Chuck Prophet. A musician’s musician,  Rock Star to the Rock Stars.  Hipster doofus extraordinaire, swings for the cheap seats every day of his life. 

12/1-Friendly Fires, The xx-The Bottom Lounge
12/2-John Wesley Harding-Schubas
12/3-Chuck Prophet-Schubas
12/4-Ramsey Lewis-University of Illinois
12/4-Zero 7- Metro/Smart Bar
12/11-David Grisman-Old Town School of Folk
12/12-Chicago Bluegrass & Blues Festival-Congress Theater
12/15,16,17-Andrew Bird-4th Presbyterian Church
12/27-The Waco Brothers-Schubas
12/29-Umphrey’s McGee-Vic
Looking ahead…1/22,23rd-Brighton Ma-Schubas

Songwriter/Musician Chuck Prophet and band travels to Mexico City to record his upcoming album, ¡Let Freedom Ring!. Filmmaker Scott Compton and DP John Behrens went along for the ride armed with Canon 5D MkII HD SLR cameras.

Amid power outages, earthquakes, corrupt police and swine flu hysteria on CNN, Chuck and band managed to plug in and roll tape on a old-school rock record that takes no prisoners.

This trailer is on the upcoming documentary chronicling the adventure.

Source: BoingBoing

Show #46 features the new CD by SHELLEY KING called Welcome Home … and she’s backed by the subdudes.  Also new releases from  REBECCA TURNER, CHUCK PROPHET and LEEANN ATHERTON. The full playlist is posted below.  Here’s the iTunes link to subscribe or download the show and here’s the direct download link to listen right now on your computer. Check the artist’s websites and order their CD’s or downloads and tell ‘em you heard the songs on the FTB podcast.  Please  email me with any questions, comments or suggestions for the podcasts.

Show #46

SHELLEY KING - Everything’s All Right Welcome Home
CHUCK PROPHET - What Can A Mother Do Let Freedom Ring!
NORTON BUFFALO – Lovin’ in the Valley of the Moon Lovin’ in the Valley of the Moon
THE DIXIE BEE-LINERS – Heavy – Susanville
(mic break)
LEEANN ATHERTON – Daily Blues Heart Traveled Road
ERNEST TROOST – Real Music Resurrection Blues
DeSOTO RUST – Six Appeals Highway Gothic
SHELLEY KING - How You Make Me Feel Welcome Home
(mic break)
REBECCA TURNER -Listen Slowpokes
ALLEN THOMPSON - All These Years 26 Years
THE ALLENDALES – Drunkard’s Dream of Immortality Low Morals & High Standards
ANGELA EASTERLING – Big Wide World Blacktop Road
(mic break)
SHELLEY KING - Welcome Home Welcome Home

Bill Frater
Freight Train Boogie

Necking his Squire

He’s had a heavy hand in the music of Alejandro Escovedo and Kelly Willis. Solomon Burke and Warren Zevon have played his songs. But he’s also his own man, that Chuck Prophet. Here’s the skinny on his new album, ¡Let Freedom Ring!, a gut punch that connects with the Boss’s Born in the U.S.A., on that monumental album’s 25th anniversary.

Here are this week’s new music releases:

Asia featuring John Payne – Military Man [EP]
Awesome New Republic – Hearts
Bassnectar – Cozza Frenzy
The Blind Boys of Alabama – Duets
Devendra Banhart – What Will We Be
Mike Epps – Mike Epps
Rosie Flores – Girl of the Century
Glass Ghost – Idol Omen
Euge Groove – Sunday Morning
Sarah Lee Guthrie & Family – Go Waggaloo
Brian McKnight – Evolution of a Man
Painkiller Hotel – Black Roses
Pink Martini – Splendor in the Grass
Chuck Prophet – Let Freedom Ring
Matthew Ryan – Dear Lover [MP3 download only]
The Swell Season – Strict Joy
Tainstick – 6lbs. of Sound
Tegan and Sara – Sainthood
Winger – Karma

Here are some of the better new Americana music releases for the week of October 27th, 2009.   The artist’s names link to their websites or MySpace pages and the CD title links go to either Amazon or CD Baby for easy ordering.

ROSIE FLORES – Girl of the Century (Bloodshot)
With cover art and production by Jon Langford and back-up by the Pine Valley Cosmonauts, this is a welcome return for the “Rockabilly Filly. ”   Bloodshot say Girl of the Century is an album of spirited and soulful romps through the back roads of American music.

SARAH LEE GUTHRIE & FAMILY – Go Waggaloo (Smithsonian Folkways)
a 13-track disc of children’s music from Sarah Lee Guthrie & Family featuring Johnny Irion, their two daughters, and a host of other family and friends including her father Arlo Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Pete’s grandson Tao Rodriguez Seeger.

THE DEL McCOURY BAND – Family Circle (McCoury Music)
Celebrating a 50 year career, Del McCoury started playing banjo before joining Bill Monroe’s Bluegrass Boys in as lead singer in 1963.  His band featuring his 2 sons Rob and Ronnie are not only the best bluegrass band in the land but also the most popular, even among the rock ‘n roll crowd.

THE MOTHER HIPS – Pacific Dust (Camera)
For the band’s seventh full-length studio album, The Mother Hips have never been more primed to share their well-traveled tales the long days and nights on the road, the gritty politics, the smart inward reflections and man, the music! – all delivered with a most appealing balance of Americana storytelling and their California-burnished rock.

CHUCK PROPHET – Let Freedom Ring! (Yep Roc)
The studio was state-of-the-art…for 1957. Surgical masks were as common as sunglasses. Earthquakes shook the streets. This was Mexico City, 2009, the city that was the muse for Chuck Prophet’s new album ¡Let Freedom Ring! Needing a vantage point outside his home country to make what he calls, “a political album for non-political people.”

CHIP TAYLOR – Yonkers, NY (Trainwreck)
Taylor’s newest album is a heartfelt and endearing window into the life of a young man learning about music, horses, girls, — and family. Set in the small bedroom community just north of the Bronx that’s the album’s namesake, Yonkers, NY finds the celebrated storyteller chronicling his upbringing,  along with his two brothers, actor Jon Voight and renowned scientist Dr. Barry Voight, and the trials, tribulations, and triumphs of a young man finding his way.

…coming soon: THE DIXIE BEE-LINERS, HANK WILLIAMS SR., MICKY & THE MOTORCARS, RICKIE LEE JONES …  more new releases.

Here’s a link to this week’s Americana Music Association’s Americana Airplay Chart

Bill Frater
Freight Train Boogie

Download “¡Let Freedom Ring!” by Chuck Prophet
Off “¡Let Freedom Ring!”

MP3 Courtesy of Shorefire

This is for Count Druncula…

The Paisley Underground was pretty influential on what’s come to be known as alt-country and at the fringes of it was a band called Green on Red, who – like so many great US acts – were very successful here and in Europe but less so in Usania.

Green on Red weren’t quite as obviously country-influenced as their contemporaries like True West although they did get more country-inclined as their career drew to a close.

Anyway, for a while Green on Red – fronted by the slightly crazed Dan Stuart – made a few OKish albums, but then they got a new guitarist called Chuck Prophet who seemed to ignite something in the band that had been there for a while but not really come to the fore – a certain stoned and world-weary, almost suicidally dark, mood that was the perfect medium for Stuart’s vocals and Prophet’s guitar working together but in total contrast.

Stuart and Prophet made a few Green on Red albums, of which Here Come the Snakes, This Time Around and Scapegoats were the best and contain a mixture of sensitive but death-obsessed love songs and ballads and some really quite angry rockers which often sound ‘up’ but on closer examination appear to have been written after a handful of downers.

And bleak?

It’s three in the morning I can’t get to sleep
I know I’m in trouble, I’m in trouble deep oh no, oh no
The bankers have taken the Chevy away
It’s the only thing left around here anyway except you, except you
I can’t understand all of the things that I put you through

The sun is arisin’, I’m cleaning my gun,
This nightmare ain’t over I hope you had fun oh darling, my sweet little woman
Nothing’s forever but I got my doubts
I’m going upstairs, I’m gonna find out what’s waiting, for me now
Baby don’t miss me I was no good for you anyhow
Baby don’t miss me I was no good for you anyhow

Bleak doesn’t begin to describe some of their lyrics.

File under: Proto-Alt-Country.

Here’s a clip from the latter days of the band’s heyday.

London 1992, the Town & Country Club and Green on Red.

“Just a few more songs. Then we’ll take a break and afterwards we’ll play a second set.” Chuck Prophet houdt wel van een grapje nu en dan. Of tenminste, daar leek het op.

Lees hier verder.
Copyright : daMusic

Continuing from the last article, I want to get into more band stuff.

When a big promise falls through, it can be hard for some band members to stay pumped about the band. Disappointment and deflation are all too common.

You have 2 choices as a concerned band member. You can let everyone’s feelings sit and fester. Or, you can get the band to drop the issue, and move on to what is happening today. Focus on the next gig, the next song, the next jam.  Maybe in today’s new light that promise wasn’t what you really needed, or wanted. Maybe it’s given you the perspective to look around at what you have and make it happen on your own.

Keeping band momentum should be an easy thing. Jam often, hang out often, treat each other respect and above all keep making music for the love and the fun of it. If you keep pouring your artistic soul into your sounds you’ll connect with people. Keep going.

Chuck Prophet hit the road in the ’80s with the psychedelic-roots band Green on Red straight out of high school and never looked back. In addition to working as a singer/songwriter, guitarist, bandleader, and musical collaborator with artists diverse as Cake, Kim Carnes and Solomon Burke, Prophet’s deepening solo catalog of self-produced “sideways” roots rock has steadily becoming his calling card.

Born in the Southern California suburb of Whittier, the San Francisco-based Prophet made his debut as a solo artist in 1990 with Brother Aldo. One U.K. music paper called its collision of lo-fi and country “As close to the genuine article as a white boy can get.” Developing his style over the course of seven albums, including Balinese Dancer (1993) and Feast of Hearts (1995), Prophet hit his stride with his gritty meditation on suburbia, Homemade Blood (1997) followed by the studio tweaked and poetic The Hurting Business (1998) and the streetwise epic No Other Love (2002) which sparked a radio hit, “Summertime Thing” (the title track was covered by Heart). His 2004 release, Age of Miracles, marries vintage with state-of-the art studio technique while consistently never compromising its raw, roots foundation. Soap and Water (2007) barges through rock’s barriers with a helping of swamp and hip-hop. Between albums, Kelly Willis and Boz Scaggs, among others, have laid down versions of Prophet’s songs while his guitar tracks show up on recordings from Warren Zevon and Lucinda Williams to Jewel. In 2005-2006, Green on Red reunited for a series of shows. Prophet continues to perform as a solo artist and with his band, the Mission Express, featuring his wife, Stephanie Finch, on keyboards and vocals.

• Sonny Liston’s Blues
• Let Freedom Ring
• American Man

Download

Chuck Prophet.com ## MySpace ## CD’s ## MP3’s ## Hype Machine

A movie that literally brought tears to my eyes the entire time.
I fell in love with the music throughout this entire motion picture. It’s a movie about a woman who must rediscover herself after her husband dies.
He arranges for letters to be sent to her that he prepared before his untimely death.

With music from The Pogues, James Blunt, and others, this soundtrack really captures the most perfect things about the movie. It helps that the music is great too. Soft beats make you sway to the music and great lyrics make you want to sing along.

On the Soundtrack:

Love You ‘Till The End, The Pogues

Same Mistake, James Blunt

More Time, Needtobreathe

Carousel, Laura Izibor

Fortress, Hope

Last Train Home, Ryan Star

Rewind, Paolo Nutini

My Sweet Song, Toby Lightman

No Other Love, Chuck Prophet

Everything We Had, The Academy Is…

In The Beginning, The Stills

If I Ever Leave This World Alive, Flogging Molly

P.S. I Love You, Nellie McKay

Kisses and Cake, John Powell

.Check out the P.S. I Love You page to listen to the songs.