Chuck Prophet - 21/02/17 - The Garage

Somewhere between Bruce Springsteen and Alice Cooper, lies the mind of Chuck Prophet. It’s a Ray Harryhausen lost world where all the eras of rock’n’roll co-exist in a delicate ecosystem; feeding off each other and any unwitting musician who passes through.
I first encountered Chuck Prophet a couple, of years ago, when the song ‘Ford Econoline’ appeared on my radar. A road trip song with a Talking Heads reference, kicked off with a Townshend-style acoustic rhythm; I was there. The album – ‘Night Surfer’ – went straight on to heavy repeat and I saw him not long after at the Bush Hall. Two years later, an even better album and a better venue for a touring bar band.
The support act, one Max Gomez from New Mexico was okay – but conditioned to having to shout over American bar conversation, rather than sing over a decent PA.
Prophet, and ‘The Mission Express’ hit the stage with minimal fuss, and maximum riffage – straight into ‘Bobby Fuller Died for Your Sins’ – a call and response song which in my head keeps sliding into ‘I Wanna Be Elected’.
For those of us (including me) who didn’t know, Bobby Fuller was a 60’s rock & roller, who in 1966 recorded the definitive version of ‘I Fought The Law’, shortly before dying in mysterious circumstances at the age of 24. ‘I Fought The Law’ was written by the guy who replaced(?!) Buddy Holly in The Crickets. Originally it was a zip-gun; it was Bobby Fuller who made it a 6-gun. Exhaustive research concludes that the worst version of the song ever recorded is by Status Quo (but then I couldn’t face the Bryan Adams version, so I may be wrong). Meanwhile, back at the gig…
Prophet is having a great time – a tight band, including his wife on keyboards and vocals, a mean slide-guitar player and a solid rhythm section. There’s songs about touring, about cars, about holidays and at least two about baseball. There was a cover of Leonard Cohen (‘Iodine’), a steal from Alan Vega (‘In The Mausoleum’), and echoes of a whole bunch of rock’n’roll myths and legends.
Musically they had the classic American bar sound of Bruce Springsteen, with the arch lyricism of early Alice Cooper, and the messianic presence of a happy Nick Cave. There is nothing not to love about Chuck Prophet at this point in his career.
Although tour dates on the t-shirt would be nice.