the stage last week with blues legend Johnny Winter at the Catalyst in Santa Cruz. Junior grew up here in Sonoma and got his feet wet on the harp with the Rock Bottom Blues Band before they turned into the Whiskey Thieves. Junior is also working on a new CD to be released in the spring. Filed under: Sonoma Valley Music Scene by james src="http://www.ourstage.com/banner/static/image/1013.png" /> Hometown favorite Junior Boogie has been making all kinds of waves in the music scene down in Santa Cruz lately. In addition to holding down the fort as the house band at Moe's Alley, he also has been in the studio with the likes of Dennis Dove, Henry Geller, Sean Kennedy, Gary Goldworthy and Keith Graves.
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