Chuck Prophet aiming to ‘hit where it hurts’

Groove Tube with Jimi McDonnell – tribunegroove@live.ie

At a first listen, Chuck Prophet brings to mind songwriters like Beck and Bob Dylan. Delve a little deeper, though, and you’ll discover an artist whose solo career began in 1990, and who has a sound that’s very much his own. The San Francisco based singer plays the Róisín Dubh next Tuesday, July 21, as part of this year’s Galway International Arts Festival.

Given that his career goes back over 25 years, is it hard for Chuck to put a set-list together? “I tend to like my later stuff – I can’t say that about all the artists that I follow!” he laughs. “I’ve so many songs to choose from, so I try to read an audience. I try and hit people where it hurts. I try to make them laugh.”

Last year, Chuck Prophet released his 13th studio album, Night Surfer.

Was he happy with how it turned out? “Absolutely, yeah,” he says. “I’m just so surprised that it’s taken me this f**kin’ long to get the hang of it! I feel like I’m just starting to. I don’t know, there’s songwriting, performing, and then there’s the craft of making a record. You want it all to come together at the same time, and it’s a mystery what that is.”

Laughing on the Inside is a track that grabs the listener from the very first chord. How did that bittersweet tune come about?

“I was trying to write something big like [George Harrison’s] All Things Must Pass, or Phil Spector,” he says. “There are two drummers on that track. I just wanted something that was less delicate and not sweet. You hear a track like Lust for Life and it just hits you, it rolls over you like a steam engine.”

Chuck is particularly proud of Truth Will Out (Ballad of Melissa and Remy), which he describes as a ‘dense, storytelling song’.

Was it hard to get that one right? “It was a little bit tricky,” he says. “Honestly, I don’t know if we even nailed it. Songs are living and breathing and you never know where the definitive one is coming from. Except for The Beatles – I heard Revolution on the radio and it’d be hard to think of a better version of that song. But they had the ability to make definitive recordings.”

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.