His first endeavor away from his sleepy hometown of Whittier, California was straight to the absurdity that is San Francisco. He almost immediately joined the seminal cosmic country rock band Green On Red and spent 8 years and as many albums playing and touring with them. He wasn’t yet 21 years old. Hell, he wasn’t even 20. He was still a teenager. Once called by the New York Times “By far one of the best bands in the United States for almost an entire decade”, he spent his youth touring Europe and the US; watching himself grow up on the road. He became a teenage junkie. Trial by fire? Horse shit. He was a kid; a kid who could play and sing and write like a musical time bomb and he kept himself alive long enough to find crack cocaine, the drug that finally brought him to his knees ten years ago. He’s been clean ever since.

Chuck, in his Green On Red days was often called, in quotation marks, Billy The Kid. He first signed to China records in the early 90s and then onto Cooking Vinyl for his first 6 amazing platters. He signed to New West records in 2002 and two albums into a five album deal, he left in August 2006 even though he had sold over 45,000 sales on his sixth solo album “No Other Love” he just needed the change as was off to Yep Roc which has seen him up his game with four magnificent records and securing him and his band, The Mission Express, as one of the best live shows around. Each one of these records has seen him hone is craft of bringing in the new while paying some homage to the past with ‘Soap and Water’, ‘Let Freedom Ring’(recorded in Mexico), ‘Temple Beautiful’ (his homage to San Francisco) and now ‘Night Surfer’. Chuck Prophet is 51 years old. There, now you know. But he’s still a kid.

Chuck’s encyclopedic knowledge of rock and roll and The American Songbook at large is weighty and impressive. He’s not a student, though. He tells me he, “doesn’t understand why people are so down on Dylan’s eighties records” with heart. He’s not drawn to the stories and music because of any intellectual need to know; he’s drawn to it like a moth to flame, like a razor to the vein. He can’t live without it and has never quite figured out how to live within it. His fans within the music community are vast. Lucinda Williams, Alejandro Escovedo (whom he co-wrote and played on his last two records) as well as the likes of Dan Penn, Kelly Willis, Solomon Burke, Kim Richey, Jim Dickinson, and even Heart whom he has all co-wrote with. He’s played on the recordings of Warren Zevon, Jonathan Richman, Cake, Bob Neuwirth, Penelope Houston, and many others.
God bless Chuck Prophet." Yes sir, God bless him indeed.
God bless Chuck Prophet. He has released twelve solo records, the last three all finishing in year end polls with top marks and his newest being the brilliant “Night Surfer”, is objectively his best.