IT has been three years since his last album, Age Of Miracles, but Chuck Prophet hasn’t exactly been sitting around.

For one thing, there’s his own new album, possibly his best, called Soap And Water.

He has also produced a new album from Kelly Willis (“We jumped off some cliffs together!”), reformed and toured Europe with his former band Green On Red, collaborated with Alejandro Escovedo an a new album, made his big screen acting debut in a film called Revolution Summer, and worked on the soundtrack of the Sundance Film Festival hit, Teeth.

Surprisingly, then, Chuck talks of a “crisis of faith” after Age Of Miracles.

“We toured for a month too long with that record,” he contends. His current touring band, though, which he’ll be bringing to Club Academy this weekend, is, he enthuses, “lighter on their feet than any band I’ve worked with before”.

Speaking of which, a lot of people were surprised when alt-country rockers Green On Red reformed a few months back “It took us by surprise too,” he laughs.

“I suppose we did it as a kind of dare, but I was surprised, I think we all were, at the ease with which it came together. Might we do it again? I wouldn’t be against it at all.”

The project with Alejandro Escovedo also “just sort of happened. He asked me down one weekend to try writing some songs together and we’ve ended up writing a whole record.

“It’s sort of like our joint musical biography. There’s a lot of real characters in there.”