There isn't much that journeyman musician Chuck Prophet hasn't covered in his 40-plus years in the rock and roll biz. In 1984, he was a member of the Paisley Underground music scene in Los Angeles, having his first brush with success playing in the revered band Green on Red. Since the band's dissolution, he has not only been steadily churning out his own unique brand of Americana rock while incorporating a wide variety of influences but also collaborating with a long, eclectic list of artists, including Warren Zevon, Kelly Willis, Jim Dickinson, Jonathan Richman, and Alejandro Escovedo. This list, of course, only scratches the surface. Chuck is back with his latest effort, Wake The Dead, which comes four years after his previous record. This time, he is bringing the band ¿Qiensave? along for the ride. After a major health scare in 2022 (battling stage 4 lymphoma), along with the COVID lockdown, Chuck found himself gravitating toward a form of Latin dance music called Cumbia. The origins of this music started in Colombia, but it has since spread throughout Latin American countries, including Mexico and Argentina. Now cancer-free, Prophet is hitting the road with a six-piece band, bringing his variation of Cumbia along with some classics that have his fans dancing in the aisles. Chuck sat with editor-in-chief Joann Butler at the LifeMinute Studios in Times Square recently to enthrall us with stories from his past, what inspires him, and what lies ahead. This is a LifeMinute with Chuck Prophet.
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00:00Hey, this is Chuck Profitt and you're watching Life Minute TV.
00:11There isn't much Journeyman musician Chuck Profitt hasn't covered in his 40-plus years
00:16in the rock and roll biz.
00:17Revered for his songwriting skills, he's been covered by everyone from Bruce Springsteen
00:22and Lucinda Williams to Heart.
00:24He's now out touring in support of his latest record, Wake the Dead, to rave reviews.
00:30He stopped by the Life Minute Studios to tell us all about it and more.
00:33This is a Life Minute with Chuck Profitt.
00:36Woohoo!
00:37Chuck Profitt in the house.
00:39Yay!
00:40Thanks for joining us on Life Minute.
00:42Thanks for having me, Life Minute.
00:43Yeah.
00:44Wake the Dead, your new record, is out right now.
00:46Tell us about it.
00:47Well, it's called Wake the Dead.
00:49I think it has 11 songs on it.
00:51It's a gestation story, really.
00:53I mean, this record is pretty unique in that it's been four years since my previous record
00:59and I've been doing this a while and I kind of have a par, you know.
01:03I kind of generally make a record every 18 months to two years and go out and do the
01:09hand-to-hand combat and try to tour behind it and play throughout the States and Europe
01:15and the United Kingdom and sometimes go back and do it all again and maybe some festivals
01:19in the summer and really try to go out there and bring music to the people.
01:23But between the lockdown and a health scare that I went through, a stage four lymphoma,
01:28which I was treated for, four years went by, you know.
01:33But in that time, having those things really afforded me the time to listen to a lot of
01:39different music and really immerse myself in things and one of those things was cumbia
01:45music, which is this kind of Latin dance music that some people say originated out of Peru
01:51or Colombia and was imported into Mexico and, yeah, I discovered a band called Quien Sabe,
01:59who are from the central coast of California and they're from a small farming community
02:05of Salinas.
02:06You know, over a period of time, I would jam with those guys and write some songs that
02:11might fit into their groove and, you know, eventually I kind of stood back and squinted
02:17and I'm like, man, there's like three or four really good songs.
02:20If I keep at it, I could maybe make a cumbia record and go out and tour with these guys
02:25and here we are, you know, and we're having a ball.
02:28We played the City Winery last night here in New York City and we sold it out and people
02:32were dancing in the aisles and it's been really fun, you know.
02:35In many ways, having a show that is that sort of dancy has gone on to sort of erase
02:43the line between the stage and the audience and that's really exciting.
02:47I mean, you know, I've been doing this a long time and, you know, the challenge is always
02:52finding new ways to do the same old stuff or at least new ways to stay excited about
02:58it, you know, and so I really lucked out when I came across those guys.
03:03I'm loving it.
03:05That's awesome.
03:06How did you start as a musician?
03:08I started really as a listener.
03:10I had two older sisters with pretty impeccable taste and so we had all the great records
03:16in our house, you know, The Stones and Creedence and Beatles and I just was a listener, you
03:22know, more than anything and eventually my sister brought home one of those CYO camp,
03:28Catholic Youth Organization nylon string guitars and I learned a few basic chords and I was
03:34off and running.
03:35How old were you?
03:36I was like, you know, 11 or 12 and got some lessons just for a couple of months and had
03:41an excellent teacher and I learned some of the basic useful stuff that I'm still using,
03:47you know, which is learning about chords and things like that, intervals and enough that
03:53I could start to pick up the Jeff Beck licks out of the Yardbirds records and things.
03:59Yeah, and then punk rock came along.
04:01It just enabled anybody to start a band and do things as audacious as writing your own
04:07songs and, you know, that was the next step for me.
04:10Played in a lot of bands.
04:13On the job training, really, in many ways, yeah.
04:16Tell us about that, your first brush with fame, what was that?
04:19I'm still trying to break into the music business, honestly.
04:22I don't know that I'm actually in it, but I was in a band called Green on Red, you know,
04:26and one of the first things we did was we went over and did a European tour.
04:30We started in Sweden and we went back, I think, again, and I remember these Swedish promoters
04:36said if you guys want, you could go to London on the way back to Newark or whatever it was.
04:43Is that something you guys want to do?
04:44We said, yeah, sure, you know, so I remember we flew from Stockholm to Gatwick and then
04:50we took a train to not the sexiest part of London.
04:54They met us there and gave us our instructions and the next day we went to Piccadilly Circus
05:00and went down to this basement, into this club that was like a goth club.
05:05This was probably like 1984, 85, I don't know.
05:08They said, yeah, here you go, you know, and there's some amps and things and there were
05:13these other characters hanging around and we were trying to chat them up a little bit
05:20and I really couldn't understand a word they were saying.
05:22Their Scottish accents were so thick.
05:25That was the Jesus and Mary Chain.
05:27And so Green on Red, the band I was in, and the Jesus and Mary Chain played this legendary
05:31gig in the basement of this goth club and, you know, they had the weekly papers in England.
05:37So when you talk about Brush With Fame, three weekly papers, the Melody Maker, the Enemy,
05:42Sounds, and they were always looking for something to write about, you know.
05:47So as soon as we got on stage there were a lot of flashpots going off and we ended up
05:51in the papers that week and we really enjoyed that, you know, and that led to a deal with
05:59a British label, Phonogram, you know.
06:01So there we were with Van Morrison and gosh, you know, Tears for Fears and I don't know.
06:09And that was the beginning of a great adventure for that band and we made a couple records
06:13for over there.
06:15And you've collabed with so many people and so many people have done your songs.
06:19Warren Zevon, Bruce Springsteen, Peter Wolfe, Kelly Willis, Hart, Jim Dickinson, the list goes on.
06:26Do you have a favorite collab?
06:28Oh my, I mean I learned so much from Jim Dickinson, the sort of maverick producer out of Memphis
06:34who was sort of an extension of the great Sam Phillips.
06:37He taught us so much and when he produced Green on Red we were really pretty challenged
06:41as musicians and his thing was like, yeah, don't let anybody ever make you feel bad about
06:46what you're doing.
06:47And that really helped us a lot, you know, when we needed it and he was a huge influence
06:52on me.
06:53And when you talk about other people like Warren Zevon, he's out of the list.
06:57Warren didn't record one of my songs, but the other people on their list that you just
07:01mentioned had, yeah.
07:02So I did a session with Warren Zevon for a record called Life Will Kill Ya.
07:07Life will kill ya, that's what I said.
07:12I was hired as a guitar player, you know, it was rough going man, I gotta tell ya.
07:18I mean, I consider it one of the best paid internships of my life, you know.
07:24But he was a character, God I never thought that, you know, a couple years later he'd
07:29be gone.
07:30I grabbed every trick that he let out of his bag, you know.
07:33He was definitely somebody that I looked up to as a songwriter and I still do, you know.
07:38So cool.
07:39The greatest.
07:40So cool.
07:41Why was it tough?
07:42Was he tough?
07:43Yeah, he was tough.
07:44Yeah, he was tough.
07:45The best ones are.
07:46Actually, the difficult ones are often easier to get along with because you know why they're
07:52difficult because they're trying to wrestle something to the ground and they're, you know,
07:58they're focused on it and, you know, you just gotta help them achieve their vision, you
08:02know.
08:03Yeah, that's a good way to look at it.
08:04But that's, you know, who you're dealing with, somebody that's intense, you know.
08:08Sometimes those are easier.
08:10And we talked about Alejandro before.
08:12You co-wrote Real Animal, which was his breakthrough.
08:17The first time I laid eyes on Alejandro Escovedo was at a place, a punk rock club in San Francisco
08:25called The On Broadway.
08:27It was a band from Canada that night, a legendary punk band called DOA were playing and the
08:34opening act was a band called Rank and File.
08:38And they got up on stage with their cowboy boots and their check shirts and cowboy hats
08:43and it was like, what is happening here, you know?
08:49And the punks went nuts, you know, and the mosh pit and everything.
08:53And it was one of the most subversive, cool things that I'd ever witnessed, you know.
08:59It was like challenging the punk rock establishment to embrace country music, you know, because
09:05let's face it, you know, who's tougher than Johnny Cash, you know?
09:10Who's a bigger punk than Johnny Cash, you know?
09:12And so that was really great.
09:13And I clocked Alejandro and then a couple of years later, Green on Red played with the
09:18True Believers, which were his next band.
09:22So we always ran into each other and Alejandro, I want to buy you a shot, man, and he just
09:28started talking to me as if we'd known each other our whole lives and that's kind of the
09:32way it's been without.
09:33You know, he may be that way with everybody, I don't know, he might be a total sociopath,
09:38but I feel like we always had a connection.
09:43And somewhere around 2006 or something, he said that he was getting ready to do a record
09:48and he wondered if I'd be into writing some songs with him.
09:51You know, we did.
09:52We spent a lot of time between his home in Wimberley, Texas and Al traveling to where
09:57I live in San Francisco, my so-called office there.
10:02And yeah, we just ended up writing this record, Real Animals, which ended up being a pretty
10:08cool collection of songs and it was produced by Tony Visconti, who was a real hero of ours,
10:13of course, because of T-Rex and Bowie and everything.
10:17And it was a good record for Alejandro and we continue to write, you know, when we can.
10:24Any other collabs you'd want to do in the future that you'd like to do?
10:27I used to say I was always waiting for Glen Campbell to call, but he's been gone for some
10:31time now.
10:32I gotta think of somebody new.
10:33Oh, that's interesting.
10:35Any music of today that you particularly like?
10:37Well, I like a lot of modern reggaeton and cumbia music.
10:41That's what I find myself gravitating towards.
10:45And you know, there's just so many great songwriters out there.
10:50There's a band out of San Francisco now called Fake Fruit, who are a really inventive, tight
10:56little band.
10:57It's just one of those bands that sounds like they know what time it is.
11:00I can't really explain it, but I saw them play live and was really charmed by them.
11:06Cool.
11:07How did you know you were good with words?
11:09You know, I was a poor student, had some learning disabilities.
11:13I don't know that I ever really thought that I was good with words, you know?
11:17I started to get confidence as a songwriter and I quit drinking somewhere along the line.
11:22I noticed that whenever I walked around San Francisco, I would see people in these coffee
11:26shops, you know, on these things, and I'm like, what's that?
11:31What's a laptop?
11:32And you can type into it.
11:33And I thought, I've got to get one of those.
11:35So I became a little bit more, really it was kind of the email era that kind of woke up
11:41the writer inside of me, I think, in many ways, you know, just trying to be understood
11:46and, you know, practical.
11:49I read.
11:50I'm not the most well-read anymore now that there's so many other great distractions,
11:55but that probably has.
11:56Like what?
11:57What are your great distractions?
11:58I'm just like anybody else.
12:00I'm scrolling through 30-second videos wondering how long have I been doing this, you know?
12:06And you know, I mean, the amount of notifications on my phone between the New York Times and
12:10the Washington Post and the LA Times, you know, there's always something going on.
12:14Those are distractions.
12:16Some are probably more quality than others, but it's a new world.
12:20We've got a lot of stuff coming at us, you know?
12:23And writing is writing, you know?
12:25It wouldn't include journalism, it wouldn't include anybody, really.
12:29Part of what we do is, you know, we just kind of stare out the window and think about stuff.
12:33And so that, I find myself doing that less and less and, you know, that's probably not
12:39the coolest thing.
12:40Yeah, I know what you mean.
12:41You've got to make time to stare out the window and do nothing.
12:45What inspires you as an artist?
12:47I hear something and I get kind of jealous, you know?
12:50I mean, there were like gateway drugs for me, like The Clash's album, London Calling.
12:59So many different kinds of music on it, ska music and rockabilly and glam rock and punk
13:06rock and just all these different things.
13:10And it was just all put into The Clash's own Cuisinart, you know?
13:16That inspires me.
13:17You know, what they were able to do with reggae, you know?
13:20That really empowered me to take on cumbia music and be a little less concerned about
13:24doing it correctly, you know?
13:27Which is something that happens a lot with jazz and Latin music, you know?
13:34This is a proper samba, this is a proper bossa nova, this is a proper cumbia, this is an
13:38orteña.
13:39You know, I got some good advice from a producer, Adrian Quesada, from the Black Pumas.
13:45I played him some stuff I was working on and he said, you know, my advice to you would
13:49be to just keep going and whatever you do, Chuck, promise me that you will pay no attention
13:55to the clave police because there's a lot of correct ways to do things, you know?
14:03And it all goes out the window.
14:07But The Clash really pointed the way in many ways for me.
14:11It was like punk rock said, hey, anybody can pick up a guitar, but it was The Clash that
14:16showed what you could do with it, you know?
14:20How would you describe your sound?
14:22I'm definitely a roots artist, you know?
14:24So much of what I do is based on, you know, the big bang of rock and roll from the 50s
14:31onwards.
14:32Irish music, Cajun music, and all these things worked their way into it.
14:37And I'm a bit of a classicist, I think, as a songwriter, a little bit of a slave to verse,
14:42chorus, verse, chorus, you know, bridge, come back to the chorus, you know?
14:46They will have missed you by then, and they'll be happy to see you again.
14:50Yeah, I mean, what was the question?
14:51What inspires me?
14:52Or what do I, what kind of, what's my music?
14:53How would you describe it?
14:54Yeah.
14:55Yeah, it's pretty eclectic.
14:56It's a result of a lot of listening.
14:59Awesome.
15:00You worked with poet Kurt Lipschitz.
15:02Lipschitz, yeah.
15:03What was that like?
15:04Well, many years ago, there was a place that a lot of songwriters hung out at called the
15:09Albion, which was a bar in San Francisco on 16th Street and Albion.
15:15And there was a guy playing there one afternoon named Bone Coots, and I thought his songs
15:20were really cool.
15:21I thought they were just unique in a lot of ways.
15:25And I ended up introducing myself, and we hung out.
15:27And he wrote with this guy, Kurt Lipschitz, who's also a poet and a journalist and a lot
15:34of things.
15:35And so the three of us wrote some songs, and then Kurt and I continued to write.
15:39A lot of those songs found their way onto my records.
15:43And then we had a falling out.
15:44Nobody can remember exactly why, but I think we probably could have each written a book
15:49on just how wronged we were.
15:54He says we fell out over money.
15:56He says there was just too much of it, and he couldn't go on anymore.
16:00And we took about a 10-year break.
16:02But then in around 2012, my wife kind of brokered a get-together, and he and I started writing
16:09again.
16:10One of the things that I suggested was that, because I'd just gotten done writing the Real
16:16Animal record with Alejandro, is I said, you know, we could write an album if you want
16:21to do it that way.
16:22Instead of just a bunch of songs, we could write an album.
16:25And so we had a batch, and we kind of stood back and squinted, and I was like, this could
16:30be like a San Francisco record.
16:33So we've got all the characters, the people, the history, the mythology to work with.
16:39And there's a lot of it there.
16:41And so we wrote an album called Temple Beautiful, which has a lot of heroes, people like Willie
16:46Mays, but probably more villains, people like Bill Graham and Jim Jones, and San Francisco
16:52has such a colored past.
16:56And after that, we found ourselves writing more and more, and that's his story.
17:02We're writing a musical at the moment, so get that out there.
17:06Anybody who wants to work on a musical, hit me up in the DMs.
17:10So that's coming, okay.
17:12What's the process like for you creatively?
17:14Do the words come first, or sound?
17:16The best way is when they come together, when maybe I'm alone in a room, I'm strumming some
17:22chords, I start shouting at the walls, and I like hearing it bounce off the walls, like
17:27honking your horn in a tunnel, and you think, that's fun, do it again.
17:30When I start hearing things that I like, then I'm in it, you know, and that's inspiration
17:35for me.
17:36I'm not thinking about anything else.
17:39And sometimes, you know, I might get it down the road a little bit, and then bring somebody
17:44in the room to help me get it all the way there.
17:47Yeah, when it comes at the same time, it's what you want.
17:50Otherwise, you could write backwards from a title.
17:52You could write, oh, you know, there's a number of ways to do it, they're all legit.
17:57And no matter what, if I finish a song, certainly one that I'm proud of, you know, I'm pretty
18:04happy.
18:05That inevitably wears off, and within a couple hours, I'm deeply depressed, because I just
18:11have no idea where the next one's coming from.
18:15So it's a cycle.
18:18What inspires you creatively, not people, or not other bands, but just everyday life,
18:23what inspires you?
18:24Yeah, I don't know.
18:25I find inspiration everywhere.
18:27One of the things about traveling, as much as I do, if you have a heightened awareness
18:31of like architecture, it can kind of improve the quality of your life, you know.
18:36And so here we are, we're, you know, walking through these corridors in New York, and all
18:42the signs, and all the typography, and the neon, and it's just really wonderful, you
18:49know.
18:50Well, that's pretty inspirational, yeah.
18:52What's something you always take with you when you travel?
18:54I got it pretty dialed back these days, yeah.
18:59You're a pro.
19:00Not a lot.
19:01I have a phone, and that's, you know, of course everybody knows that's your live blood.
19:04I know that question doesn't quite work anymore, with the phones these days, everyone says
19:07phone.
19:09And you mentioned your health care.
19:10How are you doing?
19:11I'm glad you're good.
19:12You seem good.
19:13Yeah, I was diagnosed with stage four lymphoma, which is treatable, and there's a number of
19:18ways they can treat it.
19:19They treated mine with immunotherapy, Rituxan, and chemo a year later, and they told me I
19:26was completely cancer-free.
19:27But, you know, I'm going to live with it.
19:29We're living in the age of miracles, you know, I mean, if there's anybody out there that's
19:34thinking about getting checked up, checked out, just do it, I mean, because no matter
19:38what you think about it, every day they're finding more ways to beat it, so if it's treatable,
19:46it's beatable.
19:47Yeah, that's great.
19:49Stephanie, your wife, tell us about that.
19:51So you're not touring with her on this tour, but you do usually, the Mission Express tells
19:56us about that.
19:57Yeah, well, she's my rock.
19:59After I left Green on Red, the band that I'd been in for maybe as much as ten records or
20:04something, I was writing songs and thought maybe, you know, I was going to make Chuck
20:11Proffitt records.
20:12You know, I didn't think I was going to be in another band after all that.
20:15And I thought I was an okay songwriter, better than average guitar player, but when I met
20:22Stephanie and we started singing together, I thought, well, I'm pretty good, but with
20:26her, it's great.
20:28And so that was really what we did a lot in the early days, we were probably inspired
20:32by Graham Parsons and Emmylou Harris, and Bob Dylan and Emmylou Harris, and Richard
20:38and Linda Thompson, and those were big records for us.
20:42You know, eventually we got married and we've been on the road for a long time, we added
20:47more instruments and got louder.
20:50She's been there through thick and thinner, really.
20:54And we're still playing.
20:56Now tell us about this tour, so what are fans going to get?
20:58You said they're dancing in the aisles at City Winery, which is like unheard of, I've
21:03never seen anything like it.
21:05Yeah, lucky that security didn't come.
21:07Well, it's a six-piece band, we're playing cumbia music, if not strict cumbia music,
21:12we're playing cumbia-inspired or adjacent music, and still playing some of my old songs.
21:17Yeah, it's a six-piece band, it's really wild, it gets people on their feet, and it's pretty
21:23guitar-centric music, which makes it fun for me.
21:26Yeah, I'd really like for you guys to see it, I've got a couple of the members of this
21:30band, Key & Save, who've taught me so much about this music.
21:34We've got a couple of those guys, Mario Cortez and Alejandro El Flaco Gomez, playing percussion
21:41and organ and bajo sexto, and it's just, they're bringing a lot of flavor to it.
21:50Yeah, it's awesome.
21:51What does music do for people?
21:52Well, it can get you out of your head, which I learned a lot during my treatment.
21:59There's also cumbia dub, which doesn't necessarily have singing, and so there's really no images
22:05or words to take you anywhere else, and it's just music, and oftentimes that can be really
22:13meditative for me.
22:15How many memories are completely entwined with the music, especially those formative
22:20years?
22:21Music's pretty important, and not everybody is a musician, but if you learn an instrument
22:27a little bit, then it can really enhance your appreciation of music, classical music, rock
22:33and roll, whatever.
22:35So I think music plays a pretty important part of everything, and you know, try making
22:39a movie without any music.
22:41Good luck.
22:42Try making a movie anybody wants to see.
22:46Anything else you want to tell us that we didn't cover?
22:48Somebody once asked me if there was anything that was totally unique, and I just want to
22:53say that I had dinner once with Brian Adams, and I also had dinner once with Ryan Adams.
23:01So I'm probably the only person who's had dinner with both Ryan Adams and Brian Adams.
23:08Great guys, both of them.
23:11Well, they had dinner with you.
23:13They were lucky.
23:14There you go.
23:16Thank you so much for coming.
23:17You're a treasure.
23:18Oh, thanks.
23:19Such an honor.
23:20Thanks.
23:21Well, this was fun, right?
23:22You guys got a cool thing going on.
23:23To hear more of this interview, visit our podcast, Life Minute TV, on iTunes and all
23:27streaming podcast platforms.
23:30You can also follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
23:33Thanks for watching.
23:34Be safe out there.
23:35Be well.
23:36Bye.
23:37Bye.
23:38Bye.
23:39Bye.
23:40Bye.
23:41Bye.
23:42Bye.
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23:55Bye.
23:56Bye.
23:57Bye.
23:58Bye.