Chuck Prophet at Natasha’s Bistro: Likening the sold-out, coffeehouse-flavored atmosphere at Natasha’s Bistro & Bar to “a PTA meeting,” Prophet stripped away the voltage but not necessarily the rockish electricity from his music for his 90- minute solo acoustic performance. Although it was his first Lexington outing without a band, the West Coast songsmith presented what was essentially a rock ‘n’ roll show for a sit-down crowd. And it worked.

Sure, the quieter strides of ballads like Would You Love Me? and Whole Lot More already had enough folkish ingenuity to fit readily into the solo format. Other works opened up enough for Prophet to color them with playful narratives. Before Sister Lost Soul, for instance, Prophet recalled when he and pal Alejandro Escovedo went in search of a recording studio in the aftermath of an Austin, Texas, ice storm (“Where it got cold for, like, 10 minutes”). Then there were the less-than- complimentary remarks about CNN journalist Anderson Cooper that more curiously prefaced You and Me Baby (Holding On). And let’s not forget Apology, which Prophet proudly dedicated to Mel Gibson.

But the real riot involved more purposefully rock-directed fare that packed a potent and resourceful wallop even without a band. Among them: Doubter Out of Jesus (All Over You), which revealed a cool yet pensive groove, and I Bow Down and Pray to Every Woman I See, with its sly, Tom Petty-ish framework.

Sure, there were a few songs that really made fans miss the homemade firepower of Prophet’s Mission Express band. Diamond Jim, for instance, sounded great, but one couldn’t help but yearn for those fat, Kinks-style power chords that the band version possesses.

But hearing a long-lost relic like Lucky recast as a wily acoustic yarn, or the radio hit Summertime Thing as a suitably seasonal sing-a-long? Those were the products of a crafty pop mind that can locate a rock ‘n’ roll vibe in the most unassuming of performance venues.

This was a rock show even the PTA could love.

End Of the World Blues: Chuck Prophet at the 8X10, Nov. 30

By Geoffrey Himes | Posted 12/3/2009

If Randy Newman had grown up not as the heir of Hollywood composers but as a scruffy garage rocker and had recorded an album about the United States in 2009, that record might have sounded like Chuck Prophet’s Let Freedom Ring. It would have had the same untrustworthy third-person narrators and bitterly comic commentators; it would have had the same perky melodies arranged in the same passed-by styles of the past; it would have had the same sharp powers of description and the same barely constrained outrage.

Whether he’s singing through the persona of a barely articulate boxer, the mother of a foolhardy child, an unemployed husband, the ominously quiet kid at school, or the couple on one last credit-card spree, Prophet inhabits each character with just the right diction, just the right guitar riff, just the right mix of anger and hope.

It’s one of the year’s best rock’n'roll albums, and it brought out a good-sized crowd to the 8X10 to see Prophet on a Monday night. The tall singer-guitarist, with his scarecrow hair, baby-cheek face, and black blazer over a black vest, began the night banging out garage-rock chord changes on his cream-colored Telecaster. He took his time getting to the vocals; assuming the voice of Sonny Liston, he finally mumbled, “I’m a man of few words, baby,” allowing his strangled guitar to say what the boxer couldn’t. Then suddenly all the noise fell away and the mumble landed on a lovely melody as Prophet/Liston sang, “What I’m trying to tell you is how much I loved you in that dress.” This moment of grace was soon swallowed up in amplifier distortion again, but its memory lingered.

So it went all night, moments of unguarded feeling and melody would surface amid the roiling waves like strange deep-sea creatures, only to submerge again. His choice of cover songs included Iggy Pop’s sardonic “I’m Bored” but also Bruce Springsteen’s valentine, “For You.” His choice of his old songs included both an anthem of alienation, “Automatic Blues,” and an anthem of possibility, “Age of Miracles.”

The selections from the new album included the dystopian title track, a vision of capitalism run amok: “Let there be markets,” he snarled over a knotty guitar riff, “let ‘em run wild/ all the lost brothers can drink themselves blind.” But he also sang the new album’s best song, “You and Me Baby (Holding On),” named after a Newman number and borrowing Newman’s curdled Tin Pan Alley delivery. Prophet began bleakly, “Marriage on the skids and the folks ain’t doing well,” but rallied for the chorus, singing, “We can still dream like it’s Saturday night/ we’re holding on,” to a major-chord glimpse of sunshine.

The evening was marred by Prophet’s constant bickering with the soundman about the monitors, but his backing band (guitarist James DePrato, bassist Kevin White, drummer Todd Roper and keyboardist/singer/wife Stephanie Finch) sounded terrific in the house speakers whenever a song finally started. The highlight of the evening came early: a rampaging, hook-laden version of “Always a Friend,” the tune Prophet co-wrote for Alejandro Escovedo’s album last year—the best Rolling Stones song of the decade.

Best Single Set:

Chuck Prophet at the Ale House, 11 p.m. Friday. That the room was about two sizes too small for the crowd—and for the increasingly ambitous scale and scope of Prophet’s music—only served to amplify and intensify the glorious performance turned in by Prophet and his four-piece band. While he’s always been a compelling live performer, Prophet seems to be stretching beyond himself these days, reaching heights he’s never quite hit before. The vocal balance between him and keyboardist Stephanie Finch is precisely on target, while the rest of the crew just keeps driving all the dramatics and dynamics and grooves of Prophet’s songs to tighter and trippier end-results. The peak moment: “Let’s Do Something Wrong”, a mission-statement for breaking the daily grind that had the crowd chanting along by song’s end: “Let’s do something wrong, let’s do something stupid!”

Alejandro was just in Madison in November, and it was a great show. But since I am one of those people who think he’s good, not great (I know, blasphemy), I probably would have skipped this show. Except that, like so many times before, I couldn’t miss the opening act. Perhaps only the Pernice Brothers have a better track record than Alejandro for choosing openers, and they kind of blew it with the love ‘em or hate ‘em Elvis Perkins. Past shows have featured David Garza, the Drive-by Truckers, Jon Dee Graham, and Jon Langford, while the last show was opened by an un-missable solo Robbie Fulks. Tonight he went one better with a solo Chuck Prophet, who is usually thought of as a great electric guitar player with a stellar band.

Prophet ranks third on my “cool list” behind only Andrew Bird and Joe Terry, and tonight he made a strong case for moving up. He claimed he hadn’t played a solo acoustic show in over a year, but it was hard to believe him as his amazing opening set just got better and better. I sat there the entire time with the biggest, goofiest smile on my face. He introduced a song from his last record Age of Miracles by saying it addressed one of the biggest questions of the universe. Suddenly serious, he added that he wasn’t sure we were going to be able to handle it before playing the delightfully goofy “You Did (Bomp Shooby Dooby Bomp).” Asking questions like “Who put the bop in the bop shebop shebop?” or “Who put the ram in the ram a lama ding dong?” Infectious and ridiculous, it was anything but profound.

Most songs came from his last two solo records, No Other Love (2002) and Miracles (2004), both of which are pretty amazing. He opened with the syrupy sweet “Just to See You Smile,” and included “I Bow Down and Pray to Every Woman I See.” The latter included an uncomfortably hilarious lecture on premature ejaculation. He finished his far-too-short set with the modest hit “Summertime Thing” which got regular play on Triple M back when I still listened to the radio. Thankfully it seemed everyone was as enchanted as I was and the crowd-demanded encore brought him back. Since I was right in the front row and very visible, I had resisted the temptation to video even though I was dying to. When he said that the last song would be “After the Rain,” I couldn’t resist any longer. He told me after the set that he had been on his best behavior, “I saw that camera,” he said with a smile.

I hadn’t had much sleep this week and in comparison to Chuck’s giddy set, Alejandro just made me sleepy. Every song was at least five minutes long, and even though they were all lovely and Susan Voelz’s violin enchanting, I was ready for the show to be over long before it was. He covered all the fan favorites from “Rosalie” to “Castanets” to “I Got Drunk” (a personal favorite of mine), but it wasn’t until he called Chuck up for the encore that it really became interesting. They have been writing songs together recently, and these were two of the new ones. Alejandro handed his guitar over to Chuck, and directed the songs, leaning into the microphone for his parts, leaning back when he wanted Chuck to sing, all the while allowing space for the violin and guitar to solo. The song was created right before our eyes, and that was a pretty cool thing to see.

Bottom Line: start time 8 pm end time 11:00 pm

Worth the drive? it’s not every night that I smile like that for an entire set

Reason to move Chuck up the cool list? that orange blazer for one

Reason Joe Terry doesn’t have to worry? he’s Joe Terry, Andrew Bird on the other hand should watch his back

Grade A

Green on Red, during their Eighties glory days were said to be part of a movement known a the Paisley Underground. Bands which saile under that flag of convenience tended to be le by sissies or nerds who’d gotten all excited abou The Byrds

Green on Red bore much the same relationship to this scene that William Burroughs did to the Beat Generation. With them, but not of them. Laughing at them, not with them. They knew one another, but there the connection ended.

There was nothing second division or socially acceptable about GoR’s rich stew of sophistication, urban alienation, cultural ambition, or punk rock exuberance. They fitted, more tidily, into that troublesome wave of acts which included The Gun Club, Panther Burns, and Alex Chilton. These people tended to be hugely aware avant gardeists high on, amongst other things, the redemptive powers of rock music as high art.

There ended up being two versions of Green on Red. The original was Chris Cacavas, Chuck Prophet, Jack Waterson, Dan Stuart, and Alex MacNicol. I saw them live at The Buttery in Dublin’s Trinity College; I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anything better. Their 1985 album, Gas Food Lodging, is just one of the dazzling artifacts they created; it conjures up the American landscape of Steinbeck, Charles Willeford, or Horace McCoy. I like its cover artwork which calls to mind Philip K Dick’s The Man in the High Castle.

That band came apart at the seams; sometimes the center cannot hold. A while later, Green on Red Mark 2 (Stuart and Prophet backed up by good session players) showed up in Europe, issued a batch of impressive albums, gigged their way up the greasy pole of the live circuit, and became more popular (in Europe) than the original GoR had ever been. I got to know Chuck and Dan somewhere in the middle of that phase in their lives, when they became the Phil and Don of Bukowski Rock. I also met and talked with Chris Cacavas when he passed through London playing with Russ Tolman.

All three men were significantly poignant examples of gifted musicians stranded in an Eighties world gone wrong. The leader of their particular pack, Dylan, was temporarily knocked out and loaded. U2 were writing the book on a whole new set of (tediously mind-numbing) rock’n’roll ethics and mores. Like old gunfighters in Sam Peckinpah movies, the likes of Green on Red were the last of their type, riding off into a post-nuclear sunset. To use an old Irish phrase, their sort will never come again. Just like the sort that I am myself, and the sort who used to throng their long-ago sweaty smoky gigs, will never come again.

And here they come again. That’s bands for you.

Original drummer MacNicol died last year. Death, especially premature death, concentrates the mind and the psyche. The rest of the original lineup got together for a gig in the States and came to London this January to do a one-off show at the Astoria.

I got offered a blowjob as I made to leave the venue by the side exit down a slimy back alley. ‘No thanks, man, I had one earlier.’ I responded, pretty sharpish. One is always being offered blowjobs in the vicinity of the Astoria. It goes with the territory.

It’d been an emotional night of tunes suffused by a narcotic beauty. The dueling between guitarist Prophet and Cacavas on keyboards – two real master musicians – still seemed to be as fundamentally original a sound as anybody important has ever made. Vocalist Dan Stuart, a patrician writerly figure fronting a strident swaggering swamp of sound, was man enough to wear his heart on his sleeve and to be moved by the whole experience. I was touched by the occasion myself.

Bands reforming is tricky business. The Velvet Underground took a hammer to their pristine reputation when they did a Nineties tour. My own favorite adolescent band recently reunited dreadfully as a bunch of besuited, smiling, and middle-aged bores. The Stones’ restoration started shakily but they ultimately found their feet.

You can always come back but you can’t comeback all the way.

Green on Red have just finished a short tour of Europe involving gigs at festivals and clubs.

They sailed into London to participate in an itinerant festival – Don’t Look Back – which gets classic bands to perform live an entire album deemed by armchair pundits to be their finest. Iggy and the Stooges played Fun House as part of last year’s festivities. This year Green on Red did Gas Food Lodging.

I’m totally opposed to the idea of bands playing a so-called “classic album” live as if rock music has become a preserved-in-aspic art form whose best days are behind it. The concept of the “classic album” is a crock of shit too. You either like a band and you buy every last thing they do and you like the most of it or else you’re just a male bozo who collects stuff and reads monthly rock magazines. The “in-concert album” phenomenon started when that abominable Republican walrus Brian Wilson started touring his allegedly “legendary” Smile masterpiece. Why won’t somebody tie Brian Wilson up in a sack with a few large chunks of concrete inside, and throw the sack into the nearest river?

I don’t much like Koko, where GoR were performing, either. It used to be the faintly ridiculous Camden Palace and now it’s been gussied up to look like the world’s biggest bordello.

Back in the Astoria in January the crowd was mainly fortyish gentlemen in black suits, some of them chomping on cigars while others sported Stetsons. Koko and the Don’t Look Back concept brought in a different element. There were a lot more women, many of them glamorous. Denim was much in evidence.

It looks like Green on Red is going to be around a bit from now on. This is good. Gas Food Lodging doesn’t exist as some slice of cultural nostalgia to be conjured up like a magic trick for self-styled cognoscenti. It’s an album available in the shops now, still as exciting as it was in 1985.

The band’s set finished, like their album did, with the old civil rights hymn, We Shall Overcome. As they played it, a filmic backdrop featured examples of American torture and abuse in Iraq. The song turned into a long, percussive, sonic throb. Its great that this band is around again, helping keep beauty on a razor’s edge.

Chuck Prophet and The Mission Express: Sept. 13 – Off Broadway

Combining jangly, country-style joie de vivre with carnivorous Memphis-soul intensity, the former Green On Red lynchpin remains an engaging performer with a winningly droll sense of humor. His songs can also hinge on wonderful sing-along pop gems or total freak-out hits.

Chuck Prophet is a good songwriter and a decent singer, but the best moments of his live sets are when his mouth is shut. That’s when Prophet is uncoiling his guitar solos—kinetic, crackling and always inventive, wading up from the swamp of Neil Young’s “Tonight’s the Night” and heading for the open country. There were plenty of those skin-tingling passages at Iota on Saturday night, the songs sounding far more alive than they have on his last few recordings.

“Age of Miracles,” Prophet’s seventh and latest solo album—he initially made his mark as guitarist for grizzled psychedelic cowboys Green on Red—serves up his usual omelet of fractured Memphis soul, country (he was alt before alt-country was cool) and Dylanesque romps. Playing off the steel and rhythm guitars of Tom Heyman and the keyboards and vocals of wife Stephanie Finch, Prophet, whose own voice bears more than a passing resemblance to Tom Petty’s, dunked new songs (“Just to See You Smile,” “Solid Gold,” “Automatic Blues”) in an agreeably gritty bath.

The 90-minute set’s highlights were live-wire solos woven into songs with offbeat hooks: “You Did” (a shakin’ retelling of Barry Mann’s “Who Put the Bomp”), a wonderful cover of Tyla Gang’s early Stiff single “Styrofoam” and the stomping, fuzzed-over hoodoo of “Shore Patrol.” When Prophet put solos and songs together with that kind of raucous, bar-band energy, his home-brewed country-soul tasted spellbindingly good.