As we edge ever closer to this year’s annual shindig on the 28th November, 25 years of Americana UK this time, I thought it entirely apropos to look back at our headliner in his early years. So this week’s Classic Clip is Chuck Prophet from 31 years ago, performing on what appears to be a tiny stage in a back room at Glastonbury, introduced by Mark Radcliffe. A quick search shows he was booked for the acoustic stage, but this feels more like a set for TV. In a three-piece group setting, with Chuck on acoustic, Stephanie Finch on accordion, and a mandolin player I don’t recognise, they essay a beautiful version of Longshot Lullaby from his third solo album,Feast of Hearts, released that year.
My own relationship with Chuck slightly predates this recording and is the source of a lot of joy and some embarrassment. 1993 finds me at the start of my parental journey and learning to be a grown-up (my oldest son was born in October of that year and frankly being a grown-up is still a work in progress), and I was a regular listener to the inimitable Johnny Walker on his Radio 1 show, The Saturday Sequence. I had already reached the point of “maturity” where Walker was one of a handful of DJs I liked and enjoyed his choice of music. One week, he played Heart Breaks Like The Dawnby a new artist called Chuck Prophet. I believe that there was an interview with Chuck as well, but that may be a fever dream; whatever, I can remember stopping and listening to this song, transfixed.
Coincidentally, around that time I had started buying an ill-fated magazine called Rock CD. It was one of the first to feature a monthly covermount CD. The CDs were generally filled with old cuts from the 60s and 70s; some classic, some rare, only occasionally new stuff. The first few were somewhat randomly curated, but they began to theme them. RCD 8 was themed around country rock, and after a start of Mike Nesmith, Flying Burrito Brothers, Gram Parsons, Gene Clark, Crosby and Nash, and Steve Earle, was a track from Green on Red, Keith Can’t Read (written by Prophet), and Chuck Prophet’s Heart Breaks Like The Dawn. I was made up and played that CD to death, specifically for that track. The magazine folded after the 12th edition, but that CD became almost a founding text in my Americana journey.
So clearly, thus enamoured, I went out and bought Balinese Dancer and followed Chuck’s career from there… Errrr, nope, to my shame, I let the responsibilities of fatherhood distract me. In fact, it was a full 21 years later, around the release of The Night Surfer in 2014, that things pick up again. I had discovered a colleague at work who liked alt country, and we had been happily swapping CDs. Coincidentally again, I used to download music from Noisetrade. This was a free service where, for sharing your email address, you could download EP’s and albums by generally new or lesser-known artists and often from the Americana field. Chuck had posted an EP curated from The Night Surfer and a couple of other tracks which I downloaded.
I mentioned this to my friend and nonchalantly noted this was the first I had heard of this artist in 21 years. I passed my treasured copy of RCD8 for their perusal. I did not fully expect the response. “That is stunning, a beautiful track… why have you not bought more… what were you thinking?” I will leave you to picture the rising intonation of voice and the pain that can be inflicted when you are belaboured about the head with a CD in a crystal case. The happy ending to this story is that I started checking out, and now own all of Chuck’s oeuvre, have seen him live on a number of occasions, and read the fabulous biography. Indeed, what was I thinking… Doh! This has since become known as the Prophet incident, and whilst I have occasionally pulled other gems out of my carefully curated covermount collection, if I can remember that I have them, none have quite achieved the 21-year gap and the impact when realised.
So this article is in some way my recompense for ignoring him at a formative time in his career. One album after Balinese Dancer, Feast of Hearts can be unfairly passed over to get to Homemade Blood, arguably the first of Chuck’s classics. Longshot Lullaby is therefore probably not quite as well known as some of his other material. The Chuck Prophet of 1995 was also a slightly different artist to today. It may have been the TV camera on him, but he is very serious, playing it very straight with excellent acoustic guitar as you would expect and focussing on his vocals. The resonant Prophet drawl and burr that his voice will develop is not there yet, simply a pure and affecting voice. As the song ends, the programme is coming to its conclusion, but Chuck and the band start Step Right This Way off his first release, Brother Aldo, and this is played over the credits on the clip.
Next month those there will again see Chuck and Stephanie in acoustic mode, and I, for one, will be up there for it, beaming like a loon and denying I wrote this article if he asks.
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