TWELFTH STUDIO ALBUM PAYS HOMAGE TO SAN FRANCISCO

CAST OF CHARACTERS INCLUDES WILLIE MAYS, THE MITCHELL BROTHERS, JIM JONES, RED MAN, DAN WHITE, CASTRO DISTRICT, EMPEROR NORTON AND MORE

NATIONAL TOUR TO BE ANNOUNCED

“…a sparky songwriter worthy of greater attention.” Q Magazine

“Prophet delivers with quixotic swagger and declamatory sneer.” MOJO

With “his triple-threat ability—excellent songwriter, killer lead guitarist, charismatic frontman”—(AOL Spinner), California native and longtime San Francisco resident singer-songwriter Chuck Prophet pays homage to the city he calls home for his twelfth studio album, Temple Beautiful. Set for February 7, 2012 release on Yep Roc Records, the album is named for the ill-fated club of the same name, “Temple Beautiful is a long closed punk rock club located in the old Reverend Jim Jones’ People’s Temple. Where I saw my first gigs,” says Prophet, who co-produced the album with Brad Jones. “This record was made in San Francisco, by San Franciscans about San Francisco.”

Co-written with klipschutz (AKA klip) at Prophet’s “non-internet-having office space,” the 12-track album’s odes include “Castro Halloween,” “a gleaming, breezy rocker, anchored by Prophet’s everyman voice” (SF Weekly), “Willie Mays Is Up At Bat,” “Emperor Norton in the Last Year of His Life (1880),” and the title track which boasts Roy Loney, vocalist of legendary Bay Area band The Flamin’ Groovies, on guest vocals.

Compelled to pay tribute to the history and weirdness that brought him to the city nearly 30 years ago and inspired by current San Francisco artists, Prophet entered the studio with James DePrato (guitars), Rusty Miller (bass, vocals) and The Tubes’ Prairie Prince (drums, percussion) to record “an unsentimental (though loving) tour of San Francisco,” says Prophet. “My effort to tap into the history, the weirdness, the energy and spontaneity that brought me here in the first place. All the songs are San Francisco related somehow.” The album also features Stephanie Finch (vocals); Chris Carmichael (cello, violin); Jim Hoke (woodwinds, flute).

At 18, Prophet joined the seminal Green on Red and soon became one of the driving forces behind the cult heroes and the influential L.A. Paisley Underground scene in the 1980s. During his eight-year run with the band, he cut a major-label album with producer Jim Dickinson, enjoyed a couple record deals, and made his solo debut in 1990 with Brother Aldo (Fire Records). He subsequently released Balinese Dancer (1993), Feasts of Hearts (1995), Homemade Blood (Hightone, 1998), The Hurting Business (Hightone, 1998), Homemade Boot: Live at Roskilde (Cord, 2000), No Other Love (New West, 2002), Ages of Miracles (New West, 2004), Turn The Pigeons Loose (Cooking Vinyl, 2004), Soap and Water (Yep Roc, 2007) and 2009’s neo-political rocker, ¡Let Freedom Ring! (Yep Roc).

Over the past several years, Chuck’s music has been heard in several hit television series’ including True Blood (HBO), Californication (Showtime), and Sons of Anarchy (FX). He also co-wrote all the songs on Alejandro Escovedo’s 2008 critically acclaimed album Real Animal.

Throughout his career his tunes have been performed by legends like Solomon Burke and Heart, he’s recorded with everyone from Warren Zevon to Kelly Willis, and taken the stage with Jim Dickinson, Lucinda Williams and Aimee Mann, to name a few. As a producer, Prophet’s credits include Kelly Willis’ Translated From Love (2007) and Jace Everett’s (“Bad Things” True Bloodtheme song) new release Red Revelations.

Track List:

1. Play That Song Again

2. Castro Halloween

3. Temple Beautiful

4. Museum Of Broken Hearts

5. Willie Mays is Up at Bat

6. The Left Hand and the Right Hand

7. I Felt Like Jesus

8. Who Shot John

9. He Came From So Far Away (Red Man Speaks)

10. Little Girl, Little Boy

11. White Night, Big City

12. Emperor Norton in the Last Year of His Life (1880)

For more information, please contact Mary Moyer, Lellie Capwell, or Carla Sacks:

Sacks & Co, or , 212.741.1000, , 818.384.1180

Chuck Prophet sat down with writer Alex Green to discuss the songs on No Other Love.

Alex Green: “WHAT CAN YOU TELL ME” - A bluesy number with horny swagger. A rave-up like Jon Spencer piggybacked on Joe Tex’s shoulders. An apparent tale of infidelity at a bridal shower when the narrator’s girlfriend drinks too much and climbs all over some dude like a jungle gym. The worst part: the narrator is the last one to find out.

Chuck Prophet: “The real clincher is when it gets to the bridge and he discovers that the Chippendale dancer in question was his best friend Jerome. Oh no! Not Jerome! This is the kinda news that gets around. The horror—the shame. Ah…I’m just playing ya’ll. Stick around for the outro. How often do ya get to hear someone play bottleneck bass through an envelope filter? You may never again.”

AG: “AFTER THE RAIN” - A hushed and gorgeous ballad that looks ahead to spring. The leaves are turning color; you take off your boots and walk in the water. Found strings, brushes on a snare and grandma’s metronome.

CP: “That’s me playing the punch bowl on the chorus. My favorite bit. And we should give special mention to Stephie - the only singer I know who can effortlessly barnacle onto my vocals. Not to mention, brave those mouth-to-mouth duets night after night. Not for the squeamish, I tell ya.”

AG: “I BOW DOWN AND PRAY TO EVERY WOMAN I SEE” - Swamp changes augmented by a bossa nova groove. A tour-de-force that finds Prophet in a playful, associative mood. Name another song that mentions both Sissy Spacek and dropping acid at Disneyland? Didn’t think you could.

CP: “Back in middle school in Orange County, radical meant taking acid at Disneyland. Ah…the good old days. Kinda like ‘To All The Girls I’ve Loved Before’ only not as good.

“They don’t make those Southern exploitation movies any more, do they? Jerry Reed, Burt Reynolds… small towns, crooked sheriffs, corrupt politicians and most of all, those custom color Pontiac Firebirds and Trans Ams. I always dug Jerry “Guitar Man” Reed. A real underrated songwriter, as they say… ‘Amos Moses,’ ‘When You’re Hot You’re Hot’. Masterful! He used to make the rounds on the afternoon talk show circuit. I’d watch with my mom after school while she did the ironing. He’d panel with the host holding a guitar and always show off a little. I seem to recall he was a mind-numbing, devastatingly great guitarist. Anyway, I kinda lost track of those movies - ‘Gator’ anyone?”

AG: “RUN PRIMO, RUN” - A modern-day folktale of fellow hoodlums who pilot a failed scheme all the way to the bitter end in a border town you’ve probably never been to. Replete with a snare drum piped through a twin reverb and mariachi horns, its dark grooves punctuate the imminent desperation of our two heroes - or villains. Think Raymond Chandler in a Hawaiian shirt somewhere in Florida.

CP: “Too many miles in an Econoline sitting on a Fender Twin Reverb reading Elmore Leonard with a flashlight in the dark I suspect. Based on a true story… the names were changed… you know the rest. What can I tell you about Primo and Sonny? Sonny hates pretentious assholes and strip malls exploding around him. And Primo never did like to be talked down to. In their day, they had wars to protest. There were real sides. Four students were shot to death by National Guardsmen at Kent State. Hell, even Patty Hearst wielded a machine gun. Just a little harmless fun, ‘til somebody gets hurt.

“It was a simple plan. Of course the heist went terribly wrong - they always do. Down the road, Sonny developed a conscience or fell into a paranoid funk, depending on whom you talk to. And as they say, only the truth can set you free. Besides, after a couple of drinks, Sonny never could keep his mouth shut. Now it’s not just between Sonny and his Higher Power. Primo had better run. The money’s gone and there’s no statute of limitations on murder. Primo says, ‘Damn, Sonny—I got kids!’

” I thought I was paying tribute to Hubert Sumlin with those repetitive one note Tele stings, until Justin the engineer spun around on his stool and said, ‘Rad dude, sounds like Cypress Hill!’ I guess ‘it’s all good’ as the kids say.”

AG: “STORM ACROSS THE SEA” - Heavily under the influence of Tony Joe White/Jeannie C. Riley and all those great southern exploitation story songs from “Son Of A Preacher Man” to “Midnight Train To Georgia” and every stop between. The production: a marriage of eras—the rhythm section sounds like they’re on loan from D’Angelo. Dripping wah-wah, gooey molasses electric wurlitzer.

CP: “I wrote this with klipschutz in a couple of minutes one Sunday in his basement flat in S.F. We were both getting hungry and halfheartedly finished it off. Three verses before lunch I always say. It just wouldn’t go away. We must have rewritten it a dozen times. After the first line, ‘someone call the ambulance, she’s completely nude standing on a fence’ and the string figure that follows it, people should get the idea that something’s about to go down. It would be foolish to follow ‘I woke up this morning, duh, duh, duh duh’ with all those grandiose strings … wouldn’t it?”

AG: “NO OTHER LOVE” - A spare and slinky number with pedal steel and soaring strings. An honest and intimate meditation, whose mantra, ‘no other love,’ allows the narrator to go anywhere. Beautiful. Some people call it skywriting.

CP: “I involuntarily wrote this song in a hotel during a commercial break in one sitting … top to bottom! All three chords and two lines or whatever it is. We were ‘rehearsaling’ some stuff and setting up mics to record demos at Pigshead Studio/Rehearsals. It was so cold that day in that cement bunker of a studio, I can remember seeing my breath in front of my face. Tim Mooney surreptitiously recorded us running it down. Not the first take: he actually recorded us learning it. That’s why it takes so long for the band to come in. They’re pretty quick - by the time we’re two verses in, key change and all, they got all three of the chords in the right order. No point in trying to recreate that crime scene or write a second verse for that matter … not that I didn’t try in vain. We later recovered the original multi-track cassette it was first captured on and Greg Liesz and I over-dubbed onto it in my living room. Hats off to Tim Mooney for rolling the tape. Now that’s production! And props to Jason Borger, who charted the beautiful string arrangement.”

AG: “ELOUISE” (self-help boogaloo 2001) - Farfisa and bajo sexto guitars rage in this Mexican rock and roll border nugget fiesta. No shortage of secret sauce.

CP: “He drives a late model Lexus. There’s a stack of self-help books on the passenger seat. He’s not necessarily a bad guy. He’s accepting applications for a mate. Must have a positive outlook and a sympathetic ear and a few other specific qualifications. A song that might build character to sing night after night. I have no idea. That’s a nod to Senator Condit with the Modesto reference. There’s always something to pull out of the air - or maybe it’s the fact that wherever I go there’s a TV on in the background. Not that I have any beef with TV. You go fight the power. I’m staying at home. There’s got to be something on!

“God knows why, but did you know that for some reason, a lot of Germans settled around San Antonio, Texas? Obviously, they brought their accordions with them. It’s been well documented. In the ‘60s, when the world went electric, any self-respecting Beatles fan traded in their accordion for a Farfisa organ. It’s true! Or maybe I just made all this up. Sir Doug, Question Mark … I can’t get enough of that shit. I recommend you go out and get the Texas Tornado’s greatest hits today. It just might make you a better person. Mixing this song, we tried our damndest to find a reverb setting that sounded like a corrugated tin shack. Apparently, they haven’t made one yet. Give it time, though.”

AG: “THAT’S HOW MUCH I NEED YOUR LOVE” - A lover’s plea in the tradition of Andrew Marvel, but way hornier. Swaggering, pulsing, and smooth. Duane Eddy meets the Gorillaz at Lou Rawls’ house.

CP: “When we cut the track, we were amazed at how Max was able to lock in the omni chord beat box with the band, until it occurred to us that we were playing to him! It’s just a blues really, over a Casiotone beat box. Stephie came up with that cool background siren vocal part. I’d like to hear Bon Scott sing this song, or better yet, Mark Kozelek. It’s a kind of predatorial thing, isn’t it? Not quite Andre Williams, but heck, my parents are gonna hear this. And God knows, I’ve done enough to embarrass them already.”

AG: “SUMMERTIME THING” - Recorded under the influence of Dr. Dre/Tupac Shakur. A sun-soaked urban shuffle that pays homage to the summer. You can feel the sweat down your back, the sting of debt, and you know it’s going to end, but you just don’t care. This one has bounce…with steam. California soul that tips its hat to Roger Trout with the vocoder in the chorus. Pedal steel and vocoder are a deadly combo-you don’t find that everyday.

CP: “Am I deluded or is it a hit? I’d like to have a hit. Instead of living like a community college student, maybe I could start to live like a grad student? Or maybe get one of those custom guitars with my name written across the fretboard in mother of pearl. I can see the video now: girls in bikinis singing into blow dryers… Yeah!” We played this song recently and a Mission boho Clark Kent eyewear-donning hipster said to me, ‘Chuck, I don’t mean any disrespect, but that song put me right back where I was the first time I heard ‘Night Moves.’ Bob Seger? No offense taken!”

AG: “WHAT MAKES THE MONKEY DANCE” - Adolescent character studies for the sexually confused. A rootsy hip-hop meditation that asks some pretty important questions. The answers are forthcoming.

CP: “There’s nothing unhealthy about it. Some things you can’t learn in books … so just throw away the owner’s manual. We don’t need Dr. Ruth to tell us that - or do we? With only two chords toggling back and forth, your mind tends to wander. I try to imagine Cleopatra dressed as Venus, the goddess of love, reclining under a gold canopy, fanned by boys in Cupid costumes. Or that fleeting moment when at a stoplight on Mission Street - the windows down - Santo and Johnny spilling out of the radio … a low rider pulls along side, pumping the 808 at bone rattling volume, and for a split second it all comes together in harmony like chocolate in the peanut butter. That’s the sound I was chasing. And I guess I’ll keep chasing it until something reaches out and grabs me! I laid down a track of my attempt at a human beat box and we built it up from there.”

AG: “OLD FRIENDS” - And that’s the thing about small town gossip—you know so much you forget to talk about the things that actually happened. A track featuring nylon string guitar over a bossa nova pre-set beat.

CP: “Stephie played the one note samba ‘string’ in an homage to Nilsson’s ‘Everybody’s Talkin’.’ There are some secrets we all take to the grave. Then again, if you can’t laugh at yourself, make fun of other people. That’s what I always say.”

Rise

At first it was called ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’, but you haven’t been able to call a song that for several hundred years. That’s Stephie Finch cast in the role of the wayward child. It’s a little like Tony Joe White piggybacked over a Turtles breakbeat or a trip from San Francisco to San Antonio in less than three minutes.

The Hurting Business

Mike Tyson said it first. Presumably, he meant it literally. Biting off years and breaking hearts is all in day’s work for some showfolk. I think I was under the influence of ? and the Mysterians and Sir Douglas Quintet at the time. Maybe Jerry Springer will pick up on it as a theme song. It’s all in there.

Apology

Randy Newman meets Glen Campbell in a wine bar and they start arguing about the south. In comes El Vez, who neither one has ever heard of; a young lady on each arm and a spare bringing up the rear. All of them seem to know exactly who he is. He introduces himself and Randy opines, “You’re not even the king of bottled beers where I come from.” Things get unprofessional. Before it’s all over, everybody wants an apology. Sensitive to insensitive and back again. Conn organ metronome “count off’ preserved on cassette and reproduced by Jacquire King.

It Won’t Be Long

Trailer park trash, carpetbaggers with high Arbitron ratings. The sad beauty of freak encounters recollected, last chances cheerfully blown, Waterloo sunsets digitally altered by faceless electromagnetic collectives. Put your Business in the street and the heartland takes a bow. Jenny Jones nightmare appearance hangover recounted in three verses.

Shore Patrol

Old movies. Anti-heroes. A tribute to Jack, Hal and the generation who took Hollywood by the balls and held firm for a while. Not nearly long enough. Before the French reclaimed it and Auteur became nothing more than another post modern band moniker. And by the way, that’s the pride of Daly City, DJ Rise on turntable. Rise and I have been chipping away at our own record for a while. Stay tuned.

God’s Arms

A story within a story, based on a line from a romance magazine. Reincarnation, shape-shifting, Bobby Gentry strings blowing in from the east. Buddy Holly on opium. Resurfacing on a rehab collection plate.

Diamond Jim

Who the hell is Diamond Jim? There’s a finders fee, but not a big one. I found a stack of 45’s at a flea market. Watt’s One Hundred and Tenth Street Rhythm Band, James Brown, Lowell Fulsom, Inez Foxx, Bull and the Matadors and the like. I added them to my swelling collection. I lived with them till they got under my skin and stayed there. I would’ve loved to have come up with a new post millennial dance step, but this is what came out the other end of the Cuisinart. Without Diamond Jim, the BBQ is just row after row of sizzling meat and the announcer wont say “play ball.” Diamond Jim is the patron saint of the Apocalypse. Until he comes back, traffic lights will blink incoherently. Fowls will fill the air, rivers will change directions, my laptop will go up in digital dust.

Bring it on.

I Couldn’t Be Happier

Here Comes the Bride? Having recently gotten hitched, I got to thinking someone should write a song for the grooms. Where lovers sway in the key of A minor. I never got around to finishing this song. The first time I ever sang it is the version you hear.

Lucky

Revenge is a dish best served cold. This guy steals your band and marries your girl and you end up running his sound board and taking her dog to the vet. We wrote it thinking it might be perfect for Johnny Cash. It turned into this, which might not be so perfect for Johnny Cash after all. Who wouldn’t like to get lucky?

Dyin’ All Young

Major 7th chords and a towel over the snare. Who’s gonna count the song off now?

Statehouse (Burning In the Rain)

Its bound to happen. Everything will. I play the patsy, the guy who just wandered by and took the fall. Farfisas provide the stabbing punctuation. Even the buildings built to last forever don’t. In Havana as elsewhere, sometimes people cheer for all the wrong reasons.

La Paloma

On the road again. California is so close to Mexico that whenever we mention it someone is sure to remind us we stole it. J.J. Cale locked in the research department of Mattel Toys.

Ex-Green on Red mainstay Chuck Prophet continues his solo metamorphosis with The Hurting Business

Prophet comes clean: “Rock ‘n’ roll has just gotten too precious.”

The first thing you notice talking to Chuck Prophet, naturally, is his voice. Not so much the way it sounds—a raspy, unfettered bark—but the attitude it projects. His is the tone of a polite cynic—filled with gallows humor, self-deprecation and a world-weary indifference. The kind that seems logical given a lifetime of cult success and junkie excess.

The L.A.-born Prophet spent nearly a decade with ‘80s psychedelic cowboys turned roots avatars Green on Red, most of it riding shotgun with partner/singer Dan Stuart. By the time the group ground to a halt some nine years and 10 albums after it had begun, GOR had yielded a rabid underground following (especially in the U.K.), a vaunted critical legacy and little in terms of tangible success.

Meanwhile, Prophet had become the victim of the clichéd rock ‘n’ roll existence, plunged into the depths of a herculean heroin habit that left him at death’s door.

But by the mid-‘90s, life found Prophet clean, married and in the throes of a fruitful, if overlooked, solo career.

Terminally deadpan, the lanky guitarist brightens when discussing the genesis of his fifth and latest album, The Hurting Business—a radical and triumphant departure from the journeyman country-rock of his past.

The idea for the record was hatched after Prophet returned home from a lengthy tour in support of 1997’s Homemade Blood. In his mind, he had already conceived a loose-knit concept album which would take an aural shift away from the innately folkish charm and Exile-era Stones aphorisms that had marked his previous work.

“I had a sound in my head,” recalls Prophet. “And I wanted to take a cinematic approach with it.”

Prophet’s primary influence in creating The Hurting Business wasn’t musical, but rather inspired by Danish director Lars Von Trier’s “Dogma 95” film movement. Stylistically rooted in naturalism and realism, Von Trier’s pictures (most notably Breaking the Waves) focus on the vagaries of contemporary life, filmed without effects, using natural lighting and jarring movements provided by hand-held cameras.

To help him achieve a similarly original and vertiginous feel on wax, Prophet hooked up with Jacquire King, an engineer and desktop recording wizard who helped shape Tom Waits’ grim-and-grand weeper Mule Variations.

“Part of working with him was a desire to get out of the normal staid studio recording process. We just kind of took my original four-track sketches of the songs and loaded them into the computer and were able to go in and add and cut stuff wherever we wanted.”

Prophet also strove to match the organic feel of the Dogma style by capturing a natural ambiance on his vocal tracks, recording them everywhere from the front seat of his car to a bathroom stall. “I’ve never been one to require mood lighting or candles when I sing,” he notes with a chuckle. “But sometimes you do feel the need to extend the mike cable a little bit so you can get that same feeling you get when you’re sitting there singing by yourself.”

To complete his vision, Prophet decided he needed something more than the jagged guitar chords he’d long relied on. He found what he sought in the lexicon of electronic music—the stutters and starts of turntables and elasticized grooves of machine-made beats.

“That was definitely inspired by a lot of things I’ve been hearing,” says Prophet, rattling off a list of names that range from hip-hop eclectic Dr. Octagon to neo-blues experimentalist Jon Spencer.

“It’s at the point where people are taking traditional songwriting or traditional structures and figuring out ways to twist and turn them sideways. That’s always the fun part—kicking the song around and wrestling with it. Seeing how much you can beat it up beyond recognition before it gets worse.”

Much of Business is augmented by loops, scratching and the occasional sample—the bulk of them provided by prominent Bay Area turntablist DJ Rise. The album’s cut-and-paste fusion teems with an overall quality that mimics the laid-back jazz cool and foreboding sonic textures of Portishead and the Sneaker Pimps.

While the move may smack of an aging roots-rocker’s bid for postmodern relevancy, Prophet incorporates the subtle electronic touches so deftly, they seem less an intrusion or distraction than just another instrument at his disposal.

If anything, the songs lend themselves to such tinkering as Prophet’s effort comes off more memorably than Joe Strummer’s Rock, Art and the X-Ray Style, and more genuine than the Stones’ Bridges to Babylon flirtations with the Dust Brothers—both forays by traditional rockers into similar loop-and-sample territory.

But beyond modern accouterments, the foundation of The Hurting Business is rooted in a bedrock of deep soul sounds—black and white, North and South. Songs that draw on greasy R&B, from Muscle Shoals to Harlem, and a strain of late ‘60s country/pop that Prophet calls “housewife goth.” “Bobbie Gentry, Tom T. Hall, Dusty Springfield, Jimmy Webb—all the great story songs from that era.”

Consequently, there is a heavy emphasis on craft. Half the album’s 12 songs clock in at three minutes or less, a structure that Prophet regards as vital to the essence of his work.

“Rock ‘n’ roll has just gotten too precious. I hear records nowadays and the fades are like a minute. If you go back and listen to James Brown or Charles Wright, Betty Harris, Lee Dorsey, any of the stuff I was soaking in the couple years where I was working toward this record, they’re like two and a half minutes long—that’s it. And when they’re over, all you want to do is put the needle back to the beginning. That’s the kind of record I wanted to make.”

Prophet should take heart; The Hurting Business is exactly that kind of album, one that invites frequent and repeated listenings, yet provides new revelations with each spin.

Kicking off with the funky Ennio Morricone-influenced opener, “Rise” (“A change, a change is gonna come/Those very words once left me numb”), Prophet fashions a sometimes dark, often funny narrative of modern life, seething with urban tension, and sprinkled with caustic insights and pop culture references.

The title track, an insistent farfisa-maraca number that hints at Beck, were Mr. Hansen in the midst of a serious Sir Douglas Quintet jag. A he-did/she-did tale of fraught relationships and bruised romance (“You hurt me, baby, and I hurt you/Sometimes we fake, sometimes we jab/Sometimes we bounce right off the mat”), it takes its name from the unlikeliest of sources, a Mike Tyson quote.

“It was during a press conference after he bit off Evander Holyfield’s ear. They asked him if he wanted to apologize, if he felt any remorse about what he did. His reaction was just belligerent and insolent: ‘You understand, I’m in the hurting business, that’s my job,’” says Prophet in sotto voce, imitating Tyson. “He thought he was doing his job in there. I liked that. I don’t know how it relates to what boys and girls do to each other, but it ended up in my notebook.”

Prophet’s vocals—which normally split the difference between Tom Petty’s redneck whine and Kurt Wallinger’s British drone—take on a variety of hues here: the somber baritone of “Rise”“; the funky drawl of “Diamond Jim”“; the angelic croon of ‘Dyin’ All Young.”

On “It Won’t Be Long,” Prophet’s singing recalls Iggy Pop’s dry, craggy tone. Ironically, the song is a more successful stab at the kind of moody string atmospherics that the middle-aged Stooge attempted on last year’s career nadir, Avenue B.

The song’s theme, like much of Business, is imbued with a sense of irreverent topicality—in this case, it’s the world of the confrontational daytime talk show. “What we were trying to imagine was what the mother lode of all hangovers would be like if you stood naked on Jenny Jones and embarrassed yourself in front of a whole nation,” says Prophet, breaking into a coarse laugh. “What would the morning after that be like, when you realized what you’d actually done?”

Peter Anderson

Pills and booze: Prophet (left) and Stuart with Green on Red in 1989

While the subject matter may be bleak—Prophet characterizing it as “trailer park trash with high Arbitron ratings” and “the sad beauty of freak encounters recollected”—the song retains a light, almost absurdist lyrical quality: “I like T-Bone Walker/I like Wonder bread/I like to quote back in your face/All the things you never said.”

Elsewhere, Hammond organ colors the deathly revenge anthem “Lucky” (“I’d like to get Lucky/Get my fingers ‘round his throat”), its dark, smoky verses and skewed sonics surrendering to a chorus that arches up toward classic pop territory.

Not surprisingly, the record does stumble upon some of Tom Waits’ patented gruff ‘n’ clang, with the jagged blues and vocoder/megaphone intonations of “La Paloma” and the funky “Shore Patrol” (another vaguely Beck-ish sounding number).

At his best, Prophet seems capable of synthesizing his many influences—musical and lyrical—into a uniquely original vision. When he does, the results are the apogee of understated brilliance, as on the album’s centerpiece, “Apology.”

A languid mesh of warm bass and Mellotron, the song takes the universal human need for forgiveness and turns the concept on its ear with a litany of comical examples: “CBS from the MTV,” “the shoulder from the road,” “the Cancer from the Scorpio.”

But the moment that best captures Prophet’s ironic worldview comes after a verse in which he opines that “someday soon the Vatican is gonna call”—an allusion to the recent papal apology for the Catholic Church’s toleration of the Holocaust. Prophet follows that heady reference with a bridge that asks, “How can I swallow every little thing she says?/She don’t even know Elvis from El Vez.”

It’s the kind of uncommonly literate moment that bridges hard-edged romanticism and precise musical syntax, while plumbing the depths of pop arcana.

“When you start talking about when the Jews are going to get an apology form the Vatican, you can’t follow that up with anything too heavy,” says Prophet. “You gotta get into something as pathetic as falling out with a girl because she doesn’t know the difference between Elvis and El Vez. Some people, man, that’s how small their world is.”

Surprisingly, Prophet’s signature guitar work is downplayed on The Hurting Business. The album boasts few traditional solos, as the instrument is more a character actor than a featured star in Prophet’s wide-screen production. His twangy runs and subtle fills are still there, but they never rise above the songs, married instead to a bed of keyboard sounds, clipped percussion and ghostly background vocals (provided by a studio cast that includes Prophet’s wife, singer/pianist Stephanie Finch; bassists Roly Salley and Andy Stoller; American Music Club’s Tim Mooney; and longtime drummer Paul Revelli, among others). For Prophet—a man who made his early reputation as a six-string hot shot—the lack of over-the-top fretwork isn’t a problem.

“My tendency is to turn the guitars down. I hear that sometimes with Lindsey Buckingham or J.J. Cale—where it sounds like they’re just a little bit underneath everything. I don’t know why, that’s just where my sensibilities lie. It’s not that way onstage, though,” he says.

Like a number of his fellow roots-rockers, Prophet has long faced an unusual career quandary; all but ignored in his home country, he’s maintained a healthy following—even minor star status—overseas.

“I’ve got a love/hate relationship with Europe. I mean, I enjoy the success we have over there, but I’m not making this music thinking what someone in Paris would like. I’m making American music,” he offers adamantly. “After a while, you start walking around thinking you’re crazy because you’re not connecting with more Americans. But I think we’ve sort of turned that around with this record. It’s been really gratifying to go to shows and see a lot of people, especially when they speak English.”

Since its January release, The Hurting Business helped boost his profile in the U.S., earning the kind of breakthrough hosannas from critics that Prophet supporters have long demanded. Despite that, his sales remain modest, a situation that he feels will be remedied over time.

“The thing about being a solo artist is you tend to get discovered and rediscovered. I think the real challenge is building a nice body of work that people can tap into anywhere along the line.”

Prophet’s solo catalogue is impressive, running from 1990’s country quaint Brother Aldo, through the Cosmic American muse of 1993’s Balinese Dancer, continuing with 1995’s unassumingly retro Feast of Hearts and up to his previous long player, the suburbia study Homemade Blood.

Unfortunately, the bulk of those titles are hard to find on these shores. Only Business is readily available, and it was originally recorded for the U.K.‘s Cooking Vinyl label, only later to be licensed for American release by Hightone.

Still, Prophet’s popularity is flowering in many quarters, thanks in part to the cult surrounding Green on Red, one that continues to grow on both sides of the Atlantic. In 1995, China Records released a GOR best-of; in 1997, Germany’s Normal issued Archives Vol. 1, a retrospective collecting demos, B-sides and live tracks; in 1998, Edsel U.K. put out the group’s last four albums as a pair of special-edition two-fers. And later this year, Restless Records will issue an expanded, remastered version of 1985’s alt-country pioneering Gas, Food & Lodging.

Prophet (who hooked up with the originally Tucson-based Green on Red in L.A. in the mid-‘80s) looks back at his time with the group fondly. Still, he has no regrets about GOR’s 1992 demise.

“You can only drag your adolescence so far into your adulthood. Being in a band is like living with your parents. You gotta move out of the house before people start talking—‘How old is he? 35 years old and he’s still living at home!’” he says, amid gales of laughter. “It’s just natural to get out of it. Plus, nobody can break me up. I’ve tried. Believe me, I tried to break myself up and it’s hard to do.”

While the arc of his work clearly proves that Prophet has benefited from solitude, he hasn’t remained cloistered. On the contrary, he’s been an in-demand collaborator on projects ranging from alt-country sweetheart Kelly Willis’ 1999 comeback LP What I Deserve (Prophet plays on the album and co-wrote its “Got a Feeling for Ya” with Southern soul composer Dan Penn) as well as hired gun for alterna-rockers Cake and Hollywood songwriter cynic Warren Zevon.

“It’s always flattering when the phone rings,” says Prophet. “Sometimes you do it just to pay the utility bills and sometimes you get lucky and get to work with somebody like Kelly Willis out of the blue, and it ends up being really rewarding.”

Prophet also recently returned to the group fold, with an all-star contingent known as the Raisins in the Sun. Featuring legendary Memphis pianist/producer Jim Dickinson (Replacements, Big Star), knob-turning tandem Sean Slade and Paul Kolderie (Uncle Tupelo, Radiohead), singer/songwriter Jules Shear, and Dylan rhythm foils Harvey Brooks and Winston Watson, the group convened in a Tucson recording studio for two weeks in May 1999, with the notion of writing and recording an album from scratch.

“That was a leap of faith for everybody,” says Prophet of the sessions. “I think we were all prepared to go down to Tucson and come away with nothing.”

Instead, the collective came away with a self-described “10 slices of rock and soul” that are tentatively scheduled for release on Rounder Records.

Prophet’s immediate plans include the long-delayed completion of the debut album from Go-Go Market, a collaboration with wife Finch that he describes as “fulfilling a Brill Building jones.”

A follow-up to Business is also in its early stages. Instead of again taking the redacted studio route, Prophet plans to write and record a more ornate and traditional album, one that will feature fleshed-out arrangements, horns and a string section.

It’s hard not to marvel at Prophet’s versatility and output. It seems especially remarkable for a man once regarded as the epitome of wasted, junkie cool. The same Chuck Prophet who once denounced “rehab” as artistic immolation on the pages of Melody Maker.

“In a lot of ways I feel like I’m crazier now than I was back then—I’m just not on drugs anymore,” he says, laughing. “I’m off my medication and I feel like I’m much more dangerous now. I really do.”

Hey chuck, how are you? how’s life in San Francisco? it’s cold and rainy in London. How do you feel about brother aldo being re-issued after 8 years?

It always nice to know your records are in print. I don’t have children but, after a while I imagine these records become like kids from another marriage. You don’t need to see ‘em everyday. One just takes comfort in knowing they’re out there fending for themselves.

What are your thoughts and recollections on the album?

Brother Aldo started out as song demos. At the time, I naively thought I might go to Nashville and get a gig as a songwriter. I was in a band (Green On Red) that had disintegrated (shortly after, resurrected-but that’s another story). I was ready to retire or head for the hills. I didn’t get the staff songwriter gig, but the cassette was dubbed here and there and when Chris Carr played it for Fire records head honcho Clive Solomon, he demanded to put it out. I made peace with my nasally nicotine stained baritone and we threw it out there. A modest but proud group of people responded and I’ve been making Chuck Prophet records ever since. And last year I eventually made the first of many treks out to Nashville to write.

Was there anything different about the recording process that went in to defining the sound of the record?

Producer/raconteur (sp?) Scott Mathew’s had converted his Bernal Hights shack into a makeshift studio. He had a funky AM radio console and one good German mic (which we used on EVERYTHING). In order to disguise some of the tape hiss we kept an old tube radio bleeding into the room at all times tuned in between the just the right two stations for the optimum static. This approach was later affectionately, commonly, referred to as “Lo Fi”. It was mixed as we went along on 7” inch 1/4’ reels which I carried it around in my suitcase. The tapes went through a couple airport x-rays machines before I made the hand-off to the Fire Record brass in a Camden pub. Which had me concerned for the first four pints or so.

How do you feel does it stand up to the test of time?

If I stand back and squint when I listen to it, I dare say it sounds timeless. I think because of a combination of the technical limitations and the spirit in which it was recorded, it’s held up. Thankfully, there was no one around who felt compelled to meddle with it too much . We didn’t bow to any of the conventional wisdom’s of the era; None of the bells and whistles that were goin around at the time, no boxed Japanese reverbs or effects to speak of. The real test is that when I kick some of those songs around on the bandstand (which I often do) they still manage to stand up for themselves.

What kind of music were you into at the time?

As I recall, whenever in doubt, I’d turn out the lights and listen to Waylon Jennings’ Dreaming My Dreams for inspiration. Certain records have the sound that they were made when no one was looking. LX Chiltons’ Flys on Sherbert , Neil’s’ Tonight’s the Night or the Basement Tapes come to mind. I don’t mean to put myself next to those records but on a good day I like think of Brother Aldo as a kind of kindred spirit.

Who is brother aldo?

He’s a character in one of the songs. I like albums that have names. Tim by the Replacements comes to mind. I’m sure there’s others…

How did you feel about working with that many people on brother aldo?

It was mainly me and Stephie with Scott and Roly Sally together with whoever was hanging around at the time. One night we went to see JJ Cale. After the show we abducted Spooner Oldham and brought him to the studio to play piano.

As an artist what has changed for you in those 8 years?

Not a whole lot. Back then I carried those songs around in my head or backed up in a compositional note book. Now I have a laptop that saves everything. And when the song Gods are smiling it comes out of my fingers straight into the hard drive. If anything’s changed, we all like to think we get better. I Guess I’m no exception. I like to think I’ve learned and unlearned some things along the way

What’s it like working so closely with your wife Stephanie?

Nobody can sing around me like Stephie. It’ been known to get a little crazed but , hey , what am I gonna do? At this point she knows where all the bodies are buried.

What are your plans for the future? And what can we expect from the new album you’re working on at the moment?

The plan is to keep my self entertained. Any day now I’ll assemble the usual cast of Mission district musicians and characters to the studio. Maybe return to FT Apahe under the watchful eyes of Sean and Paul. We might augment it by cutting some tracks with Dan “The automator” AKA Dr. Octagon. With one eye on Hip Hop culture and one eye for wreckage in the rear view mirror. We’ll heat up the BBQ till the coals glow in the dark; Tear a couple pages from the blood stained diary and throw em in there. Then we’ll wrestle with the songs straight to tape, before they get too housebroken. and serve ‘em up greasy. You can expect less introspection, more visceral, butt shaking, sweaty revival music that I’ve only hinted at in the past. With a little luck it’ll be more in your face or up your nose.

How do you feel about the burgeoning No Depression scene in America and your place in it?

If they’re’ gonna have chat groups or rooms that debate over the best version of Townes Van Zant’s “Pancho and Lefty” how can anyone complain? Nobody invented that stuff. Anybody will tell you that.. But along with the new groups, it keeps people aware of the sources and the complete heaviness of artists like the Stanley Brothers and Furry Lewis. I dig it.

‘When I’m recording I can find a sweet spot on any guitar, but live it’s still the Squier and nothing else. Man, that guitar knows all the songs by now and it can play ‘em without thinking - which is what I need ‘cos I got to worry about other things when I’m on stage.’

‘The Squier’ is Chuck’s battered Japanese Telecaster. It cost him $150, and it’s been a mainstay of his career since early Green On Red days. He’s fitted Seymour Duncan Vintage Telepickups and the sixth tuner flips between E and low D. For amps, Chucks a vintage tube fanatic. His main squeeze is a blackface Fender Delexe Reverb with a single 12” EV speaker, though he’ll also use a Princeton and, for its metronomic tremolo, a Musicman also, on Feast Of Hearts, producer Steve Berlin brought on other toys for Chuck to get to grips with.

‘He had bazoukis with lipstick pickups, electric mandolins, baritone guitars, things like that. As a producer he’ll want to record a lot of things for effect and he does that by using a lot of effects - big crates of boxes. But I just thought music came outta your fingers y’know? But, if you can keep yourself amused with that stuff, he’ll reel it out for you.

‘A good example of what we did is Battered And Bruised, which was cut with a baritone 6-string bass capo’d at the 5th fret through a phase shifter which is his sort of thing. I was just going, “Oh yeah Steve, i’m into a lot of new groups too man, I like the Cure, Modern English…” Of course, Berlin loved it ...’