Folkster finds inspiration in music’s margins

INDIANAPOLIS - Chuck Prophet has touched many an itinerant soul with his quirky, loosely-compact folk music. But to call him an influential genius is to get an opposite response from him.

"I don’t know what any of that means," Prophet said of that description. "I think I’ve gotten away with murder. I can’t believe I sell as many records as I do."

He’s no household name, but Prophet did provide a blueprint for the alt-country movement, starting with his Bay Area exercise-in-excess, the band Green on Red in the 1980s. It’s continued with numerous solo albums, the most recent being last year’s "Soap and Water." The release features more of Prophet’s signature mood swings - the loutish rollick of "Freckle Song" to the spectral chill of "Doubter Out of Jesus (All Over You)." That essentially defines Prophet, an artist as comfortable writing simple chord progressions as he is elaborate sound collages.

"Some songs just don’t want to behave," he said of the latter. "Some songs become so married to a certain arrangement that you’ve gotta take ‘em out and rotate the tires. It’s elusive about what people respond to. That’s really the greatest part about any art form. You can be the greatest craftsman in the world, but you don’t know what people are really going to respond to."

It was the ‘80s punk movement that Prophet and his friends were enamored with. Though Prophet may not have translated the buzzsaw guitars and truculent speed, the iconoclastic spirit remains intact.

"The goal was just to have a band," he said of those early days. "We didn’t do much, just sat around fantasizing."

It could be said that’s what Prophet continues to do. He still frequently tours ("I’m probably one of five people who doesn’t complain about it"), produces others’ records, and runs his own label, (((belle sound))). Yet he still won’t fully admit to being a professional musician. He’s never had a business plan. Rather than measuring success by any economic indicators, Prophet’s reason for performing has always been for his own amusement.

"I just have a dark need to write songs and wrestle them to the ground in the form of records and play," he said. "That’s what I do. You’re really only competing with yourself. The goal is to do something that keeps you interested in what you’re doing."

Relatively unknown singer-songwriter Chuck Prophet gathers kudos from artists, critics

Chuck Prophet's been playing music for a good 30 years.

Maybe you've heard of him?

He picked up a guitar as a child and started out in punk as a teenager in Southern California. There were about eight years in Green on Red, the country/rock/Americana band of the 1980s that inspired acclaim from critics and fans in the know. Then he went solo and created eight albums including his most recent, Soap and Water.

Nothing? No bells going off?

How about Lucinda Williams, heard of her? He toured with her. Kelly Willis? He produced her last album, Translated From Love, and has collaborated with her, writing songs and performing on her albums.

He's worked with Warren Zevon, Jonathan Richman and Alejandro Escovedo and the band Cake.

In other words, Chuck Prophet's a man with the kind of insider résumé that has earned him praise from musicians and listeners - the ones who are listening, that is.

"I think he's brilliant," said Willis, who has worked with Prophet since 1998, when she was working on her album What I Deserve.

"I think he's one of those few people who is really and truly a musical person. It isn't hard for him. It's instinctual and natural."

For committed fans and the curious, Prophet, 43, will perform tonight at the Continental Club as part of his tour for Soap and Water.

Like Willis' assessment of Prophet, the tunes on Soap and Water sound anything but hard. They feature sly and sexy lyrics set to music that surprises as it slides between amusing and moving.

Take the opening track, Freckle.

I like the way you freckle

I like the way you peel

I love to see your hair in a mess

It's been a long September

It's gonna to be a longer winter

Let me help you out of that dress.

Before you catch a cold.

Or the children's choir singing, "You could make a doubter out of Jesus" on a rock 'n' roll song with a large dose of vulnerability.

But even with a career that boasts longevity in a burn-bright, burnout kind of business, Prophet says he's still not convinced he's making a living as a musician.

"Especially when I do my taxes at the end of the year," Prophet said in a telephone interview from a van on its way out of Denver after a show.

But he's been playing since he first traveled from his home in Orange County, Calif., to Los Angeles to hear punk bands and figured he and his friends could do that. He was 13.

Nearly seven years later he "was blown away" by Green on Red at a club in Berkeley, and asked to sit in with the band.

"Not only did they have a van, but they had a gas card," he said. "In the punk-rock economic strata, I thought that was positively bourgeois."

He joined up and performed with them for about eight years. That union produced some MTV airtime and eight albums.

"If I stand back far enough and squint, some of them are pretty good," Prophet said.

The group was "a groundbreaking thing, combining elements of country music with harder rock-roots stuff in a way that seemed kind of fresh and new," said Willis, who first became acquainted with Prophet's music when he played with Green on Red. "It was aggressive and country-ish at the same time."

After the band "just disintegrated," Prophet said, he started a solo career with his now wife, Stephanie Finch. From a home base in San Francisco, he also performed and wrote songs with other musicians.

He came in to Willis' music as a hired gun to play guitar on What I Deserve, she said. But he proved an attentive, professional and sensitive writing collaborator.

Since then, he has performed, produced or written on her albums.

"The key is he has a lot of respect for other people," Willis said. " ... He doesn't have the huge ego where it has to be all about him."

Critics have provided good buzz for Soap and Water.

Earlier this month, he and his band performed Doubter Out of Jesus on the Late Show With David Letterman.

For Prophet, this album "wasn't nearly as difficult to midwife as the others," he said. He chalks that up to years of experience teaching him how to write songs suited for his voice.

The result was an ease that comes across on the album and a "devil-may-care spirit to it," he said.

"I think," he said, "that boxing in the dark with your demons and assuming that is going to be interesting to people, that is a young man's game."

"San Francisco," says Chuck Prophet, "is a great place for a musician to live." He backs up his claim, in typical fashion, with numerous diversionary tales of San Franciscans he's known, music he's heard and places where he's been, washed dishes and parked cars. He loves the gravitational pull the city has on "people with a freak flag to wave." If a lot of artists on the fringe were driven out during the dot-com era, he reckons that that's starting to shift.

Prophet, 43, was born and raised in Orange County until his family moved north. He went to high school in the East Bay and college in San Francisco and never left. "I don't like to brag, but Stephanie and I do have a rent-controlled apartment," he says. It's in the Lower Haight, or if you're a real estate agent, Duboce. "And I have done the math and I've come to the conclusion that to have a rent-controlled apartment has about the same value as a Ph.D. over time."

Stephanie Finch, Prophet's wife, a singer, writer and keyboard player, is also part of the city's music scene. Recently the pair spent a month touring Europe with Prophet's band, in a van. "I tell you, you drive 2,000 miles in a Ford Econoline at a stretch and it's either gonna bring you together or pull you apart," he says. The couple, who first recorded together on Prophet's 1990 debut album, "Brother Aldo," celebrated their 10th wedding anniversary this year.

They're back home for just a couple of days, to repack, convert their euros to dollars and play a special hometown show at the Make-Out Room, with free Mexican food (Prophet, who hired a taco truck, says, laughing, that he's still paying it off). Then it's back on the road for a U.S. tour to promote Prophet's new album, "Soap and Water." It's been picking up accolades here and abroad from the British music press, where he's long been a star, to mainstream American media (Entertainment Weekly called it "excellent").

"I wouldn't - maybe it's superstition - utter anything like that out loud, but people have been reacting to this album," Prophet says. "It's an elusive thing, making records, and I don't know what it is, but I do know that records are never really finished, they're just abandoned. At a certain point it's like 'I haven't got any more time or money, I give up.' Or I could push it around on my plate until I lose my appetite or I could just cut it loose and it can fend for itself. But then you do make a point of killing yourselves (with touring) at least once behind every record. You know, give it the college try."

"Soap and Water" was recorded in two very different music cities, San Francisco and Nashville. One has the bay and Rainbow Grocery; the other is landlocked and has Christian supermarkets. "Aside from the country music community, it does have a lot of churches," Prophet says. And gospel singers. That's why when he suggested to his producer that they overdub a choir - "I'd been listening to 'Jesus Christ Superstar,' 'Godspell' and a group called the English Congregation who, it turns out, were neither English nor a congregation" - Nashville was the place to go.

But Prophet wanted a choir without real singers. They got 27 schoolkids into the studio "with the aid of only some M&Ms;and pizza. The extra level of irony they give to songs like 'Let's Do Something Stupid' just made the whole record that much more perverted somehow. I loved it."

For the past couple of years, Prophet has been spending an inordinate amount of time in Nashville. He produced and guested on the acclaimed new album by country singer Kelly Willis ("Translated From Love"). He has also been co-writing country songs. "I'm Gone," written with Kim Richey, was a Top 40 hit for Cyndi Thompson. "I've got the gold record in the bathroom to prove it."

It was his music publisher who first suggested he go to Nashville and write country songs, "when it became pretty clear that they weren't going to get much of their advance back from the record I put out." His response was, "Yeah, and after that I can go to Hollywood and write a screenplay," but he did and he liked it.

"It's a funny community; I do find myself writing with people that in real life I probably wouldn't have anything in common with at all. But I've since made some friends out there and been lucky enough to write with some really great writers."

What drew him back was that his record label had dropped him. He burnt out from touring with "Age of Miracles," the last album he recorded for it. "Things kind of started unraveling and I didn't know if I even wanted to do it again," he says. He spent the next year "trying to figure out if there was other stuff to do." There was.

Besides Nashville, there was the reunion of his roots-rock band Green on Red and a collaboration with Austin, Texas, singer-songwriter Alejandro Escovedo, with whom he has been writing and recording an album. He signed a publishing deal for a book "chronicling life in motion - gathering road stories from different artists; whether you stay in five-star hotels or whether you have a tennis shoe for a pillow in the back of van." He brushed off his own small label, Belle sound, usually reserved for his and Stephanie's projects, and released an album by East Bay singer-songwriter Sonny Smith ("Fruitvale"). He tried writing a screenplay with Happy Sanchez. He landed a role in San Francisco filmmaker Miles Matthew Montalbano's "Revolution Summer," "playing this deranged drug dealer. I was just doing my best Dennis Hopper, really."

"I have an addictive personality, but music is probably the healthiest addiction I've had." He's kicked the rest. "And I think my biggest fear is I'd have to stop. After all this manic activity, it turns out that I do have a dark need to make records anyway - because we made this record without a record deal, just pulled it together - and I have a dark need to drive around the world in a van like I'm 22. And to be honest with you, I'm good at it, too. I'm good at staring out of a window for long stretches."

He smiles. "People always ask me, 'Don't you think you should be bigger?' I don't even think of that, I just think of the next record.

"When we first started playing music and we were living like community college students, our goal was always to live like graduate students, so in that sense, we've held on."

But, he adds, "it's still hell trying to find a place to park the van."

A walk through the used record bins of some of the country’s finest music stores with musicians, both famous and infamous.

"You hear that?"

Standing outside Open Mind Music on an impeccably beautiful sunny San Francisco day, Chuck Prophet points down Market Street, cocks his ear and waits. A few seconds later, a siren blares in the distance.

"Every Tuesday at noon, the city tests their emergency warning system," Prophet explains. "It goes for like ten or fifteen seconds and then it’s over, but I like the idea that everyone in this neighborhood hears that. It’s a part of anyone’s life who lives around here."

Prophet’s knack for these kinds of intimate details – pervasive in his songwriting – is the mark of the long-time Bay Area denizen. Though he was born and bred in Southern California, the singer-songwriter has lived in San Francisco since joining cult-favorite Americana rockers Green on Red in the mid-1980s as a prodigious 18-year-old guitar talent. After the band dissolved in 1992, Prophet focused his efforts on his burgeoning solo career, recording a string of albums beginning with 1990’s Brother Aldo and culminating with Soap and Water, his latest opus released in early October on Yep Roc Records.

"Hanging out in record stores was pretty much what I did growing up," Prophet says as he swings open the door to Open Mind Music and tosses a casual hello to Henry, the store owner. "The Music Box in La Habra, California was where I bought my records. Back then, they usually cost $3.98 and I remember agonizing over the decision on which record to buy every time I went in there. It would take me all week to decide what I was gonna get."

Growing up in Whittier, California, Prophet wasn’t too far from either the rock and roll of the Sunset Strip or the surf spots that dot the coast along the Pacific Coast Highway.

"I lived in a neighborhood in Orange County growing up that if you shook a tree, five guitar players would fall out. Everybody played guitar and everyone surfed. It was that type of culture back then," he says. "My girlfriend in the seventh grade bought me Hunky Dory for my birthday. Bowie records were definitely big around my house. I had an older sister was an old-school hipster and we got all the new records when they came out. What’s astonishing about Bowie during that time period is the diversity of his albums You can go from Hunky Dory to Ziggy Stardust to Aladdin Sane to Diamond Dogs and then you blink and he’s in Philadelphia doing Young Americans. The breadth of the music he created in only about three or four years is just astonishing, especially when compared with what’s going on today. And it’s not like he fell on his face doing it either. Bowie was big in our house, no doubt about it. Still is."

Like so many other young guitarists, Prophet cut his teeth by playing along to records in his bedroom.

"I learned a lot about playing guitar by listening to old Van Morrison albums," he says, holding up a copy of Morrison’s 1967 debut, Blowin’ Your Mind. "‘T.B. Sheets’ is the song I really learned how to play guitar off of. A lot of that double-stop, ‘Brown-Eyed Girl’-like guitar that I play I mostly picked up from by listening to old Van Morrison stuff. I think a guy named Eric Gale, who was an old jazz guitarist, did the guitar playing on those albums. His playing was big for me as I started playing guitar."

While Van Morrison may not be an influence Prophet readily wears on his sleeve, Bob Dylan certainly is. Whether it’s in the detailed imagery of his lyrics, the blues-flecked energy of his guitar playing or his not-so-mainstream nasally voice, it’s pretty obvious from his music that Prophet is a Dylanphile.

"We all know he’s the master; no one’s gonna argue with that," he says, thumbing through the Dylan vinyl. "I really liked Under the Red Sky a lot. No one really gives him credit for the albums he did in the ‘80s and early ‘90s. I like Dylan when he’s in his devil-may-care place. That’s why Dylan is a great live show – even when he’s at his worst, he’s incapable of being uninteresting. It’s not so much that he’s the greatest living American songwriter, though that’s part of it certainly. But it’s also the ease with which he does it and how cool it is. You never really see Dylan ever work that hard. I admire that about him a lot. I’ve probably bought all of Dylan’s albums at least three times. I enjoy the thrill of getting something I like the second time. I probably own five copies of Leonard Cohen’s Greatest Hits. Sometimes I buy it just to make myself feel good."

J.J. Cale’s Naturally is another record Prophet puts on a pedestal. The Oklahoma troubadour’s 1971 debut album followed on the heels of Clapton’s version of Cale’s "After Midnight," but Naturally does not pander to the blues-rock of Slowhand’s successful cover. Instead, Cale issued a sublime, country-rock classic that focuses more on the boogie and less on the bravado.

"Naturally may be the greatest auteur record of all time," Prophet professes. "J.J. wrote all the songs, played on it, put the band together and produced it. I think he may have even engineered a lot of it himself as well ‘cause it’s got this strange sound to it. I love that record ‘cause J.J Cale never turns his solos up. I always get a lot of shit for not turning my solos up. J.J. is a real abstract expressionist. All of the songs on Naturally are like two-and-a-half minutes long, but it’s the perfect record."

Perfection is a concept Prophet returns to time and time again throughout our trip to Open Mind Music, whether it’s in regard to Dylan, Cale or Alex Chilton, frontman for The Box Tops and Big Star. Calling Big Star’s 1978 classic album Third/Sister Lovers "the perfect marriage of the street and the regal," Prophet remembers the first time Green on Red opened for Chilton’s post-Big Star trio at Atlanta’s 688 Club in the mid-‘80s.

"The 688 was one of those clubs where the back door behind the stage opened up into the parking lot. As we’re wrapping up our soundcheck that day, I see this ’72 Buick Skylark pull in blowing huge plumes of blue smoke," he recalls. ‘These three guys roll out of the car and pull a little jazz kit out of the trunk along with a tiny Peavy bass amp and a Fender Super Reverb and set them onstage. Alex reaches in the back of the Super Reverb, pulls out a clean shirt – his gig shirt – and takes his other shirt off and stuffs it into the back of the amp. He straps on a harmonica rack, tunes up, clicks his heels four times and just made everything that we did completely forgettable. I can’t remember what music I was into at the time – maybe Tom Verlaine or Neil Young – but at that moment, it was all about Alex."

With both his new album and the Kelly Willis’ Prophet-produced Translated from Love garnering critical praise, Prophet isn’t resting on his laurels. With his Mission Express band in tow, Prophet recently returned from a European tour and just embarked on a U.S. tour to support Soap and Water. In between gigs, he’s been squeezing in writing sessions with old friend Alejandro Escovedo for a future album.

"Writing with Al has been so much fun," Prophet says with a laugh. "One of things Al and I like to do when we write together is sit down and just tell each other stories and usually a song will appear out of it. If that doesn’t work, we turn off all the lights, lie on the ground and put on the Mott the Hoople. Ian Hunter is such a brilliant lyricist. All the Young Dudes is worth the price of admission on the title track alone."

Chuck Prophet, a former member of famed cosmic rock duo Green on Red, has just released his eighth solo album, "Soap and Water" (Yep Roc). The critically acclaimed singer-songwriter recently made his acting debut in the independent film "Revolution Summer" and signed a deal with Chronicle Books, which next summer will release "Shoulda Stayed in School - Road Diaries From the Rock 'n' Roll Trenches." We asked the longtime Duboce Triangle resident for a tour of his favorite neighborhood haunts. (Prophet plays the Make-Out Room tonight).

Golden Produce, 172 Church St. "It's a family-run produce market right across from Safeway on Market. If you like pears, they carry about eight different kinds. I love the folks that run it - three generations from Cambodia. Golden Produce has got soul."

Jack's Laundry, 196 Noe St. "I just adore the woman who runs this laundry. She always laughs when I ask, 'Which one of you is Jack?' Aside from the usual dry cleaning, wash and fold stuff, she's a great seamstress - mends, hems and puts love and care into everything she does. In fact, she hand-sewed each patch on the Green on Red trucker hats. Bonus points for overnight work, too."

Rosamunde Sausages, 545 Haight St. "Tuesday is burger day. It gets slammed in there and they can get irritable behind the counter if you don't order properly. So get there early or you'll be handed a sausage. Wait in the Toronado Bar next door, get a real draft root beer and drop some quarters in the jukebox that's stocked with 'deep cuts' for days."

Cliff's Variety, 479 Castro St. "I almost forgot what I came there for: I found myself staring at a unicorn pencil sharpener when a friendly clerk asked if there was anything he could help me with. I was directed to the fabric annex next door and left with a couple yards of Velcro for my pedal board and a spare key for the touring van."

Peacock Music, 2200 15th St. "Maybe you just want to replace one string on that banjo that never gets played or pick up a bow for your kid's violin. OK, so you'll never be Pete Seeger. If all else fails, go on and tune all four strings on that banjo up to one note and play it with a bow. The owner, George, told me recently his church choir could use a baritone singer. I was deeply flattered. Might take him up on that someday."

Amoeba Music, 1855 Haight St. "In Holland, where I'm touring right now, they've turned churches into venues. In San Francisco, they've turned one of the last bowling alleys into the Amoeba record store. It's only the largest new-and-used record store in the nation."

Philz Coffee, 3101 24th St. "Located in a funky storefront at the corner of 24th and Folsom, each cup of Philz Coffee is ground and made by hand. Phil himself is a real character: an expansive personality, compact, fedora-sporting, mustachioed bundle of energy. You can't get a latte or a mochachino, but you can get one of the many painstakingly blended combos that Phil has perfected in his 30-plus years in the business. Don't be surprised if he pulls out a long spoon, turns to one of the gals there, spoon feeds her some foam off the top and says, completely seriously, 'Don't swallow it down, swirl it around, make love to it.' The mint leaf garnish is a nice touch."

Schauplatz Clothing & Furniture, 791 Valencia St. "I'm a lanky guy. I have what you might call an elongated torso. It's hard to find jackets that fit. Some days, the thrift store gods are smiling more than others: I found a nice sport coat in there recently, and the fellow behind the counter in his German accent said, 'Oh yes, very good choice, this just came in, 42 long don't stay long.' Their stuff is always clean and wrinkle free. Note to other vintage clothiers: Go ahead and splurge for some dry cleaning. Tack it on to the price if you have to. Thrift stores can be hit and miss. Takes someone with an acute eye to run it. It's a gift. Some people have the gift. These guys always dig up good stuff."

P.O. Plus, 584 Castro St. "This is the mailing joint in my hood. It's a FedEx, DHL, UPS and USPS hub all in one. Ahmad is the man there, a good guy. I like it when I'm done with my packages or whatever, he'll ring his bell on the counter and shout, 'Next customer!' even when there's no one there."

El Tonayense taco truck, 22nd and Harrison streets. "Tommy Guerrero turned me on to these guys. I hired them to cater our gig at the Make-Out Room. Yes, you heard right. Free tacos for all my friends! I'm a carne asada man myself, but they do a killer al pastor, which is sort of like a Mexican doner kebab. It's slow-cooked pork, thinly sliced off the spit with a large knife."

Chuck Prophet is a perverse kind of guy. He’s the type of person who would invite all kinds of people to the same party - in part because he likes them all, but also so that he can see what happens when they all hang out together.

The singer/songwriter, who spent eight years with the psychedelic cosmic cowboys Green on Red - a band that was described as a country-meets-folk-meets too many drugs Americana -is set to release his seventh solo CD and second album for New West Records, Age of Miracles.

True to Prophet’s form the album is a mish-mash of styles, collaborators and conspirators, which for some reason fit together like the pieces of a Tetris puzzle.

"When I catch an inspirational virus, I try to inflict it on my closest conspirators and even come up with a batch of songs. Then assemble a group of talented, intense, fierce, difficult, even perverted people, many of whom I’ve worked with before and a few I’ll probably never work with again, lock ’em in a studio and ... you get the idea," Prophet said.

While it sounds like a strong formula for success Prophet admitted that producing Age of Miracles actually threw him for a loop several times. "I had a couple of false starts where I had to discard some material because there was some kind of overlap schematically. In some ways I kind of simplified things a lot to embrace the chaos and resist the temptation to fix it. It was just one of those records with false starts. I went this direction, and then went another one, and about three-quarters of the way through I guess I got in a groove," he said in a recent interview with The Marquee.

Through it all, Prophet has kept two things in the forefront of his mind - one, avoiding singer/songwriter trappings and two, that no matter how hard you try, there’s only so much you can do on one record.

"In Green on Red, we did a lot of fun, character-driven songs, and I think that helps me to avoid a lot of the singer/songwriter trappings, You know, ‘My coffee’s getting cold’ kind of things that I try not to fall into," he said about the former.

As for the latter, he commented, "My self criticism (once my closest and most reliable friend) gave way to a struggle with my self esteem and mental health. So I took a little break from the record to get some ... ah ... perspective. I found there were some food groups under-represented on the record. So I looked around the couch and pulled out the dusty shoe box of cassettes. At about the same time, I bumped into Eric Feldman (P.J. Harvey, Polyphonic Spree and Captain Beefheart) and I immediately enlisted him to oversee and co-produce. Because even with all the new technology, it’s still impossible to be on both sides of the glass at the same time - Jim Dickinson taught me that."

As an unlikely guitar hero, a subgenre co-inventor and a rock & roll cultist's Kool-Aid king, Chuck Prophet was the unacknowledged legislator behind LA's pseudo-Paisley Undergrounders Green On Red, who were the most terrifyingly talented band of the great roots-rock scare of the '80s. Now solo, Prophet splits the difference between post-modern blues pastiche and chicken-fried country soul, putting the "bomp" in the "bomb-shooby-dooby-bomp" with all of the greasy wah-wah pedals abandoned since Curtis Mayfield left the charts. His records sound like the ones Mayfield should have made with Bob Dylan; his rare Midwest dates sound like a must.

The unheralded Chuck, that is

With the recent fad for books dishing the French superiority complex, let's remember that no long list of transgressions is needed to prove our own cultural stupidity. Not when Chuck Prophet is a cult hero in Europe but just a rumor of a critics' fave in the United States. The San Francisco-based singer and guitarist doesn't seem too bent about the whole thing. "I'm just now getting the hang of it," he says of his relative notoriety overseas, "though sometimes it does seem like a long way to travel just to eat some smelly cheese."

What we've missed is not the mere aesthetic experience we'd expect Euros to appreciate, but rather a ton of heart and melody. Prophet's work since his 1990 solo debut is grounded in his singular approach to singer-songwriter classicism. Take the title track of 2002's No Other Love, a pit-in-your-stomach gorgeous silhouette of a ballad composed of little more than strings and Prophet's thick croon; or last year's roomy Age of Miracles, his seventh album, stuffed with literate pop-rock that manages to make use of a sampler as tunefully as it does guitar. This is music to rehabilitate the word "eclectic" from its abuse by interior decorators.

Prophet first eluded us back in ye olde 1980s, when his adolescent band Green on Red helped found LA's Paisley Underground scene. "I don't think about it much, but when I do, I have to quickly take my medication," he says of the band's decade-long run. "Some people considered Green on Red a group of juvenile buffoons -- others considered us one of the greatest rock 'n' roll bands in the world." Then there was "alt.country": in the late '90s, while we were we were pumping overrated Wilco, Prophet was busy putting out record after rootsy, rangy record. "How can I dis a scene that has heated debates over the best version of a Townes Van Zandt song?" the ever-philosophical tunesmith says. But Prophet doesn't deserve to have to be so good-humored in the face of indifference, and the Euros shouldn't get to gloat.

Prophet plays Friday night at the Starry Plough. Be there or be a dumb Yank.

Borderline, London

It's been 20 years since Chuck Prophet found himself lumped in with LA's neo-psychedelic "Paisley Underground" during his tenure with Green on Red. But since launching a solo career in 1990, Prophet has kept evolving as a songwriter and guitarist of formidable (albeit under-appreciated) gifts.

The Borderline's promoter, Barry Everitt, will sing Prophet's praises to anyone within earshot, including tonight's audience. Springing to the microphone before Prophet's band came back for some encores, Barry commended him as "one of the best fucking guitarists in existence".

This is true, and one of several good reasons for going to a Prophet show is the opportunity it affords to watch a master of the Telecaster in full spate. Prophet's playing is like an instant guide to 50 years of guitar-playing, from the twangy bottom-end tones of Dick Dale or Duane Eddy to rolling barrages of Neil Young-style chords or intricate, string-bending runs in the Clarence White mould. The trick has been to shape his playing into an indispensable part of the way he writes and performs, so the guitar is woven through the music like an inner voice supplying insights, asides and a running commentary.

Prophet's songwriting is similarly eclectic, though he adds an idiosyncratic spin so that the stuff coming out of the blender couldn't be anybody else but him. Chuck has a radio-friendly side to him, best expressed in the effervescent Summertime Thing, but he also likes to range through sprawling narratives that travel from urban chaos to desert wilderness.

Prophet's dirty-blonde hair and dark southern drawl render him susceptible to country-boy stereotyping, and the likes of Just to See You Smile can only be described as country rock. On the other hand, You Did rollicks along over a modified hip-hop beat while Prophet growls into a weird metallic-sounding microphone, and wonders "who put the wang in the wang-dang-doodle? You did!!!" He'll also defend to the death his right to borrow from Bob Dylan, who popped up in a cover version of Abandoned Love. Prophet called his new album Age of Miracles, and he had a point.

· At King Tut's, Glasgow, tonight. Then touring.

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. (His "long-suffering" wife, as he often refers to her, probably gave up expecting anniversary gifts ages ago.)

"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.