Chuck Prophet has nine lives. It was news to me that this Bay Area rocker spent one in a health scare a few years back. I have been a fan since the early 2000s and count his No Other Love record from this period as a near perfect recording. He has always been a smartass, but community minded with his approach. At one Green Riverfest, Chuck enlisted a slew of local high school musicians to accompany his set. On this evening, he is joined by his “Cumbia Shoes”, a backing band fluent in the genre. Originally from Colombia, cumbia spread through Latin America and tickled the US southwest. The gist has a metronomic drumbeat, forward bass as a backdrop for guitar, pedal steel, or percussion workouts. The show leaned heavily on his 2024 release Wake The Dead. The setlist: C’Mon Everybody ( Eddie Cochran cover), Same Old Crime, Wake The Dead, Wish Me Luck, Cumbia de los Pajaritos (Los Mirlos cover), Jesus Was a Social Drinker, Betty’s Song, First Came The Thunder, Give The Boy a Kiss, Killing Machine, Sally Was a Cop ( co- written with Alejandro Escovedo), In The Shadows ( for Elon) OneLie for Me, One For You, West Memphis Moon, Sugar Into Water, Ford Econoline ( “the best thing to come out of Detroit besides Iggy and The Stooges”), You Did ( Bomp Shooby Dooby Bomp) and encored with the poignant heartfelt It’s A Good Day To Be Alive, and Wooly Bully ( Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs cover). The band had Chuck on electric and acoustic, Mario on percussion, drummer, bass, lead guitar ( sometimes pedal steel), and another multi instrumentalist who played guitar and keys. The sound was full for the largely gray haired, near capacity audience. Nine lives is a lot, glad that Chuck Prophet has a few more up his sleeve.
No comments:
Post a Comment