Chuck Prophet doesn’t need a map to get around in Austin. He’s so familiar with the city, it almost sounds as if he lives here. The San Franciscan has done his share of South By Southwests, and a reference to South Congress Avenue slides easily off his lips. But the bigger deal is his affiliation with Austin- and Los Angeles-based New West Records, which just released “Age of Miracles,” his second album under that label. New West propelled Prophet’s irresistible “Summertime Thing,” from his pinnacle album, 2002’s “No Other Love,” into an adult album alternative radio hit. (KGSR 107.1 is the local representative of that format). After seven years of playing guitar in the hard country-rock band Green on Red, and another 12 years trying to crack North America as a solo artist in the soul/pop-rock/funk/dirty blues/mild hip-hop/etc. vein, Prophet had no expectations of even getting airplay. Chuck Prophet, who stretches over many eras and genres, has a new album out and a gig Oct. 9 at the Continental Club. “We had a brief meeting about how to market it and promote it. I suggested we all stand in a circle and hold hands and pray,” he laughs. He was stunned when the New West gang told him they were serious. “Getting on the radio was the kind of advice my Dad gives,” Prophet says. Imitating his father, Prophet intones, ” ‘Son, what you need to do is get on the radio.’ It’s like, ‘Thanks, Dad. Maybe we can get together and have a panel at South By Southwest. Or better yet, you go and tell me what you learned.’ ” Ah, there’s that Prophet wit. He shares doses of it throughout the interview, as well as in his songs. His explanation of what happened after “Summertime Thing” took off goes, “Instead of seeing five guys with beards, we started playing to, like 25 girls in tube tops. And nobody was complaining. Not even Stephanie, my wife.” Stephanie Finch is the band member behind the Farfisa organ, from which she evokes the unmistakable sound that filled so many ‘60s hits. Prophet, a seriously wicked guitar player who loves his wah-wah pedal and other effects, often revisits that era for inspiration. Prophet lists Bob Dylan, Randy Newman and Leonard Cohen as his major influences; Brill Building scribes such as Carole King and Jerry Goffin clearly had an impact as well. On “Age of Miracles,” he’s got a song called “You Did (Bomp Shooby Dooby Bomp),” complete with “shoop-shoops” and triangle dings. For this album, Prophet had an even more direct link to that era; he co-wrote a song with the legendary songwriter and producer Dan Penn, author of the Box Tops’ “Cry Like a Baby,” and several Aretha Franklin hits, including “Sweet Inspiration,” “Do Right Woman” and “Dark End of the Street.” Years ago, Prophet’s acting manager sent him to Nashville to try songwriting (an “incredibly original idea,” he notes dryly). The first time he went, he had a gig at the famed Bluebird Café. “It turns out I was booked the night of the CMA (Country Music Association) awards, which is like the Super Bowl of country music,” Prophet explains. “I was just about ready to take the stage and perform for the doorman and the soundman when Dan Penn showed up. I guess he was the only guy who didn’t know it was the CMA awards.” They wound up writing the new album’s “Heavy Duty.” Kim Richey is another collaborator; she co-wrote “You’ve Got Me Where You Want Me” and “Pin a Rose on Me.” “I think it’s still a pretty special thing when two people can get together and do that. It doesn’t work with everybody,” Prophet says. “(But with) somebody like Kim Richey, it’s just like fallin’ off a log. She has a natural gift for just drawing a straight line.” When Prophet finds he needs a second opinion, he’s not shy about asking for help. “Sometimes,” he says, “I have to do what Dan Penn describes as bringing in a couple of people to perform a miracle. It increases your odds.” Prophet does all right by himself, too. “Summertime Thing’s” brilliance has as much to do with its vivid lyrical images as it does an incredible melody. For instance: Go ask your dad for the keys to the Honda Can your sister come along, how could she not wanna Put the Beach Boys on, wanna hear “Help Me Rhonda” Put the Beach Boys on, wanna hear “Help Me Rhonda” It’s a summertime thing ... Though she’s not credited as a co-writer on any songs, Finch has to be a major collaborator as well. They’ve been on the road together for so long, he can’t remember whether it’s been 10 years, or 13 or 14. “Sometimes, it’s less of a marriage and more like we’re Army buddies,” he says. “We get along better the more difficult it is, really. The road kind of brings that out in people.” As his New West/“Summertime Thing” experience proves, it might take a lot of miles, but eventually you can find the place where you belong.

This fun double bill shifted from alternative country that sprouted strong traditional roots to crafty rock and soul mischief. But it was the literary wit circulating in the songs of both artists that fueled the show’s finer moments. Fulks remained a country scholar well versed in beefing up vintage covers (I Want To Be Mama’d and Bill Anderson’s hardcore honky-tonk anthem Cocktails) while allowing self-effacing sarcasm to creep into the domestic cracks of his own tunes (Countrier Than Thou and Every Kind of Music But Country). Prophet, as usual, remained a rocker who addressed an uncommonly vast pop vocabulary running from the wicked cool of Homemade Blood to the noir-style setting of West Memphis Moon. But it was on 2000’s Diamond Jim that all these elements converged: a melodic groove full of soulful bounce, a vocal chorus with deep R&B creases and a guitar hook that was still ringing in your brain half an hour after the concert was over.

Chuck Prophet has been solo since 1990, after establishing his bona fides with California’s psychedelic country punks Green on Red. But it’s only on his last New West album, “No Other Love” (2002), and “Age of Miracles” (his seventh solo outing), that he has really fulfilled his great artistic potential. Commercial potential is another story: His music is, by design, difficult to classify. The whimsical choice of instruments ranges from guitar to glockenspiels, violins to Moog synths, and usually aim for a bluesy groove. But Prophet’s songs are seriously beautiful, charming and unpredictable. Killer track “You Did (Bomp Shooby Dooby Bomp)” reverses the eternal question “Who Put the Bomp?” by placing the unexpected answer first. From the tragic narrative of “West Memphis Moon” to buoyant love song “Just to See You Smile,” Prophet keeps the listener engaged and attentively off-balance. In “Smile,” he sets up a picnic for his perfect love and brings a pack of firecrackers. Some airplay might get Prophet the explosion he deserves.

While alt.country squandered its moment on vintage gabardine shirts, Chuck Prophet’s roots-rock has never needed dressing up, whatever sub-genres he has crossed along his fifteen-year solo career. Not to say Prophet’s music is bare—Age of Miracles, the SF singer and guitarist’s sixth album, has Beatlesy strings, bluesy snares, a top hat’s worth of synth tricks, and Prophet’s own seasoned leads and drawled vocals. It’s the sort of virtual orchestra Beck would use for postmodern bachelor-pad music, but Prophet writes the kind of fundamentalist pop songs underrated in the music industry since the mid-‘60s: ones that would look good no matter what they’re wearing.

If the Brill Building were still in business—and let’s say we have a stage-set view of what goes on inside—we might catch the Flaming Lips psyching out Miracles’ liltingly cynical title track (Gonna eat and drink our fill/Lose that baby fat for real/No secrets left to conceal). In the next window, maybe we’d spot Jack White belting the politics out of “West Memphis Moon” or Rufus Wainwright balladeering “The Smallest Man in the World” into exquisite melodrama. And look, there’s the maestro himself on the top floor, counting his money. But here in the real world, Prophet embodies all those elements himself (except the money-counter), still hungry and decking out his songs with his own lush, slightly scruffy sound. Lucky for us, at least.

Age Of Miracles

With his seventh record, “Age of Miracles,” Chuck Prophet, crooning like the bastard son of Leonard Cohen and Marianne Faithfull, serves up a potent brew of hip-hop, electric blues, soul, pop-rock and funk. With his knowledge, love and mastery of such disparate influences as Dylan, Brian Wilson, Johnny Cash and Isaac Hayes, the former Green on Red singer-guitarist fuses 11 otherwise wayward, fragmented tracks into a cohesive whole. The chugging “Automatic Blues” churns with a hypnotic cacophony of guitars and car horns, while the title track picks up where Cohen’s “Tower of Song” left off, insisting, almost delusionally in the face of the overwhelming darkness of the age nearly upon us, that “there’s more to see, all lost time will be retrieved, I know it’s true, it’s on TV, in the age of miracles.” Prophet proves he can deliver a pop hook on “Just to See You Smile,” which slips loose with gorgeous, muted guitars shimmering just below the surface. It’s “Pet Sounds” meets “Highway 61 Revisited,” with the latter seeping through and pooling in the next track. “West Memphis Moon” is, underneath its traditional country gleam, the tortured lament of a brutal child killer who is no more than a child himself, and as dark a song as Dylan or Cash ever wrote. With its electronic country-swamp folk flavor, “Age of Miracles” is a post-modern traveling revival show, setting up just down the road from Wilco’s “Yankee Foxtrot Hotel.”

Chuck Prophet is on a streak. With a consistency born out of a strong work ethic and an almost obscene amount of pure talent, he’s released three great albums in a row. So does his latest record Age of Miracles achieve the standards of Homemade Blood, The Hurting Business and No Other Love? Absolutely. Once again, Prophet and his musicians gracefully paint a rootsy building with modern colors, mixing soul, folk and good old rock & roll with contemporary electronic production methods. So many artists make this combination sound forced or gimmicky, but not Prophet; his style is never less than organic, and this record is no exception. Make no mistake: this is not some singer/songwriter layering his words and guitar solos over pre-programmed backing tracks. Real instruments are the foundation of every cut; the lush mixing, electro-flavored arrangements and ability to pick just the right effect put what might have been an extraordinary roots rock record into a universe of its own. Of course, all this is merely gravy on the main course: songcraft. Though an accomplished bandleader and a white-hot guitar picker, Prophet has always subsumed flash in service to the song, and his tunes here add more classics to his catalog. The slinky R&B of “Pin a Rose on Me” and “You Did (Bomp Shooby Dooby Bomp)” shares worthy space with the heartfelt balladry of “Solid Gold” and “You’ve Got Me Where You Want Me.” Rock groovers like “Automatic Blues” and “Heavy Duty” use quirkiness the way actor Johnny Depp does: as flavor, not a substitute for lack of substance. Prophet sneaks some social commentary into his usual examinations of the dance of the sexes; “West Memphis Moon” looks at the infamous West Memphis Three and the deeply sarcastic title track tunefully surveys the state of America. One could argue that Prophet does nothing here that he hasn’t done in his most recent work, and that’s a valid point. But since Prophet’s music sounds like little else out there and it’s of consistently high quality, that’s mere carping at nothing. Age of Miracles is yet another brilliant record from a great American artist.

It’s always a minor miracle when an artist you figured had reached his top speed cranks it up to another level. So often when listening to any singer/songwriter with 7 solo albums behind him, like Chuck Prophet, you know the best is not yet to come. It’s probably somewhere in the distance of your rearview mirror. Happily, this is the reverse with Prophet. He’s on a road to bigger and better sounds with each release, and Age of Miracles may be his best yet.

Prophet blends styles with an effortless ease, pulling from a big grab bag of country, R&B, hip-hop, and blues and evoking Leonard Cohen as if produced by Beck. Not everything always works well together, but stellar standout tracks like “Just to See You Smile,” “Pin a Rose on Me” and the title track are better than the sum of their parts. And Age of Miracles really shines when Chuck’s strong timbre is tempered by female backing vocals.

Overall, this is a solid release from a seasoned veteran who’s aging well. Prophet has an uncanny knack for adding just enough of that new car smell. Hitch a ride with this prophet down his new road. The trip’s just getting interesting.

Chuck Prophet’s a walking contradiction. A streetwise city kid with an eye for the country, Prophet’s a West-Coast Jim Carroll, an urban John Doe. Prophet’s seventh solo album, Age of Miracles, presents so many sides to his personality that it?s a musical Rubik’s Cube. The former member of Green on Red leads off with a blues (“Automatic Blues”), detours through hip-hop with the G-Funk inspired “You Did (Bomp Shooby Dooby Bomp)” and hits the hard country for “West Memphis Moon”—all the while running his mouth like he’s starring in a Kerouac novel. The verbiage and hipster pose keep things entertaining; but there’s no substitute for the raw emotion that makes “You Got Me Where You Want Me” endearingly sad and “Solid Gold” ultimately hopeful. Because no matter how many tricks you’ve got up your sleeve, it’s wearing your heart on it that gets ‘em every time.

Chuck Prophet covers a a wide range of musical ground on his latest outing. In then opening tracks alone, we got from loud and dirty rock (“Automatic Blues”) to cross-generational Lennonesque (think: Mind Games) psyche pop (Age Of Miracles”) to the hip-hop infected, hyper melodic nod to the history of pop culture idioms (‘You Did”) – which if it doesn’t answer, at least raises many more musical questions, including: Who put the ram in the ram a lama ding dong…? Who raised the roof and never made a sound? Who cleared the static and made it sing? You did” Prophet seems to have a fondness for throwing many different people and various sounds together just to see what happens. Dig the transformations throughout a cut like “Pin A Rose On Me”. The Magic of such experimentation is no mistake; Prophet knows what he is doing. The results are enchanting, particularly the Spector of Wilson that drives a tune like “Just to See You Smile” or the lilting groove of “You Got Me Where You Want me”. I never did believe in miracles, and I’m beginning to wonder why.

Like Joe Henry, onetime Green On Read Stalwart Chuck Prophet has evolved since his alt-countryish beginnings into a refreshingly unlabel-able artist who, in mixing and matching genres, thrives on offbeat textures and carefully etched moods. One difference is that while Art has been whispering a little too loudly in Henry’s ear of late, Prophet has over the course of seven solo albums raised his accessibility as he has honed his vision. His new album, Age Of Miracles, features some of his most infectious tunes. If not quite as challenging as its two immediate predecessors in drawing from ‘70s soul and back-porch blues to hip-hop and Moogified pop, it’s more cohesive and consistent. While there’s a current of modern unease running beneath the tunes for Prophet’s craggy baritone to bring out, the album has a brightness of purpose that lifts even the sad stuff. He may not have written a more convincing feel-good song than “You Did (Bomp Shooby Dooby Bomp)”, which answers the age old question, “Who put the bomp?” (as posed by Bill Building wordsmith Barry Mann), with a loving expression of gratitude and a seductive hip-hop groove. “Just To See You Smile” is nearly as uplifting, and with Prophet’s wife Stephanie Finch on answering vocal, “You Got Me Where You Want Me” (one of two tunes written with Kim Richey) happily completes a romantic trilogy of sorts. Another knockout song is the oddly affecting “Smallest Man In The World”, which can be read as a meditation on freakdom, or fame, or both. With its Chinese menu’s worth of guitars (including baritone, tres and lap steel) and keyboards (including organs, electric pianos, synthesizers and harpsichord) and other instruments, Age Of Miracles could have you playing a game of name that effect. That it doesn’t is a measure of how successfully Prophet integrates the musical styles that influence and move him – and how well the songs, separately and as part of a package, work. “Who cleared the static and made it sing?” He did.